Parallels Desktop for Mac build 3036 Beta is available for download.

[STim]

Hello community!

We are continuing our efforts for bringing you even more feature-full product and we are making our latest Parallels Desktop for Mac Beta Build 3036 early available to you. It will be one more FREE update of the currently available version.

Heres a short overview of the new features and enhancements introduced by this Beta:

* New Look and Feel and Improved Usability. Completely redesigned windows and dialogues to make them even easier and smooth. Too many changes to describe just check them out yourselves

* Virtual Machines Catalogue. A very useful feature for those having more than one VM now all of them are available through centralized VM catalogue which appears on each Parallels Desktop for Mac instance start in case you have more than one VM

* One-click Virtual Machine Aliases:
* Automatically created by OS installation assistant or by drag-and-drop from title bar pressing Command-Option keys combination
* Clicking on Alias automatically starts the Virtual Machine
* Shutting down the VM automatically closes Parallels Desktop for Mac application

* Resizable Main Window. Resize Parallels Desktop for Mac main window as you do with any other Mac application

* Auto-Adjusting Screen Resolution. Your Windows auto-adjusts the screen resolution to the actual Main Window size.

* Drag and Drop files and folders between Windows and Mac. A long awaited feature that lets you seamlessly drag and drop files and folders from Windows to Mac OS X and vice versa.

* Read/Write BootCamp partition. Since this build, an Apple Boot Camp partition with Windows XP installed could be used as a virtual HDD for Parallels Desktop for Mac.

* Boot from BootCamp partition. Another long awaited feature that lets you boot your 32-bit Windows XP residing on Boot Camp partition directly in Parallels Desktop for Mac.
IMPRORTANT! You need to boot in your Windows XP natively through Boot Camp and install Parallels Tools for Boot Camp package in it before your first boot in Parallels Desktop for Mac.
NOTE! It is not possible to suspend Virtual Machine connected to Boot Camp for integrity reasons.
NOTE! Running Boot Camp in Virtual Machine will need to reactivate your Windows XP installation.

* Parallels Transporter Beta bundled. Migrate your Windows PC, VMware or Virtual PC VMs to Parallels virtual machines. Please visit Parallels Transporter forum for details.

* Coherence. Shows Windows applications as if they were Mac ones. Try it and enjoy best of both worlds truly at the same time. No more switching between Windows to Mac OS.

* Improved graphic performance. Up to 50% on different applications.

* Connect/disconnect USB devices schema improved. No more wait 5-10 seconds message on USB device connecting to Parallels Desktop for Mac.

* Up to 5 Virtual NICs. Now Virtual Machine can have up to five virtual network interfaces.

* Enhanced Shared Networking Mode. Run Cisco VPN and many other complicated networking applications in conjunction with Connection Sharing Mode.

* Switch between networking modes on-the-fly. Switch networking modes while the virtual machine is running.

* Transparent mapping of Command-AZXCV key combinations. Now you can also use Mac copy/paste key combinations in Windows.

* Power On/Power Off/Suspend/Resume/Pause animation. Just try and see. Were very interested in your feedback about the feature.

* Shared folders configuration on-the-fly. Add/remove/configure shared folders on-the-fly via menu or Status Bar icon without the need to stop your Virtual Machine.

* Drag and Drop CD/FDD images and folders to the Parallels Desktop statusbar. Just drag and drop CD or floppy image you want to connect or Mac folder you want to share onto a respective statusbar icon.

* And dozens of other not that evident enhancements.

Just download Parallels Desktop for Mac Beta Build 3036 to have them all available on your Mac! It will be a FREE update once it becomes Generally Available.
IMPORTANT! Resume and shut down all suspended Virtual Machines prior to upgrade.

Please remember that this is beta software, and like any other beta software you should treat it very carefully. Do not install this Beta into the production environment yet. Do backup your virtual machines before starting them.

If, for any reason, you would like to downgrade to previous stable build, use this link to get it.
IMPORTANT! Uninstall Parallels Tools from the guest OS prior to downgrading and install them again after finishing the downgrade procedure.

As usual, any feedback is extremely appreciated at [email protected] mailbox.

Best regards,
Tim and Parallels Team

------------
Download links:

Parallels Desktop for Mac Beta Build 3036 - http://download.parallels.com/beta/Parallels Desktop 3036 Mac en.dmg

Parallels Tools For Boot Camp - http://download.parallels.com/beta/Parallels-Tools-Bcp-1.0.3-Win.exe

 

[cflem]

Install of Tools in BootCamp XP wont complete....

im trying to install the Parallels Tools in the BootCamp windows install and the install goes fine then just quits without finishing... i have tried it on a clean install and my backup image... all to no avail.. im on a 24" imac...

Anyone have a clue?

 

[tychop]

Does anybody know if I can use my XP Pro key on a Windows XP Corp edition cd?
I really need to fix my activation issues within three days....... Otherwise it will lock me out.

