No USB in virtual WinXP

J

Joel

Bit poster
I've been unable to get USB working in XP, even after today's update. Being a total Mac user, I'm not overly familiar with the ins and outs of Windows, so I researched a bit today. It appears I have no USB drivers showing up in Windows, anywhere (BIOS or the Hardware settings panel).

The set-up: MacBook Pro 2.0GHz, 2GB RAM. Windows was installed from a Win98 OEM disc, then updated using an XP Upgrade disc. Outside of the missing USB drivers (can't see my flash drive or cell phone when connected), XP is running better than on an actual Windows box. Any ideas?
 
USB support is not implemented in Parallels at this time. You'll need to wait until one of the upcoming releases. Hopefully the next release.
 
I concur re:USB!

I've been a Mac enthusiast since my first Mac in 1984 (owned about a dozen since then) and have used Virtual PC since its introduction for those few applications that I had to use but which were available only for Windoze. I always marved at the VPC technology (that it worked at all), but was never happy with the performance (nor was anyone else). So the appearance of the new Intel-based Macs and Parallels was a dream come true.

I cannot recall ever being as excited (about technlogy, at least) as I am with Parallels. Although still in Beta, it has already addressed almost all my prior issues with VPC, and I agree with others here in the forum that Parallels (the company) stands to makes oodles of dough with this product (it already has mine), and it deserves to. Beta 4 is marvelous, and I expect that the finished product will be a real gem.

I'm posting this message simply to add my enthusiastic vote for the quick addition of USB support. I am heading to Australia on May 1 with my Mac Book and my Garmin GPS receiver (which, as most folks know, is not yet supported with native Mac software). I am desperate to have USB support in Parallels (Beta or otherwise) before then in order for these two devices to talk to each other. If the also-much-needed support for shared folders is higher than USB support on the developers' list of functions to be added to Parallels, I recommend that those two features be swapped, i.e. that USB be moved ahead of shared folders, if that would mean that we could have it before May 1.
 
100% my opinion. Compliments to Parallels, superb work.
But: besides being happy running the so-needed-Windows programs within OS X in near-native speed - don't forget to be unhappy that these programs are not written for the better OS.
At this position unsure about OS X' future: more switchers, more native programs - or: less native programs because of a Windows emulation being maybe even more stable than running Windows in unknown surroundings?
100% off topic :-)
 
Good point

Good point, Martin! It's up to Apple and a few other outfits - that have shown how much better the Mac is - to continue making Mac-only applications that will make even the staunchest Windoze advocate drool...
 
Estimated date for USB capability

Andrew @ Parallels-

I so much want to pre-order Parallels, but it is largely useless to me without USB- no mouse, no printer, no scanner, no camera, no memory stick, no Palm, no keyboard....

Please give us a general date for USB capability. 3 months? 6? 9? I'd love to demonstrate my support for Parallels by pre-ordering it, but I'd be foolish to do so if it may be 9+ months before I can use it. Conversely, if you tell me it will be 1 month or 2 months, then I will gladly pre-order.

You could easily boost pre-order sales by announcing a general release date for USB. Tell the money-men what they are missing.
 
Uhhhhhhh........me too ;-)

I use WinXP solely for uploading info from a very fancy Cycling powermeter...now I'm uploading it on an old G4 desktop in VirtualPC...emailing the file from that WinXP to my intel iMac with WinXP. It's a kludge but the speeds with PW is incredible on the iMac...
 
andro said:
Andrew @ Parallels-

I so much want to pre-order Parallels, but it is largely useless to me without USB- no mouse, no printer, no scanner, no camera, no memory stick, no Palm, no keyboard....

Please give us a general date for USB capability. 3 months? 6? 9? I'd love to demonstrate my support for Parallels by pre-ordering it, but I'd be foolish to do so if it may be 9+ months before I can use it. Conversely, if you tell me it will be 1 month or 2 months, then I will gladly pre-order.

You could easily boost pre-order sales by announcing a general release date for USB. Tell the money-men what they are missing.
Click to expand...
Having a target date is a double-edged sword. Yes, it gives a good timeframe for the customers to work around, but developments can't necessarily meet it due to unforseen problems. Take... Microsoft, for example. :)

Meanwhile, I don't think Parallels can AFFORD to hold out on USB support for something like 9 months because competitors would probably have their virtualization products out by then. And not just anyone, but market leaders like VMware. And those things are probably guaranteed to have such features standard by release. Fortunately, the way the devs are posting about the featureset, I'm guessing that USB support will arrive in PW in about 3 months. This is purely my speculation, of course, so don't blame me if it's different. I'm really waiting for USB support, too.
 
The German Internet Site www.macnews.de offers an interview with Benjamin Rudolph, Marketing Manager Parallels.

He states following besides other things like Intels VT-x
actual 75.000 beta testers
:) USB support and file swapping probably next week :)
 
Wesley, I think essentially you're right, they can't afford NOT to support these things. As you say their competitors (VMware most notably) will have that support from the off.

However I do think that their time frame for adding these features is less than that. The reason? I think they are in the process of doing a striaght port from the Windows version and hence *should* take less time than designing, writing and testing from scratch.

I don't read German (and couldn't be bothered to do a babelfish) so I trust the translation and would suggest that supports my theory.

my €2c :)
 
virek: VMware hasn't supported USB "from the off". I was a user of VMware from its first release and it didn't support USB then, or in version 2 IIRC.

EDIT: It would appear USB support came in version 3.0 of VMware Workstation.
 
When I first started with Parallels, I was told by support that they were working on USB Hasp support and hoped to have it in the next iteration of the beta (beta 1 was available, making beta 2 then next beta). Based on that, I went out and bought a fully copy of XP and spent a lot of time installing this software. Then I was told that they would certainly have USB support for the release.

Now, I don't mind at all that they missed one beta, nor even two, but now I have received email that did little to assure me that Parallels is commited to delivering USB support by the release, never mind support of the HASP.

I hope that there was some misunderstanding in my most recent email, and that whoever wrote it was actually not correct about this, but I would like to hear from someone on the development team here who can give us an answer.

I can understand if Parallels does not commit to getting us USB and HASP support for the next beta, and even for the release, but personally I have been wasting my time with this product if these features are not going to be delivered by 1.0 if not sooner.
 
@dr_lha : Re-read my post and you'll see that I'm suggesting that VMware will have support for USB in their mac version from the off.

I know they didn't have it in their early products.

Cheers,

Virek
 
virek said:
@dr_lha : Re-read my post and you'll see that I'm suggesting that VMware will have support for USB in their mac version from the off.

I know they didn't have it in their early products.

Cheers,

Virek
Click to expand...

They weren't running on Intel hardware.
 
virek said:
@dr_lha : Re-read my post and you'll see that I'm suggesting that VMware will have support for USB in their mac version from the off.

I know they didn't have it in their early products.

Cheers,

Virek
Click to expand...
Ah OK - sorry. That said Parallels is here now, we have no idea when VMware will even be releasing a beta test, let alone a full version. Parallels could well have it implemented and released before VMware is in our hands.
 
@ dr_lha : That's true that Parallels is here today and we don't know for sure when VMware will release their product. But it has at least been confirmed they're working on it and it is functional (fully?) in their labs.

Interesting times indeed :-)

Cheers,

Virek
 
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