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

 

[palter]

This is a great update! And for the first time upgrading did not require a reload of SPSS (statistical software) which made me really happy.

The intriguing thing I noticed while playing around with screen resizing was that my Recycle Bin (sitting in my lower right corner of the Windows screen) gets "fixed" in its location relative to the whole monitor no matter how I resize Windows (unless I resize windows smaller then it regains it lower right corner spot). For example, if Windows is taking up the upper right quadrant of my monitor so that Recycle is sitting just up and left of the centre of my monitor screen (in the lower right corner of Windows), then I enlarge the Windows portion, the Recycle Bin remains just up and left of the center of my monitor screen. The Recycle Bin doesn't seem to be "tied" so to speak to a location relative to Windows, but rather to an overall spot on the monitor.

Hope that made sense.

That's perfectly normal. Windows doesn't relocate the Recycle Bin icon if you move from a lower to higher resolution. I've seen this on real machines as well as virtual ones.

 

[render]

'Use Boot camp' grayed out in image creation menu

I was very excited about hearing the new beta will work in Boot Camp. Unfortunately, it doesn't work for me. The 'use boot camp' option is grayed out and unselectable in the create image menu .

I have a working Boot Camp Window XP pro partition, but it doesn't seem to recognize it.
The only thing that might be unusual about my installation is that I did not do the actual repartitioning using Boot Camp; I have several partitions - OS X, XP, Linux, and Linux swap.

Any ideas how I can get Parallels to recognize the XP partition?

Thanks

 

[Saxamaphone]

Coherency no workency!

Hi,
I have a Mac Pro with 4GB of RAM and coherency will not work for me. I have uninstalled and re-installed the parallels tools a few times (the version linked at the beginning of this thread). Is there a later version I am not finding? A re-install seemed to work for an earlier poster but has not had any effect for me.

no coherency
no drag-n-drop

any help would be appreciated.

TIA,
Sax

 

[alexbet]

First of all, let me tell you that this version of Parallels is AWESOME!!!!! I especially love the coherense feature. It rocks!!!! When I develop web pages, I always have to use both Mac and PC programs because I code in ASP. The coherence feature will make my job SOOOO much easier.

There is only one thing that I have a problem with. I am on a Mac Pro here and the "shared networking" is now greyed out, I can't select it. Because of this, I had to switch to bridged networking. Is there any way to go back to shared networking?

Excellent job Parallels team!!!

 

[stevko]

Problem with Boot Camp loading

Hey everyone;
I seem to be having an issue with the new beta and my machine. It's a Mac Pro, has a separate NTFS hard drive with windows on it. I set up the parallels for boot camp on the XP installation, loaded parallels on my machine, and tried to boot it up. I got the following messages:

1) "Your CPU supports Intel Virtulization (VT-x) but it is currently disabled (locked by firmware). Virtual machine will be started without the VT-x support (in software virtualization mode). Try to do the following: stop your VM, put your Mac into the Sleep Mode (Apple Menu -> Sleep Item) and wake it to unlock VT-x, then start your VM again.

(To note, I tried that, and it didn't work. Any ideas?)

2) The boot window contains the following:
-------
Parallels(R) VGA-Compatible Bios Version 1.05

<bleah bleah copyright>

640 KB Base Memory
1048567 KB Extended Memory
Boot from hard drive... Error loading operating system.

----------

OK, I've got no idea. I do note that the separate hard drive, which usually appears on my desktop, is de-mounted when I start the XP instance running.

Anyone know what's happening?

 

[alexbet]

In addition to my above post, there is also one more problem that I found. I know that someone mentioned this before. When I try to compact the disk, the process goes fine in the guest os, and then brakes when it is supposed to start in the primary OS.

 

[GregA]

why do you need multiprocessor support in VM? Parallels Desktop is tuned to run best on dual core Macs - one core is fully utilized by Windows and second core by Mac OS X. Optimal performance for both systems.

Ahh, nope... don't want that

If I was heavily using both Windows and OSX simultaneously, it'd be fair enough to simply give them a core each. Most of the time though, I'm heavily using one app (eg iMovie) ... and I want as much resources as possible to go to that app.

Actually, I assume that already happens. ie: Parallels doesn't take over a whole core of the dual-core, it just can't use more than one?

 

[GregA]

I was able to boot natively back into XP via Boot Camp and reactivate (because the hardware hasn't actually changed); however, after rebooting again into OS X and relaunching Parallels, I was prompted to reactivate again.

I assume that if you enabled multiple hardware profiles (in the control panel - system), one for Bootcamp and one for Parallels - that this issue may be resolved???

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

That'd be great for anyone who already has Parallels and would like Bootcamp occassionally. I imagine most future users will install Bootcamp and then add Parallels.

In fact, perhaps Apple is planning on selling Macs with WindowsXP available via Bootcamp. Then a small fee for Parallels would get many people quickly using Windows and OSX side by side. I wonder if Parallels will make a deal with Apple to bundle.

Anyway.. lets hide that task bar and integrate it into the dock ASAP
Should we then set the Mac home directory to the Windows home directories? Or vice versa?

 

[GregA]

- a windows utility/driver/program such that if a guest VM application starts the browser, email, music program, etc... it's the Mac version that is started in the host VM.

