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

 

[wangooroo]

Other activation woes

And again, in my experience and in that of others, this is not true. I've followed the instructions from Parallels exactly and installed Parallels Tools for Boot Camp. Now every time I change the boot method from Parallels to Boot Camp, I get the reactivation message. Reactivation then fails, and I have to call Microsoft.

I have had to reactivate so many times that MS has now responded saying they will not reactivate.

There is a limit to the number of times you can activate a license.

This needs to get fixed ASAP. currently I'm stuck.

 

[waffffffle]

forced network share mount

I tried transitioning Parallels from my MacBook Pro to my new Mac Pro. I installed the new beta on my Mac Pro and mounted my home folder from my MacBook Pro and opened some of the virtual machines. After realizing that was a bad idea I copied the virtual machines over but the VMs on my MacBook Pro are still showing up and when Parallels launches it forces the mounting of the share. If MacBook Pro isn't on the network Parallels will not launch and instead hangs and I get 100% CPU utilization and often have to hard reboot my Mac.

I have tried deleting everything Parallels related from my home folder and while I can get it to ask me for my license key again it still shows me a list of VMs that includes VMs on another Mac and forces the mounting of that share. Where is this list stored? I need to delete it because Parallels won't launch unless all of those VMs are available.

Thanks.

 

[maynard]

XP Dead

I installed the BC Tools and tried booting my BC Image in VM under Mac and I get no mouse.

What is worse is now my BC image won't boot past the Boot.INI screen !!!

Anyone got any ideas ?

MG

 

[maynard]

iSight webcam toast in 3036

Just a note.... I no longer have the iSight webcam in my XP VM where it used to work after I upgraded t the BETA.

I reinstalled the Mac Driver Disk and no help. System Hardware Mgr shows no issues or no iSight...

Anyone know how to fix this ?

MG

 

[[email protected]]

Is an Uninstall of current 1970 build required before installing build 3036

Hello All,

I am relatively new to the world of Parallels, I currently have Release build 1970 installed, do I have to perform an uninstall before installing build 3036? Any help would be appreciated. Kudos for a great product.

 

[joem]

There's no need to uninstall before upgrading. Be sure to upgrade Parallels tools after you install the later version, and be sure to back up your VM in case you want to go back. Uninstalling, using the uninstall that came with the beta would probably be a good idea if you want to revert.

 

[bcohen44]

no Vista for Bootcamp & VM?

I have the Vista MSDN release, and I am assuming I cannot use both Parallels VM with a Vista Bootcamp install on this 3036 beta release, correct? Only WinXP SP2.

 

[luomat]

I have the Vista MSDN release, and I am assuming I cannot use both Parallels VM with a Vista Bootcamp install on this 3036 beta release, correct? Only WinXP SP2.

Currently Apple does not support Vista for BootCamp IIRC, so it would be a bit iffy even if you could get it to work.

TjL

 

[vinneh]

Howdy..

I have read a few vague statements that only XP Home or Pro installed with Boot Camp will work with this beta. I've noticed that I do not have the "Boot Camp" option after manually partitioning for tri-boot with XP and GNU/Linux.

Is this planned to be supported? It's very important to me. I can't seem to even use Parallels for my Boot-camp created XP partition after having partitioned manually - the "Boot Camp" option is simply greyed out when creating a VM.

Should I submit a proper bug on this? Is there a plan to address this in a future beta or the final release? I'm trying to follow these instructions, roughly, adapting by creating a 5G XP partition at the end of the drive using Boot Camp Assistant:

http://sharealike.org/index.php?m=200605

CAN SOMEONE IN SUPPORT PLEASE ADDRESS THIS ISSUE?
sorry for the yelling but its really important to us

 

[Pegasusrjf]

Issues with Bootcamp

I have a Windows XP SP2 installation that was done via Bootcamp.

Since then I deleted the EFI partition so that I could install earlier versions of Vista during my beta testing of Vista.

As a result it looks like Parallels doesn't see the partition I have for XP SP2.

The partition is NTFS, but the bootcamp option is grayed out.

Any ideas?

 

[bemaniac]

So I'm having an interesting problem... not sure if this has been fixed:

I set up Parallels to use my Windows XP Boot Camp partition. I re-activated and everything works great.

I then try to boot into Boot Camp, and at the screen where it asks me to pick between "Parallels" and "Windows XP", I can't press up or down or enter or anything!

Help?

 

[jkt]

I have been able to set up Parallels and use a Windows XP Boot Camp partition. The problem is that Windows is very slow - much slower than with Windows on my Mac partition. I don't remember seeing any comment on this in the forums.
Any suggestions much appreciated. Thanks.

