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

[itsdapead]

if you have an oem copy, it's probably not a good idea to try to use it in parallels. piracy concerns aside, don't oem versions of windows come with specific added/removed drivers for the hardware it's bundled with?

Not quite.

Even reputable dealers will sell you a generic "OEM" version of Windows along with a "qualifying hardware purchase" such as an internal hard disc drive, for about a third of the price of a "retail box" - there are some extra terms and conditions, such as the license being non-transferrable beyond the system on which it was intitially installed.

If you want to know whether using this under boot camp is legitimate ask a lawyer, (if you flog the "qualifying" hardware on eBay and keep the windows, probably not - but if you do actually fit the hardware in the computer running windows it seems eminently reasonable) but there are no technical limitations. However, yes, its probably a bad idea to use such an OEM copy under Parallels if only because of the ease with which the "hardware" can change.

 

[stevko]

Half-fixed.

The issue with VT-x support being disabled was fixed by Apple's latest firmware update for the Mac Pro. Apply that update and after it reboots and reports that the firmware was successfully updated, shutdown your machine. When you then turn it back on, VT-x should be enabled.

Cool. That fixed the first half. Thanks, palter.

 

[Raolin]

Boot Camp does not respond after installation of parallel tools?

Hi!

I have a complete different problem. I installed Bootcamp wit a clean WinXP SP2 Install on my Macbook (2GB Ram, 160 GB Samsung Drive). The Partition is NTFS. I installed the Mac-Driver Disc and Bootcamp worked fine, switch to OS X worked fine, switch back worked fine.
Then i booted Bootcamp again, installed the Parallel Tools. (for 3036).
Then i rebootet XP. After that i got the menu for selecting the XP configuration or the paralles configuration.
And here the system freezes. I have no possibility to select one of those or F8.

Interesting is, i can boot via Mac Os X, but then i have the same problem like a lot of people here, not working mouse, 3 days activation period ...

Any idea about this?

Thanks

Raolin

 

[Scott Willsey]

Hmmm... one more annoyance now that rez switching is broken.. if I shutdown windows in full screen mode, it comes back at the full screen rez instead of the rez I was in before going full screen. And all the icons I carefully arranged before going full screen are now lined up to the left of the display.

That plus having to fix the color mode when going full screen make this a VERY annoying release for me. This used to be a "launch and go" product, now it's a "launch and fix whatever full screen mode breaks" product.

 

[hagen]

New "error" launching Parallels VM/BootCamp

...

Boot from hard drive error loading system

I attached a screen shot of the vm window

-------

Anyone have any ideas? I have not seen this error in the forum.

Tools installed into Boot Camp XP fine
Tried setting VM memory at 1024, same error


Mac Pro, 2 GB RAM, X1900XT,
Boot Camp is on a seperate HD and is NTFS (312 GB partition).

 

[toddgarvin]

I've seen excellent progress on this software from its humble beginnings. I bought a license when it was RC1. Now I want to use the integrated Boot Camp feature, but it's not working right.

I have just installed Beta 3036 on my Intel iMac 20". I have the 250GB hard drive partitioned thus: 230GB for Mac OS X, and about 15GB for Windows XP SP2, formatted FAT32. The other 5GB is lost due to "rounding errors."

Parallels Boot Camp Tools installer failed here. But I have some information that may or may not be helpful.

I booted up into XP through Boot Camp, then downloaded and installed the tools in Boot Camp XP, but the installer failed abruptly without warning during the copying process. No error messages were given on screen; the installer just "disappeared." Going back to Mac OS X, the option for a new VM to "Use Boot Camp" is, unfortunately, still greyed out.

So I poked around the hard drive and found a log file for the Parallels Boot Camp Tools installer in the ~/Local Settings/Temp folder. The filename is parallels-bctools-install.log:



It's clearly looking for the Driver.cab file found in C:\Windows\Driver Cache\i386. My Boot Camp partition is on Drive C, or so the computer thinks. I'm using MacDrive 6.1, and all my other Macintosh drives and partitions are visible (the internal partition, two external drives, plus an iPod nano).

