I'm running parallels build 3188 (I think, I'm not in front of the mac at the moment) on my macbook which sees the USB drive connected to the airport extreme and mounts it properly but when I start Windows XP running in Parallels it doesn't see the USB drive connected to the Airport Extreme. The 500 gig USB drive is formated FAT32, Parallels tools is installed and XP sees USB devices connected directly to the macbook, but I'm not sure if this is relevant. Has someone been successful in getting the airport USB disk to work under parallels? If so, could you provide the steps taken or settings in the router, XP and parallels to allow it to work? I've seached this forum and don't see much on the subject. Tim
This is a partial solution... There is probably a more sophisticated way of mounting the Airport Disks in WinXP Pro, but I simply made the Airport Disks as Parallels Shared Folders to access them in Windows. It works just fine for me as I'm not using any security for accessing my Airport Disks. I'm using Airport Disks with HFS format. When I have Parallels and WinXP connected by Default Adapter and Shared Networking, and I launch Airport Utility, it doesn't even see the AE Base Station. If I change to the Wireless/Airport Adapter, then Airport Utility sees the Base Station and Airport Disks, but they don't seem to mount properly on their own in Windows. I'm sure there is some way to do it, but I don't want to waste time screwing around when I can access the Airport Disks by using the Parallels Shared Folders method. When I'm using BootCamp and WinXP Pro, the Airport Disks show up automatically in the My Computer window as true Airport Disks in their own section.
I assume the airdisk has an IP assigned to it. Can you ping that IP from Windows? What, in Windows, even tells it to expect to see a disk drive in the network? I haven't tried this in the Mac but surely there is an application layer in the Mac the allows mounting a network attached storage device.
I was able to get the Airport Disks to mount properly in WinXP under Parallels. It was by accident. I was in Windows Control Panel > Add or Remove Programs and I noticed that Airport Utility had a Change and Repair Option. I did an Airport Utility repair out of curiosity and checked My Computer and noticed that my Airport Disks had mounted under Network Drives. I rebooted and they disappeared. I decided to remove Airport Utility and reinstall it again. I reinstalled it and updated it and rebooted. Now the Airport Disks are always mounted under Network Drives whenever WinXP is booted. Another thing I noticed is that when I clicked on the Airport Disk Preferences tray icon, the name of my Base Station is also shown. The name didn't show before I reinstalled Airport Utility. So I guess the best way to fix your problem is to just remove and reinstall your Airport Disk Utility program and update it. I think mine worked originally, but subsequent Windows updates might have messed it up.
I do have a BootCamp partition that mounts Airport Disks under Net Drives in My Computer, but right now I'm talking about a virtual WinXP Pro.hdd that is in my Users Folder that can also mount the Airport Drives automatically under Net Drives. I don't let Parallels get involved with my BootCamp partition. I use the BootCamp partition only for native booting. I have installed all the BootCamp drivers into my Parallels WinXP Pro .hdd. if that means anything. See for yourself: http://farm1.static.flickr.com/197/522698258_1b4b1b73ed_o.jpg