 

[toddrooke]

So I'm having an interesting problem... not sure if this has been fixed:

I set up Parallels to use my Windows XP Boot Camp partition. I re-activated and everything works great.

I then try to boot into Boot Camp, and at the screen where it asks me to pick between "Parallels" and "Windows XP", I can't press up or down or enter or anything!

Help?

blackmac,

I've had this issue on my Core 2 Duo MBP and I've managed to get it to work by cycling the power a few times. One time I resorted to holding the option key down while turning the power on and manually selecting Windows as the startup volume. It seems that the keyboard doesn't just isn't reliably registering to the Windows OS. Hope this helps.

Todd

 

[toddrooke]

I have been able to set up Parallels and use a Windows XP Boot Camp partition. The problem is that Windows is very slow - much slower than with Windows on my Mac partition. I don't remember seeing any comment on this in the forums.
Any suggestions much appreciated. Thanks.

I've had the same experience. I would have expected the native disk access to be faster than a virtual drive. The only thing I could assume here is that build 3036 has a load of debug code running in the proces that is handling the native disk access given that this is the first build with this capability. I anticipate that this will be resolved over the next few builds when they stabilize this feature.

Todd

 

[toddrooke]

I have a Windows XP SP2 installation that was done via Bootcamp.

Since then I deleted the EFI partition so that I could install earlier versions of Vista during my beta testing of Vista.

As a result it looks like Parallels doesn't see the partition I have for XP SP2.

The partition is NTFS, but the bootcamp option is grayed out.

Any ideas?

I had to completely uninstall and re-install a few times after I converted my BootCamp Windows partition to NTFS before Parallels was finally able to recognize and boot the BootCamp Windows instance. If it begins to recognize it in the virtual machine config, but fails to boot to it, continue with the full un-install/re-install option with OSX restarts in between. This worked for me and I hope it will work for you as well. Good luck.

Todd

 

[toddrooke]

CAN SOMEONE IN SUPPORT PLEASE ADDRESS THIS ISSUE?
sorry for the yelling but its really important to us

My best advice here is to have the XP BootCamp partition be the third partition, because I can only imagine that Parallels development team may have hard coded this for now to reduce the number of variables. I would also imagine that this is not included in their current use cases (or test cases for that matter). If this is the case, their wouldn't be any code to accomodate this.

It would be really useful to get a response from Parallels on this before you go spend a load of time backing up, repartitioning, and restoring these two partitions if the issue is more systemic and isn't expected to work. This is something I plan to do as well, but would personally prioritize some other features before this one.


Todd

 

[prescor]

BSOD woes too

Hi there,

I just downloaded the 3036 beta to a Mac Mini that has been set up to dual-boot MacOS and Windows using Boot Camp. The Windows partition is roughly half the drive, formatted NTFS.

I followed the posted instructions and installed the Parallels update/tools in BootCamp. Then I rebooted to the Mac, set up for BootCamp, fired it up and chose "Parallels Configuration" on both screens. The gray progress bar shoots across the screen and then I get a BSOD I've never seen before:

-----
A problem has been detected and Windows has been shut down to prevent damage to your computer.

If this is the first time you've seen this Stop error screen, restart your computer. If this screen appears again, follow these steps:

Check for Viruses on your computer. Remove any newly installed hard drives or hard drive controllers. Check your hard drive to make sure it is properly configured and terminated. Run CHKDSK /F to check for hard drive corruption, and then restart your computer.

Technical Information:

***STOP ---------a bunch of HEX on one line.
-----

Boot Camp continues to work just fine. I'm using ReFIt, but it doesn't seem that that should have anything to do with this.

Help?

 

[VLMaples]

Updating tools after installing build 3036

I'm feeling rather foolish, but how do I reinstall the correct tools for the most recent build? I can't find it within parallels, on the virtual drive, or on the CD-ROM. I know it's there, but I don't remember where.

Sorry for the stupid question...

Valerie
running Parallels build 3036 data on an Intel Core 2 duo iMac
virtual machine running Windows XP Pro, 1024 RAM, 50GB hard drive

 

[Junyor]

@VLMaples: In the Parallels menu, choose Actions > Install Parallels Tools.

 

[VLMaples]

Thanks a bunch!

@VLMaples: In the Parallels menu, choose Actions > Install Parallels Tools.

I knew it had to be simple; just too tired to see it, I guess.

I heard off list that there was now a way to use the same keystrokes for cut and paste instead of switching to control+; is this true and how do I enable it, then?

Thanks for the help; it is greatly appreciated!
Valerie