. . . . . . P d t 3 - - -> . . . P d t 4 . . . . . . . . N i g h t m a r e . . . !
'PC non-sense' indeed… . . .
You are my hero Clinton Bahler…
You sir, as it looks now,
solved my problem(s) (So far, that is… Because I really do not know what surprises are going to come up next in the very near future or much later, due to probable, for now still hidden thus non-tackled, other matters…) And most probably you also solved many the problems for
hundreds of other poor strugglers, if they are lucky enough to find these posts…
After ‘windows’ kept telling me every time when I started up that I was running out of disk space
(On an expanding disk…?) in Parallels Desktop 3 (PDT3),
I finally took the step to upgrade to PDT4, despite the fact that I had already read that there were
major problems already during the upgrade and thereafter. Well, brave enough, full of courage and 'well read' through this forums and others, I finally ‘took off’ and by now I could write a huge book about it…
What a bloody nightmare…!
So, days and nights of struggle went by the last few weeks in which I have been
trying to upgrade from PDT3 to PDT4.
Lots and lots of problems, as expected… But…
My problems were suddenly solved after reading this post and following your simple advice to go to the:
‘Control Panel’ / ‘Printers and Other Hardware’ / ‘Mouse’ / ‘Hardware’
In the ‘Mouse Properties’ window under the ‘Hardware’ tab
I found no less than THREE identical PS/2 MICE living there together… (And from that moment I slowly started to realize and understand what most probably happens more than once during this horrible upgrade process from PDT3 to PDT4, to which I will come back later…)
After single clicking and examining all the mouse drivers, I found that only one of them showed:
“This device is working properly.†The other 2 were indicated NOT to work properly.
For all of them I clicked ‘Properties’ respectively and then in the upcoming little other window I clicked the ‘Driver’ tab.
For the ones that were NOT working properly I clicked the “Uninstall†box.
Back to the remaining
PS/2 MOUSE driver (under the ‘Hardware’ tab in the ‘Mouse Properties’ window) for which it showed:
“This device is working properly.†I choose (as you suggested) to click the “Roll Back Driver†option and
guess what…:
After the rebooting of ‘windows’ and in the mean time racing back and forth to be quick enough to cancel those bloody irritating non-sense ‘windows stuff’ messages, the (most probably originally installed)
“Parallels Mouse Synchronization Device†manufactured by Parallels (re-) appeared under the ‘Hardware’ tab in the ‘Mouse Properties’ window where it had apparently been buried under a nest of ‘windows’ mouse drivers that were, as it appears now undesired and beyond my control, probably automatically installed there by ‘windows’ during the upgrade process…
(BTW: Gives us to think, what more matters gets (un-) installed in what ever place, and beyond our control, automatically by ‘windows’ during the upgrade or start up process, without us ever knowing anything about it…)
(Racing back and forth because…
a. if you were not able, after trying tenfold of times, to have the ‘Parallels Tools’ properly installed by now…
or
b. some semi- automatic installer (like ‘found new hardware’ that was not timely or properly (de-) activated by you during steps 2, 3 or 4 during a forced manual upgrade process) installed a few mouse drivers or other stuff that certainly should NOT be installed over parallels drivers or other parallels software…
…you must ‘train’ yourself to be able to quickly release the mouse from the ‘windows’ part by the ‘CTRL-OPT/ALT’ keys to scroll in the visible part of the window down and to the right to get there in time to read those little non-sense windows messages somewhere at the bottom right of the screen (“your computer might be at riskâ€, “you have low disk spaceâ€, “found new hardwareâ€, “updates are available†etc… All at a time that you really do not need this bloody non-sense…). Then quickly click to catch the mouse pointer in ‘windows’ again to be able to click away these little non-sense windows. (And if you do not hit the cross to close this little window ‘bulls eye’ another larger window opens somewhere else on or off the screen…)
Then again release the mouse by ‘CTRL-OPT/ALT’ in order to scroll up and to the left to find another larger window somewhere else up there in the left part of the screen telling you…
…in the best case, exactly the same as the message at the bottom told you, in which case you then click once to catch the mouse again in ‘windows’ in order to be able to click again in the ‘Cancel’ box in this window
or
…in the worst case, (whilst you catch the last glance of a window, which had an automatic count down that is just reaching zero by now, letting you realize that, you are too late now. Because the time you had, in which to make up your mind on what to do in that window, is up, so
" ‘windows’ is now . . . " . . . installing something, . . . deleting something or . . . doing something of which you do not have the slightest idea what it’s all about… because you never had the time to read what was in this, right at this moment! disappearing window!
