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

 

[j-active]

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.

You might have to do this in the disk management tool under control panel / administrator tools. I don't think the drive label carries over when you open the explorer and just rename it, but I could be wrong.

 

[mr_zorg]

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

I had the exact same situation and renaming the drive worked just fine.

 

[mr_zorg]

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.

Makes me wonder if it's possible to somehow grant permission to mount/unmount that partition to my non-admin user. I'd be perfectly happy to do it myself, I'll see if I can figure that out.

 

[mcg]

mlandel: i believe that the first NIC is eth0, and the second is eth1, and so forth. But if you want to be SURE, just do an "ifconfig" within the Unix guest and match the MAC addresses.

 

[don montalvo]

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.

I had the exact same situation and renaming the drive worked just fine.

awesome! i was able to rename the drive to "bootcamp"...boy, do i have a lot to learn about windows.

don

 

[hairyneanderthal]

Build 3036

I love the the new features
However I have had problems with blue screens and 8 bit colour probs (lack of video memory for 1920x1200 here maybe?)...
Also, I have felt that working from my bootcamp partition isn't as fast as I used to be able to get from my previous XP installation onto a HD image.. using the boot camp partitiion with 3036 I "feel" like I am in an emulator and I haven't felt that before.

However, it's still beta and it looks to me that Parallels are going in the right direction for my needs. Keep it up!

 

[mike3k]

You can convert it using Parallels Transporter for Windows anyway.

But I'm not running Windows - I'm running Linux on that machine and running other linux distros under VMWare.

 

[mr_zorg]

awesome! i was able to rename the drive to "bootcamp"...boy, do i have a lot to learn about windows.

I'm trying hard to forget it.

 

[richdean]

Just to be clear...

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.

Thanks for all the good info in this thread...

I've read through the posts and still have these 2 questions:

1. I have an XP Pro install on Parallels and of course I'd like to avoid installing XP all over again in Boot Camp (which I have never used).

2. I'd also like to avoid reinstalling all of the XP applications.

Are these 2 things possible?

Thanks!

Rich

 

[Pibus]

Can't use Boot Camp partition

What, exactly, does Parallels use to recognize a Boot Camp partition. I've got WinXP installed on my MacBook Pro, I've installed the Parallels tools while booted into windows. When I reboot into MacOSX and run Parallels, I am unable to select the BootCamp partition as a harddrive for use in a VM (either when creating a new VM or adding a drive to an existing VM).

My partition is formatted NTFS, and is the third partition on the disk (after the EFI partition, and the Mac's HFS+ partition).

I have the same problem. MacBook Pro 17'', Windows partition made by the Boot Camp assistant, in ntfs now. I installed the tools in Boot Camp, then created a VM with it and ran it. It worked, though not as fast as I expected. Nevertheless, I have never been allowed to use the Boot Camp option as a drive in other VMs.
Moreover, I used this VM once, then I used boot camp without Parallels for some days. Now that I try to use it again, it tells me "Boot Camp is not installed on this computer" ! I removed the tools from Boot Camp and reinstalled them, with no success.

Any solution guys ?

 

[grassiness]

Hi,

althrough Parallels is incredible, I have to admit that the Keyboard and Mouse problem is a pain in the arse.

I set up all correctly, including drivers on my Core2Duo MB, but all I get is an XP Bootmanager that I can just enter via external USB Keyboard, and - what is even more important - no Mouse and keyboard in Parallels. (Parallels Tools installed of course, I did the RTFM )

After prolly 30 VM reboots and connecting all kind of HID devices to my USB ports - there still is no dice. Even more worse is that I have to completely reboot my OSX if I connect my internal keyboard/touchpad to the VMachine, because it will just refuse to respond after that completely.

It is XP SP2 Prof., NTFS and not activated atm. Works like a charm in native mode, and even boots fine in Parallels, but it is a bad feeling to see the OS and you can't touch it.

The coherency mode does not work here, too. It is OSX 10.4.8.

I don't think that there is anything to fix about it. Just wanted to let you know.

 

[zzzachi]

3036 VERY beta but showing a bright future !!!

I stopped using 3036 after 10 minutes, it seems to by VERY beta !
i couldn't stand to have the same problems we had until build 1970 again.

i think it is a strange aproach to release a lot unstable, not working betas
causing huge forum discussions with crash logs, etc ...
but anyway, 3036 is showing the future and it is a bright future !!!

i just dont want to share all those bug experiences and stay put with 1970
for now. but i'm looking forward for a non-beta (& working ;-) release

to be a bit constructive, too :
form Z 5.5 (a lot of palette windows) plus coherence made all windows
disapear, blank screen... (caused me to stop using 3036)

 

[mlandel]

Ah yes. The obvious approach. Don't know what I was thinking, but Thanks!

Indeed: Interface 1 is eth0, Interface 2 is eth1, Interface 3 is eth2, etc.

 

[mlandel]

Processing Allocation with multiple VMs running

Folks,

I've got a Mac Pro with 4 processors. If I run multiple virtual machines, will their processing load be pread over all four processors? Will each VM go to a different processor? How is the load shared?

Has this changed at all in release 3036 or otherwise since back in the beginning? I recalled looking at this early on (when I had but a Mac Book Pro) and it appeared that any number of VM's were spread over both processors. Now if I'm running multiple VM's (Three in my case) it looks like one processor is being heavily loaded. Is there any way to associate threads/process loading with a particular processor?

Thanks,

Matt

 

[ayrton]

Boot Camp activation is an issue

I too had issues with the re-activation using Boot Camp (and for the record, I know it's displayed as an issue right on the first post of this thread). It's a very, very cool idea, but it seems pointless right now, so much that I don't believe it should have been included in the release.