Why can't the installer find that file in my Windows system folder? Is it because of MacDrive? Or some other reason?

I read elsewhere that this is an error in the tools installer. Parallels is working on a fix.

 

[cetuma]

Beautiful!

Coherence is amazing! I have a toolbar on either side of my screen, one for OS X and the other for XP. I can have any app from either in the middle. This is beautiful!!!

 

[Andrew @ Parallels]

Is there any way to copy my Windows XP VM data to a Boot Camp partition? I have a lot of documents!

1. You can make you documents folder on FAT32 Boot Camp a Shared Folder in Parallels.
2. You can attach Boot Camp (both FAT32 or NTFS) as second HDD to your VM and read/write any data from it.

 

[Sheppy]

Coherence is amazing! I have a toolbar on either side of my screen, one for OS X and the other for XP. I can have any app from either in the middle. This is beautiful!!!

Yeah, it's pretty sweet. My Dock is at the bottom of my screen, the Windows taskbar is hanging under the Mac's menu bar, and it's really working beautifully. I had one crash of 3306 yesterday while doing something stupid, but otherwise it's working nicely. I can't wait to see the fully-polished final release!

There are a couple of things I'd like to see, some of which have been mentioned previously...

1. Instead of the current screenshot-style icon in the Dock, putting a clone of the Start menu a la Virtual PC would be great.

2. It would be cool if each Windows app appeared in the Dock along with your Mac apps. Virtual PC does this as well, so it should be possible.

3. I'd like to be able to move windows across both screens on my two-screen system, although I do realize there are potential issues with this due to the Mac's menu bar and the Dock being there on one of them. Still, there should be ways to deal with this -- possibly by going ahead and letting Windows stuff slide behind these and offering a way to temporarily hide the menu bar in those cases where you need to get at something that's slipped behind it.

4. Add an option somewhere that will open the Windows Desktop folder into a new window so you can get at files on the desktop without actually showing the desktop.

5. If there's a way to not have to do the full-size window for the Windows startup process, that'd be a nice improvement as well.

Those are just some suggestions. I love this thing.

 

[Andrew @ Parallels]

If you need network performance - use Bridged Mode. It is faster than Shared Networking but less flexible.

Impressive update! I'm using Parallels everyday, as I am a Filemaker template developer, and have to switch all the time between Mac and Windows. I sold my PC notebook, and my backpack now has a much more manageable weight.

There's 2 things I'd like the people from development to hear.
1. Please add an option to disable the "Transparent mapping of Command-AZXCV key combinations". I had a good solution with the RemapKey.exe and the Menu Master preference pane in the previous version. The RemapKey.exe switched my command key with my control key on the Windows OS level, and the Menu Master PrefPane removed the annoying Parallels shortcuts that interferred. I could do literally EVERYTHING in Parallels as I did on the Mac, command-Q,E,C,V,L,B,... whatever. What this new version is offering in comparision, is a bit meager, and confuses me even more. Now I have to use command-x to cut, but ctrl-L to go to layout mode. This is a half-implementation with the best of intentions, but it's worse now than before. Come on guys, one check box in the Parallels prefs to turn this back off, please please please...

2. Not really as important as the above issue, but the network performance in FileMaker Pro is a bit sluggish under Parallels. I even get a coffeecup icon when I want to open files remotely. I can live happily with this, but since I'm asking for stuff already...

Thanks for an otherwise great product. You guys rock.

 

[dtempleton]

coherence and dual monitors

With Coherence you can run Windows applications directly on top of Mac desktop and achieve really full integration between OSes.

I think the other fellow was asking "how"; choose the menu item under "view". Very nice.

just one more thing (it never ends...) dual monitor support? With an XP OS windowI *want* it to occupy just one monitor (and it does that well, selecting the monitor based on where the small window was). WIth coherence, it would be nice to drag XP apps back and forth like I do OSX apps.