That would be nice. And vice versa too.

Personally, we have ACT, which integrates with Outlook Express. I don't want to run Outlook Express on parallels... but I have no choice.

Pity there's no way of having windows fake OE (or Eudora), while really using Mail.app (or Entourage).

 

[krolco]

I assume that if you enabled multiple hardware profiles (in the control panel - system), one for Bootcamp and one for Parallels - that this issue may be resolved???

...

HI GregA,

Not so much... I didn't enable anything manually. The Parallels Tools for Boot Camp seem to enable the hardware profiles.

And I didn't get the problem "fixed"... I just decided to reactivate under Boot Camp and wait until the Parallels solution was out of beta.

 

[ebernet]

Give it a break....

...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!

Wow, what a complainer....
Bootcamp is BETA, 3036 is BETA, 2.0 support was not promised until 3.0...
You have some nerve buddy
Go get a life

 

[GJT2004]

Hey everyone;
I seem to be having an issue with the new beta and my machine. It's a Mac Pro, has a separate NTFS hard drive with windows on it. I set up the parallels for boot camp on the XP installation, loaded parallels on my machine, and tried to boot it up. I got the following messages:

1) "Your CPU supports Intel Virtulization (VT-x) but it is currently disabled (locked by firmware). Virtual machine will be started without the VT-x support (in software virtualization mode). Try to do the following: stop your VM, put your Mac into the Sleep Mode (Apple Menu -> Sleep Item) and wake it to unlock VT-x, then start your VM again.

(To note, I tried that, and it didn't work. Any ideas?)

2) The boot window contains the following:
-------
Parallels(R) VGA-Compatible Bios Version 1.05

<bleah bleah copyright>

640 KB Base Memory
1048567 KB Extended Memory
Boot from hard drive... Error loading operating system.

----------

OK, I've got no idea. I do note that the separate hard drive, which usually appears on my desktop, is de-mounted when I start the XP instance running.

Anyone know what's happening?

Hello, I have just the same set up, and the same problems, perhaps it is because the Windows i on another disk (disk2) Hmmm

 

[sethmw]

Vista and Boot Camp

Will the final release or next release of Parallels support booting into a Vista Boot Camp partition? Or is this not possible with Vista at all?

Thanks
Seth

 

[Olivier]

Will the final release or next release of Parallels support booting into a Vista Boot Camp partition? Or is this not possible with Vista at all?

Does BootCamp itself support Vista yet?
Not at all.
Then why expect Parallels support Vista in BootCamp when you can't even use Vista in BootCamp itself...
I guess that **when** BootCamp will offer Vista support, then there is no doubt Parallels will support it.

 

[PeterW]

just another request for MacDrive support...

very cool, but I won't be touching it until Macdrive support works flawlessly.

 

[DBCohen]

This is not a resolution at all. It is illegal and against the license I have purchased. The real resolution is the Parallels team need to resolve this ASAP as this is a major show stopper for me.

What would be great is if someone from Parallels actually responded to someone (anyone) in this forum that has posted this issue - to let us know they are aware and working on a fix (timeframes would be great!).

Regards,
Shane.

You need to calm down - this is BETA software, not released product. You use it at your own risk. The reason they have not released it is that it still has bugs and is not finished yet.

Really, anyone who installs a beta without backing up their system only has themselves to blame if something gets broken. Dancing up and down demanding instant resolution is completely unfair on the Parallels team.

 

[rorschachm]

I was very excited about hearing the new beta will work in Boot Camp. Unfortunately, it doesn't work for me. The 'use boot camp' option is grayed out and unselectable in the create image menu .

I have a working Boot Camp Window XP pro partition, but it doesn't seem to recognize it.
The only thing that might be unusual about my installation is that I did not do the actual repartitioning using Boot Camp; I have several partitions - OS X, XP, Linux, and Linux swap.

Any ideas how I can get Parallels to recognize the XP partition?

Thanks

I started a thread on this topic, and it looks like the fact that our partitioning wasn't through Boot Camp properly might be the cause...

http://forum.parallels.com/thread6135.html

No real solution that I've heard, though.

 

[grahammclellan]

Unable to open disk image Boot Camp!

Does any else get this error "Unable to open disk image Boot Camp!" when trying to start a session using a Boot Camp installation?

I have XP MCE (Media Center Edition) installed.

Thanx

 

[Andrew @ Parallels]

This is not a resolution at all. It is illegal and against the license I have purchased. The real resolution is the Parallels team need to resolve this ASAP as this is a major show stopper for me.

What would be great is if someone from Parallels actually responded to someone (anyone) in this forum that has posted this issue - to let us know they are aware and working on a fix (timeframes would be great!).

Regards,
Shane.

We are working on reactivation issue. I apologize for inconvinience.

 

[Robster]

Hi

I am sure I have seen this question but not a reply, although this is such a fast moving thread it is difficult to keep up.

I have a good working Parallels VM that I woudl LOVE to convert to Bootcamp so I can get the best of both worlds without having to do a load of installs again.

Is there a way to do this?

Cheers.

Robin

PS A BRILLIANT release. Well done to everyone at Parallels.