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

application switching

Using coherence, is it possible to have each windows application's icon show up in the application switcher (command-tab)? (I think VirtualPC did that)

 

VM cannot be opened since already in use in other Parallels Desktop window

Try deleting the prefs user/library/preferences parallels...desktop.plist (exact name? - I am not at my MacBook at the moment). Had to do this twice in the same situation. Actually happened without a crash, just shuttiing down the VM and the Mac over night was enough.

 

So I've played around with the new Parallels Beta. This new release is great!

Aside from asking me to re-activate Windows every time I launch Parallels, there are only a couple small problems I'm having.

The main one is mainly cosmetic, I'd like to see the Windows windows look a bit nicer... I don't know how possible this is considering the limitations of Windows, but it would be cool to make them transparent in the corners like they are normally.

 

HERE HERE!!

I agree with BladeRunner. I also think he is an excellent movie!

-- Fuzz

 

Andrew,

Is there any information on the minimum memory value that must be manually set to get a Mac Pro to operate?

It is clear from my experience and from other posts that the number is not consistent. If you set the value higher, does that mean that less memory is available for other applications? In other words, is there a penalty for setting the value to the maximum?

Thanks, and once again great product that is always improving. The ability to use multiple network interfaces is a life saver for me that came just in time.

Matt

 

Parallels Win XP themed

It just bugs me having that ugly looking windows xp screens all over my lovely OS X desktop while running parallels so I thought I'd do my best to try and make it look better.

So I installed http://www.flyakiteosx.com/ and this is the result: A much more OSX feeling to my windows XP windows.

note: I did not install the Dock program as that might get a little confusing.

 

screen freeze

thanks jschibley. I'll give that a try.

 

Boot Camp partition style

I've been using the new Parallels beta for three days with a trial of Vista and I think it's great. Drag and Drop across operating systems doesn't work for me, though. Neither does Coherence mode, of course, and I can't boot up from my XP Boot Camp partition (Boot Camp option is greyed out in Parallels). Then there's also the concern of activation when alternating booting Windows Boot Camp-style or Parallels-style. Apart from these four relatively minor things, which I'm pretty certain the Parallels developers will fix in just a few weeks at most, the only thing left, as far as I can see, is 3-D acceleration. Once that is accomplished we would have a 100% perfect product.
I'd like to mention something that can have some relevance for the Boot Camp option being greyed out in my case. I have a Mac Pro with two hard drives. The first hard drive is a GPT (GUID partition table) partitioned disk with just HFS+ on it (for Mac OS X). My second hard drive came from a PC and it has no GPT. It has a master boot record (MBR). Although I installed Boot Camp on my Mac Pro (and updated it with all the EFI stuff), I never actually had to use the Boot Camp manager, because my Boot Camp partition was already created! Everything works as usual. I press Option at boot up when the chime sounds and I am offered the Macintosh HD or the Windows HD. I'd just like the developers to know that there are users out there that may have a very Windows-like entire hard drive solely for Boot Camp that may be partitioned differently from other installations on a GPT disk.
Other than that, the only concern would be the issue of activation.
Keep up the good work, guys.

 

Interesting idea. I wonder how much it'd help activation.

I assume that Microsoft is smart enough to look at the REAL machine, not the spoofed address of the card. So you couldn't fake it with a Windows utility.

However, if Parallels uses your actual Apple's MAC address in the emulated hardware, MS Windows would not know the difference - it would literally BE the physical MAC address it was looking for.

BUT that would cause a problem on the network, if OSX and XP were using the same MAC addresses simultaneously. So you'd actually have to use a fake MAC address for OSX, while XP (in parallels) used the real MAC address. And when you restarted into XP in Bootcamp, it'd use the real MAC address.

Is that workable? Sounds like a pain... but maybe that'd take away the activation problem?