So, maybe some of these messages, if not reacted to in time, make ‘windows’ do things on its own after a certain time has expired and you can in no way be quick enough in the above described way to cancel or control this action. So if you were too late you’ll never know what ‘windows’ has done for you, what you did not want it to do… (Meaning that, although everything may be appearing all right for now, to be absolutely sure that nothing ‘odd’ or undesired has happened that might give you future problems, you have to force yourself to start the whole horrible process all over again…!!!)
And this is only describing the situation when just rebooting ‘windows’ in parallels, if you got Parallels more or less working without the Parallels Tools.
But this same sort of situation arose several times during the upgrade process, however far worse. I did not even have a mouse or better said no pointer. So how could I react to those messages (some of them I did not even see, as they were ‘off screen’. I only knew they should be there because of the annoying (in the mean time becoming a more and more familiar and frightening) accompanying ‘plop’ sound.
Most probably, after being forced to go ‘manual’ in step 2, 3 and 4 during the upgrade process, these additional mouse drivers (and what more…) were installed without me knowing it, nor wanting it. (I think that one of the things that 'windows' does is breeding mice and other stuff. And we do not know anything about this during and after the upgrade process as it all happens behind closed doors in the background)
This is also, I figure by now, why (although I had all confirmations that ‘Parallels Tools’ were properly installed) I never could get coherence to work, or use PDT4 without the CTRL-ALT/OPT command to catch and release the mouse all this time. All this stuff will be recognized as being properly installed, but that it is buried under and paralyzed by all this unwanted ‘windows’ stuff remains undetected, other than a not properly working virtual machine…
I re-installed Parallels Tools numerous times and I uninstalled and installed Parallels Tools numerous times
(two completely different actions...) and I started the upgrade process from PDT3 to PGT4 all over again also numerous times, every time learning more and more and ‘training with the mouse’ to be faster and do a few things little differently than the previous time.
Reading this forum and others back and forth and back again.
It has all been driving me coconuts…
UNTIL…
I read this simple post of Clinton Bahler…
Thanks Clinton. From the bottom of my heart…
Kind regards, learner . . .
Furthermore I think that this irritating behavior of 'windows' pushing itself to the foreground at unwanted times and then, quickly retracting and acting in the background where you can not reach it to control it (like the breeding process of mice...) might be the core issue of all the upgrade problems and Parallels should find a way around this... Apparently 'windows' wants something several times from us during the upgrade steps. What? I do not know. Because it happens behind closed doors...
Windows may also want you to 'log into windows' depending on how this was arranged for on the previous version of the virtual hard disk, to use another example... As Parallels did not create a possibility to log into 'windows' during the upgrade process, I think the upgrade will 'hang' there and that forces you to continue manually... All these things happen in the background. So you do not know... I have been waiting for hours whilst the blue progress-bar did not move for a millimeter...
BTW: I also do not like the auto count down timer prior to the Parallels Tools installation... I want to have sufficient time to be able to properly read and understand what a window tries to tell me, so I know what is going to happen... Especially with important things like these...
Regards again, learner . . .
Several Macs from the early start…
This ‘nightmare with a happy end?’ on my:
MacBookPro
2.4Ghz IntelCore2Duo
4GB 667 Mhz DDR2SDRAM
150GB Serial ATA2