Can someone from Parallel's tell me which version of XP they've tested, and if they ran into activation issues?

Thanx in advance.

It's been a long time since I've been so excited about a piece of software. I can hardly wait to run Rational Application Developer & Portal server in coherency mode & show off to my windows collegues....

 

[5150Joker]

Did you install the parallels tools in windows before trying it in parallels?

"You need to boot in your Windows XP natively through Boot Camp and install Parallels Tools for Boot Camp package in it before your first boot in Parallels Desktop for Mac."

Yep I sure did and even converted it to ntfs.

 

[scrytch]

Activation issue with BootCamp

Hi,

I have also got the problem with re-activation required. I have Media Center 2005 running in my BootCamp partition and when I boot under Parallels I have to choose "Parallels Configuration" twice, then it boots up and requires an activation.

Is there a fix to this?

Regards,
Shane.

 

[diamondsw]

Version numbers!

Would Parallels PLEASE start using version numbers and not just build numbers? It helps a lot to separate betas from production versions, and in keeping track of how "major" an update is. I can remember things like Parallels 2.0, 2.2, 2.5b1 a lot better than build 1580, build 1970, and build 3036!

I find it especially odd since you do use version numbers prominently for the Linux Parallels Workstation, but not in the consumer-friendly Mac product.

 

[Dezro]

Installing the tools causes MacDrive 6.1.5 to fail in Boot Camp on my MacBook Pro. Fix that and FAT32 and you've sold me.

 

[sabotage]

Hi,
I have WinXP installed via Bootcamp. I installed the Parallels beta 3068 and set it up to run the WinXP via bootcamp and installed the paralles tools natively in XP. When I try and run it, I get the following error:

Anyone know whats wrong ??

I get the same error. I'm running on a C2D Macbook 1GB. I installed the tools in Windows XP Bootcamp then I came back to OSX and followed the instructions in the PDF for setting up a VM Bootcamp.
Help - was really wanting to use this.

 

[dailo]

Is there a possibility to copy over one of my parallels XP virtual machine onto my BootCamp partition?

 

[jbrowdy]

I am wondering the same?

 

[aussiebuddha]

Parallels Desktop for Mac Beta Build 3036. When attempting to launch RealFlight G3.5 Flight Simulator, I get the following dialog and the application will not launch.
"Your video card is not able to render 3D images. If you have a 3D card make sure you have the latest drivers."
This aplication runs without problem when run under BootCamp. Any idea what the problem might be?

You're trying to run a 3D game withing parallels, of course it wont run.
Thats supposed to be one of the features we'll get in the hopefully near future and will enable gaming from a VM

 

[aussiebuddha]

@parallels Dev Team

Guys I'm very impressed with this release, Congratulations.
btw, when are you planning to release the parallels tools for Vista which will enable a bootcamp Vista partition run as a VM?

Cheers

 

[burachan]

Coherence Bugs

Great new features. A couple bugs I'd like to report about Coherence.

1. When using Windows Live Messenger (and I only experienced this problem with this app. The other 5-10 apps I have opened did not have this problem), there is some redrawing of the Windows desktop attached to the messenger window. See the image link to see what I mean.

2. If you disable live redrawing of the window when dragging the window around, you get some weird behaviour. Instead of a dotted outline of the window following your mouse cursor, you start panning around the Windows desktop.

Looking forward to having them fixed by the final release.

 

[demenas]

YIKES! The NTFS reqt would be a bummer! The primary reason I chose FAT32 is the fact that OS X can read FAT32, unlike NTFS partiitons. I even setup Spotlight so it indices my FAT32 BootCamp partition...

Oh well... I guess with the latest Parallels it wouldn't be as bad, but still, I won't be able to do Spotlight searches if I have to convert to NTFS.

OS X reads NTFS partitions, it just can't write to them.

Steve

 

[gkantz]

Blew my FAT32 Boot Camp Partition Away

I have a MacBook Pro with a new FAT32 Boot Camp partition with Windows XP installed. Had the same problem booting into the Boot Camp Partition through Parallels - "Unable to open partition Boot Camp". Parallels Tools for Boot Camp WAS installed.

So I saw some of the messages about FAT32 not working. I then booted directly into Boot Camp to convert the partition to NTFS, something I did not want to do. Then the new screen asking me to choose the config came up. That's when things really got bad. The config screen locked up. Could not use my keyboard at all - arrow keys, Esc, F8, etc. I could not boot into Boot Camp at all. Tried rebooting numerous times and got the same problem. Even tried to get to Safe Mode - it would still take me to the config choice screen.

So now my Boot Camp is totally hosed! Good thing I just installed it with nothing else but Windows, but now I'll have to start over. This is a HUGE issue, guys - what this tells me is that now that you are messing with the Boot Camp partition, the possibility of corruption now exists. And guess what? You can't just "restore" from a backup or ghost image, to the best of my knowledge.