 

can bootcamp partition be renamed?

bootcamp partition somehow got named "Untitled". i guess i wasn't paying attention (or didn't care) when i partitioned my drive. now that i'm presenting parallels to ceo/cfo/cio folks, they've asked...i'd like to name it "bootcamp" to dummy down the process a bit. would things break if i do this?

thanks,
don

 

Still Doesn't Pass the Chicken Invaders Test

Just out of interest, I have tried running Chicken Invaders with various versions of Parallels. The mouse controls are quite crazy in it and they are still that way with this beta.

It would be nice to be able to play some windows games like this one under parallels.

 

Using the Bootcamp partition to boot, I am now required to authenticate as the OS X administrator before it boots. Is it possible to override this 'feature'?

 

Unlikely - you need root privileges to unmount the drive, which needs to be done before Parallels can safely start playing with it.

However, they've surprised me before.

 

Wow what a jump in build numbers. This is a big update, but the one feature I was hoping for isn't mentioned - Webex. Is it fixed in this build? Pleasepleasepleaseplease!!!!!

Mark

 

Is this a request that the Parallels team add this functionality or a question??

If you're asking how to switch between Windows applications like you do with command-tab the answer is use ALT-TAB. ALT-TAB is the Windows equivalent, however this will only switch between your Windows Applications. It will not switch between Mac and Windows apps.

As an added feature for when Coherence is enabled it would be nice if Windows Applications Icons appeared on the DOCK. That way you could use the command switcher to switch beteen all available Mac and Windows applications seamlessly.

 

As long as that's an option - I don't want that stuff in the Dock myself.

 

Please Directx

I love using Parallels. It's made my life easier as a Webmaster but I am tired of booting into Bootcamp to use a critical program for my work that only works on Windows needing DirectX. I would love Parallels to get DirectX working in virtualization. If VMWare comes out with it first I may have to switch cause I'm tired of booting into my Windows partition. Very annoying!

 

Putting beta through its paces

Hello all... I'm a recent switcher who has been following this forum topic since the announcement and yesterday installed the beta update (w/o the bootcamp option b/c i'd read about so many problems with it)

Configuration:
MBP C2D 2.33 w/2GB ram
XP Pro

I've set up mapped network drives on XP that look for storage + work folders shared out on the OSX side of things--so my parallels virtual-partition for XP will only house programs.

Coherence mode is excatly what i'm looking for as I like the OSX interface/operating system, but the same programs i used on a PC--i don't like the little differences in the ways they programmed them for mac... so i'd prefer to run the PC versions.

At any given time, I will have open:

firefox
internet explorer
dreamweaver
adobe photoshop CS2
flash (sometimes)

Well today i'm going to try out working exclusively on my mac/xp (instead of my acer ferrari) to see how well this parallels build preforms on everyday tasks with fairly memory+processor intensive programs.

I'll write back later with my report if any of you are interested...

Btw, inital bugginess/annoyances

- sometimes while in OSX using apple+tab will actually open the start menu as i guess the parallels team set up the apple key to mimmic the windows key. i'd like to turn that off... seeing as how i never use the windows key to begin with.

- already mentioned in some other posts, some applications don't "appear" if you have coherence mode turned on (dos, for example, will only show up if its on top of another window.

- it doesnt remember certain preferences--my trillian chat windows always start up at the far end of the screen even though i always drag them over to where i want them... the start menu always starts up telling me thats where i can find my programs...

overall, however, i've found this build to be fairly stable (knock on wood) though we'll see what the rest of the day brings...

 

Multiple NICS: Which one is which?

Tim and Andrew,

Now that we have multiple NICS , how do we know which is which within the guest OS?

In my case, I am using Redhat ES 4. I have eth0, eth1, and eth2. I don't know which Network adapter connects to which so that I can place the right settings on the right adapter.

My first inclination is that eth0 does *NOT* attach to Network interface 1 and so forth.

Thanks!

Matt

 

Renaming bootcamp partition

just boot into windows (bootcamp) and change the name of the C: drive. That will carry over to your Mac. If its FAT32, it will show as all caps in OS X. If its NTFS, it will be upper/lower case.