If you have a Boot Camp partition, then it stands to reason that you need to occasionally boot to it directly. If you didn't need to do that, then you would just use the virtual machine all the time. This release doesn't change that at all: you're still limited to Boot Camp OR Parallels Desktop, because you have to re-activate every time you switch, which Microsoft simply will not allow. The end effect is no different than what we had previously.

I'm curious as to how on earth they'll manage to get around this. To XP, every time you switch between the virtual machine and your actual machine, you really *are* changing the hardware (at least as perceived by XP) significantly. It's analogous to literally taking the hard drive out of one PC and dropping it in another. I'm a software developer myself, but know very little about how virtual machines are utilized, but why can't hardware be emulated in a "pass through" mode, i.e. your video card is recognized as the same card in your virtual machine, as are the rest of the computer's components?

 

[mlandel]

processors

Of course I meant cores instead of processors. When 8-core machines are available next year, It'd be great if this means that I can run more VM's efficiently!

Matt

 

[dizzydeane]

Switching between Coherence & Full Screen needs work

1. Things are fine when I switch from Full Scrn (FS) to Coherence, but then if I minimize a window, the FS part of what I minimized is on the Mac desktop. The Mac screen should be clear. I hope this makes sense.

2. Likewise, when I switch back from Coherence to FS all the windows revert to small windows which I then have to resize. They should retain their FS size.

I hope this helps.

 

[blalor]

I've been using the new beta for a few days, now. By and large I'm happy with it. A couple of thoughts, however:

Resuming suspended VMs has been agonizingly slow several times, now. Usually it's quite zippy (esp. with the released version), but I actually had to force-quit one because it was killing my machine and taking for-freaking-ever.

I noticed that cmd-xvc are passed through as their Windows equivalents. Could you also suppress cmd-h and cmd-tab, so that the stupid start menu doesn't show up when I come back to the VM? I cmd-tab a *lot* and that start menu is a pain in the butt. It'd be nice to have these configurable, too.

I'd like to be able to turn off the resizable VM windows; when XP restores, I end up with some weird sizes, and it's actually told me it was running in some kind of reduced-capacity display with the weird size when booting. Maybe an option to turn it off, and perhaps another option to limit the resizing to certain resolutions? And if you could make it in blue that'd be great. Thanks

I'd like to be able to turn off the status bar at the bottom. That used to go away when you collapsed the toolbar. This takes up more screen real estate, and either shrinks the VM's resolution vertically when it hits the dock, or causes my Linux VM to scroll.

Great work, folks!

 

[Hydraht]

Windows 2000 won't run with 3036

Hi.

I'm using a 2ghz Intel Core Duo MacBook with 2gb RAM. My VM is a Windows 2000 Server with all updates. 1500 mb is assigned to Windows. No Bootcamp.

I was running 1970 fine, when I read all these great reviews about 3036. I downloaded and installed it, ran it, and it gets stuck in an infinite reboot. I log into Windows, the initial system tray programs and icons load, and then Parallels shuts down, pops up a "Report this error" window with a snapshot and a log file, and reboots.

I had a similar experience with Win 2000. It would get to the Windows login prompt, I'd enter the password, the desktop background appeared, then it went into the "report this error" (which I did) loop. I was initially able to get it far enough to install the new Parallel tools, but now it won't run past the login prompt. It runs fine with Win XP and with SUSE SLES9, however.

Thanks to sdidier, I tried raising memory allocation from 468 to 768 and now Win 2000 runs fine, though I'm not too fond of the large memory increase.

 

[Ensoniq]

Not that I can speak for Parallels, but just to try and clarify something...

I am sure that Parallels knows that having to reactivate Windows each time you switch back and forth between running Windows in the VM and Boot Camp is not acceptable. That is why their approach to it involves creating the separate hardware profiles you see at the Windows boot screen.

Those profiles were originally designed mostly for laptop users who had docking stations. One profile would be for the laptop when on the go, and the second profile would be for when you plug into a docking station with extra ports, extra hard drives, connected printers, etc. Windows would be intelligent enough to use the extra profile without complaining about activation or reconfiguring your hardware every time you docked/undocked your laptop.

For whatever reason, Parallels' current implementation of the second profile (the one for their VM, since the original profile was for Boot Camp directly) is clearly broken for some users. It may not have come up during their testing, but now that it's "out in the wild" it's an issue that many are seeing.

My point is this...I have no doubt that Parallels did NOT intentionally release 3036 (even as a beta) knowing that the switch between Boot Camp and VM was going to REQUIRE a reactivation every single time. That would be ridiculous. I am sure this issue came as a surprise to them, and I'm sure they agree with everyone that it's a serious bug that needs to be resolved. So let's just give them a chance to figure out the cause, and it will be fixed.

Like everyone else here, I would be happier if we got more detailed reports from Parallels. Something along the lines of:

"Thanks for all of your reports on build 3036. We have duplicated and identified the cause of the following 6 major issues: <insert issues here>. Our team is working on these issues, and further info will be released as soon as possible. For now, we no longer need additional reports pointing out these specific issues, but please bring other issues to our attention."

Something like that might prevent 25 new topics about the same exact problem being repeated over and over again. But we keep asking Parallels to be more responsive and vocal on these forums, and while some (Andrew in particular) do their best to communicate, it seems the company as a whole is more focused on silently fixing issues than spending too much time talking about them here. So since actions speak louder than words, I will stop grumbling about the lack of "talk" here, and be confident that Parallels is working hard on the next build.

-- Ensoniq