Overall, though, a big improvement. Thanks!

dennis

 

[Andrew @ Parallels]

4. Add an option somewhere that will open the Windows Desktop folder into a new window so you can get at files on the desktop without actually showing the desktop.

There is special icon in Windows XP task bar - Show Desktop.

 

[seddison]

bootcamp vm locks up on first boot cannot input to the vm via keyboard or mouse

Just thought I'd share my experience on this as I was really looking forward to the bootcamp vm feature but when I booted for the first time the vm froze. I didn't want to power off as I thought it might corrupt the boot camp partition.
from the vm menu I was able to reset (reboot) the machine /and then caught it at the menu options (normal XP or parallels config) and pwered off there.(just press the down key when you see the options and then you have all the time in the world).
Then I went to disk utility and performed a permission repair on my osx volume. Permissions repaired included some with names like 1386 and efi so I knew I was on the right track. I then booted perfectly but wanted me to re-activate in 3 days so I rejected and went back to normal bootcamp - now I can't log in at all without activating and I'm out in the field. My fault for not reading the instructions. I'll fix that up but I am concerned that by virtue of microsoft a user will have to stick with one method only boot camp or parallelsVM as the activation will keep flipping.
Anyway I would like to express my admiration for a great product. Can we get parallels tools for linux versions please even if it's just a mouse driver !

 

[thegdog]

I read elsewhere that this is an error in the tools installer. Parallels is working on a fix.

Are they? I've just been surprised that they've been quiet on this particular issue, not commenting on it at all. Even to say they managed to reproduce it or need more information.

 

[hcl]

Can't finish OS Installation Assistant

Hi,

I tried to install Parallels for Bootcamp installations. When the OS Installation Assistant printed "Click 'Finish' button to create the virtual machine", I removed the check from "Start virtual machine" and tried to click "Finish" but the Assistant does not recognise my click. Just nothing happens. Does the Windows Boot Disk has to be formatted with FAT32? I did not read anything about that in the documentation!

Edit: Tried now the "Express Installation" - the Assistant stops at the same point!

 

[superchink]

Are they? I've just been surprised that they've been quiet on this particular issue, not commenting on it at all. Even to say they managed to reproduce it or need more information.

I haven't seen any response from them re: this issue.

 

[bemaniac]

So I've installed the new Beta, and made a new VM using my Boot Camp HD. Everything works great (coherence is amazing), but I can't seem to get drag and drop working. Is there anything I need to be doing to fix this? Would re-installing the "Parallels tools for boot camp" help?

 

[tomservo291]

There is special icon in Windows XP task bar - Show Desktop.

Speaking of which, using the Show Desktop shortcut is another thing that breaks the transparent background of Coherence mode for me.

MacBook Pro 1.83ghz CD/2GB RAM ... VM: XP SP2

 

[bemaniac]

Other problems: Every time I run parallels with my Boot Camp VM (I'm not talking about switching back and forth between Boot Camp and Parallels, I'm only using Parallels) it asks me to re-activate windows.

 

[gkantz]

Keyboard freeze

Other problems: Every time I run parallels with my Boot Camp VM it asks me to re-activate windows.

also.

I tried booting back into Boot Camp, and I get the "Parallels" or "Microsoft Windows XP" configuration screen and my arrow keys wont work! HELP!

The keyboard issue with the config choice screen is exactly as I reported earlier. Some people have this problem, but others don't. Don't know if it's specific to notebooks (I have a MacBook Pro Core 2 Duo) but when I plug an Apple USB keyboard in I'm able to make the choices, then it boots into Windows and I have full control of my notebook keyboard. Andrew?

As with any beta, this is just something that needs to be checked out and I'm sure it will be fixed quickly. These engineers are very quick in terms of squashing bugs. I have to say Parallels is an outstanding product and will keep getting better.