The other features (drag and drop, coherence, etc) look fantastic, but this needs to be addressed right away. BTW, we have to have USB 2.0 support!

 

[effgee]

Harumppp ... this is a bit disappointing. I've been keeping an eye on Parallels Desktop for Mac for some time, tried it once before but wasn't convinced it'd be able to replace BootCamp (for me). Read about the new beta on xlr8yourmac, was sufficiently intrigued to give it another go and downloaded the whole shebang.

Booted into my BootCamp installation, installed Parallels Tools for BootCamp (without a hitch, it seemed), rebooted into OS X, installed Parallels and proceeded to create a new VM - following the instructions in the user guide.

Everything seemed to work alright until I actually attempted to start my new VM ... the error I get is "Unable to open disk image Boot Camp!"

"Well, it's beta software, after all. I'll just get rid of the Parallels Tools for BootCamp and continue to work in XP via BootCamp."

Fat chance. My BootCamp installation will no longer boot - bluescreens every time I try to boot from it and booting into Safe Mode won't help, either because "And and remove programs" won't let you uninstall Parallels Tools from within Safe Mode ... argh.



Is there a way to manually remove the "Parallels Tools for BootCamp" files from my XP partition? Is there a list of what files were installed where?




(edit: Just saw that I seem to be having exactly the same problem gkantz describes in his post above mine. I too have an MBP and a FAT32 partition ... son of a #$%!)

 

[envycom]

mouse drift

is no-one else having this loss of mouse problem? the build works perfectly as far as i can tell, but going into coherence mode makes cursor drift slowly to right and down screen, diagonally. i then have to uninstall and reinstall tools to make it work again, which is a bit tricky without mouse control!

i've got second monitor with MBP. Running Build 3036 Beta.

it's a very cool feature, i'd love to get it working!

Getting Mouse drift too. any solutions?

 

[dialo]

Thanks to the parallels team. "Coherence" is a very cool feature and the implementation is pretty clever.

 

[ehurtley]

Parallels installer doesn't recognize Boot Camp

Well, I have a Boot Camp partition (NTFS), and I have booted into XP on it and installed the Parallels Tools for Boot Camp, which went fine.

Then I went to create a new VM using the Boot Camp partition. It doesn't even recognize Boot Camp as a valid option. (See attachment.)

I am thinking it might be that I do not have the Boot Camp software installed on this copy of OS X. I installed Boot Camp months ago, then just last week re-installed the Mac OS. As the Boot Camp version of Windows still works fine, I never bothered to re-install Boot Camp on the OS X side. So just to test, I am downloading Boot Camp again right now.

 

[Michael A. Lowry]

Boot Camp with Windows on 2nd partition

Hello, Parallels guys:

Thanks for the updated beta version. I'm glad to see the improvements that you have introduced.

The one that interested me most was the ability to boot a Parallels VM from a Boot Camp partition. This ability would be very useful for me because it would allow me easily to move data from my Mac parition to the Boot Camp partitiion. So as soon as I found out about the new beta, I downloaded it and tried it out. Unfortunately, the new Boot Camp support isn't working for me.

I am seeing an error message when attemting to boot Parallels Desktop build 3036 Beta from my Boot Camp partition. The error message follows.

Windows could not start because of a computer disk hardware configuration problem.
Could not read from the selected boot disk. Check boot path and disk hardwaare.
Please check the Windows documentation about hardware disk configuration and your hardware reference manuals for additional information.​

I successfully downloaded and installed the Parallels Tools for Boot Camp while my Mac Pro was booted from the Windows partition, so I know that the drive works.

I suspect that the problem may be related to the fact that my Boot Camp partition (an NTFS partition) is the second parition on the drive. The first partition on that drive is a Journaled HFS+ partition. Oh, and in addition to being the second paritition on the drive, the Boot Camp partition is also located on the second SATA drive in the system.

I tried adjusting the Advanced drive settings for the virtual machine so that the IDE address of the boot parition was different. None of the available choices seemed to work. In fact, changing this setting made Parallels Desktop unable to find any boot partition.

Let me know if you need additional information.

Regards,
Michael A. Lowry

 

[Michael A. Lowry]

Version numbers

Would Parallels PLEASE start using version numbers and not just build numbers? It helps a lot to separate betas from production versions, and in keeping track of how "major" an update is. I can remember things like Parallels 2.0, 2.2, 2.5b1 a lot better than build 1580, build 1970, and build 3036!

I find it especially odd since you do use version numbers prominently for the Linux Parallels Workstation, but not in the consumer-friendly Mac product.

I second the motion!

The version information string should go in the application's Info.plist file, in the CFBundleGetInfoString key.

Here's an example version string from another application, Adium X 1.0b15:
"1.0b15, Copyright 2001-2007 The Adium Team"

By placing the correct, up-to-date version information in the CFBundleGetInfoString key, you ensure that your users can quickly reveal the version by using the Finder's "Get Info" command.

Regards,
Michael A. Lowry