HUGE PROBLEMS Parallels 8 and Windows!!!!!!

R

Robster

Hunter
Hi All

Just a warning, I am having huge issues with Parallels 8 and Windows 7 VM's!!!!!

I have just upgraded from Parallels 7 and booted three of my VM's, two Windows 7 and one Windows XP.

I let all three go through Parallels add ons/drivers upgrade and now both Windows 7 VM's are screwed up.

Windows XP is working perfectly but both Windows 7 VM's show in properties that they are still at the same resolution as they were before the upgrade BUT and it is a HUGE but.....

All the icons are about 5 times the size they used to be and the 'apparent screen resolution is a fraction of what it was.

It is totally unusable in this state.

YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!!!!!
 
Hmmmmmm

VERY strange behaviour.

I moved one of the VM's from my external Dell Screen to my Thunderbolt display and apart from 'physically' changing size due tot eh change in screen resolution, icons within the VM Window stayed in their relative positions as you would expect.

HOWEVER, when I move the VM to my Retina display, all the icons rejigged a bit and the 'perceived' screen resolution actually changed.

NOT back to a normal resolution but very slightly better that he grossly bloated Window I have at present.

The resolution reported by Windows did not change, which is exactly what you would expect!!!!

Really don't know what is going on but it is horrible.

For Clarity, I have a Retina MacBook Pro, Thunderbolt display and Dell 24inch display.

Running 10.8.1

Robin
 
I'm having the same issue. I go to where you can make icons bigger or small. The zoom is set to 199% and I change it to 100% and it changes itself back?!?!?!
 
Yup, I saw the exact same thing.

I dont know what they have done but it is a HUGE bug as far as I can see!!!!!

Robin
 
I'm having the same problem. macbook pro retina and 27" thunderbolt display.

At first, everthing was really small on the external display, and resolution was way up to 5880x .. or something. Adjusted that back to the 27" size, and everything was enormous, not fitting in windows, etc. Changed icons and text back to 100% and it won't stick.
 
also seeing that no keyboard input is working. both the macbook pro built in keyboard and the apple bluetooth keyboard. My magic trackpad works with no problems, though.
 
Wow... Lots of bugs to fix here.

This should not have been released to the public yet.

Using new Mac Book Pro Retina with Windows 7 VM

Coherence mode only works for Windows and Windows Office apps. Everything else is useless (only get the top left of the screen)

Dual display Full Screen mode is also buggy. Can't move application between windows.

Not Cool, I use this Windows environment for work....

Nate
 
My Fix

The problem for me was with new option "Enable Full Resolution" under virtual machine settings, hardware, video. This appears to force windows into the max retina resolution.

To fix it, I unchecked the "Enable Full Resolution" option, went into windows control panel display settings and changed the resolution to 1680 x 964 (to match my current settings on mac) and then changed the "Make text and other items larger or smaller" back to "Smaller - 100%."

Everything back to the way I want it. The new retina settings for the virtual machine allow the full retina display under windows but are not very practical unless you have 20/10 vision.
 
Yup me fixed too.

Although it took 70 minutes on the telephone with a Parallels support person controlling my Mac we DID eventually get there.

When you have Windows 7 you get TWO check box's under Retina support.

One screws up the size of your icons (the bottom one) and the top one doubles the resolution of the VM when dragged onto the Retina display!

So having purchased V8 in part for its new Retina support, in practice all has to be turned off to work properly!!!!!

Oh well........

Robin
 
Agreed … if you have a retina display, DON'T UPGRADE!

I just spent the $49.99 to upgrade today and I should have learned my lesson from previous upgrades. This should never have been released to the public without testing.

I use Parallels almost exclusively to run Quicken 2012 on Windows 7, which I believe a lot of people do. All of the text in the Quicken register view are about twice the size they need to be. Trying to resize the Register font size using Quicken's Preferences makes no difference. Various combinations of checkboxes screw up the icon sizes or text. The only way I found to make Quicken even usable is to turn off all support for the retina display.

DO NOT UPGRADE UNTIL THEY HAVE FIXED THIS!
 
Disable Retina support and everything should work fine!

Open preferences for your VM, go to hardware, then Video, you will see a checkbox about Retina.

Uncheck and you should be good to go.

Robin
 
PD8 is simply controlling the DPI setting in Windows, making everything appear huge. DPI scaling is much better in Windows 8 than in Windows 7, so it looks like they haven't tested this enough for Windows 7.
 
Moving windows between displays

The work around that I have found so far in moving a window between displays in Windows 7 is to drag the window to the other display and up to the top to make the window maximize. Then if you pull the window title banner down, it will unmaximize. Now it is on the other display.

Yikes.
 
With Windows XP. once I unchecked (under video) "Use full resolution with Retina Display" all was back to normal again, as has been stated here.

So, I guess this means that with XP there is no way to take advantage of the Retina display. I was hoping--and tried to do this--that changing the resolution in Windows XP from within Windows (right click desktop, go to Settings, video, etc.) with Retina display enabled would let me get the Retina-like resolution. But I cannot make XP maintain the lower resolutions.

I don't have Windows 7, and using the Windows 8 preview Boot Camp VM in Parallels 8 there are no display problems.

Like another forum member here, I use Windows mainly for Quicken (2011). I will have to upgrade to Quicken 2013 when it comes out to get the tax projection data for 2012, and was planning to upgrade to Windows 8 at the same time, but from what I have seen of W8 I don't think I'm going to want to use it--it's like a cross between the old Windows and an iPad, without the good features of either. The absence of a Start button really drives me nuts. There is a third party (free) program that adds a Start button. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to work very well, and I uninstalled it.
 
My Retina MBPro 15 is working fine now - but I had to go Configure/Hardware/Video, uncheck Optimize Windows and Enable Full Resolution, restart, and then re-enable Enable Full Resolution - and then the video works just fine.

Obviously a bug to fix, but I have no complaints with PD8 functionality at this time.
 
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