When booting an XP installation on a BootCamp partition, Parallels always asks for my OS X password. While I understand that Parallels needs to unmount the drive (and requires sudo to do this), it would be great if there was an option to remember the user's OS X password. SuperDuper! does this... you can enter your user account password and click on a padlock icon (probably uses Keychain) and you don't have to be prompted in the future. This shouldn't be too hard to add, and would be a few less clicks that I have to do every day, when there is an easy solution. Thanks for considering this! P.S. - Aside from some annoying USB bugs and such, Parallels is one of the best products I have used in awhile as far as helping me get my work done.
This is really very annoying since it is an Admin password that is asked... I will install a parallels/bootcamp solution for one of my users and this user MUST NOT be admin but should be able to use Parallels using the BootCamp partition... A fix for this is necessary for me...
I agree, it would be nice to get rid of the need for an admin password... I understand the reason why is because it is taking admin rights but perhaps there can be something that will just call a script that has admin rights that will only do certain things...
I absolutely agree. I absolutely agree. I (from a mac user view) "unfortunately" HAVE to use parallels every day for work. (read: i don't like windows but parallels is a great solution for that!) As I sometimes have to natively boot into bootcamp I set up my Parallels VM to boot from my Boot Camp drive... Entering the password TWICE for unmounting, then again once for shutting down/mounting the drive back to OSX really bugs me every day... especially because I must use a (security wise) very complex 10 digit password, which normally goes like "a3kEm53xvK" which ain't easy to remember AND it changes twice a month... you get the picture... it really drives me nuts... please-oh-please.... boy you can't imagine how annoying this is... you could do a little test: write down a combination of 10 random letters and numbers on a post-it, set it as your admin password and stick it somewhere under your table or on the back of your screen... harassingly!!
It would seem that version 3.0 still suffers from this same problem. Is anyone besides me still experiencing it? It really is annoying!
I need my VM to start running at Mac restart I, too wish to get rid of having to type my password. The main reason is that I need my virtual machine to start running right away when my Mac is restarted, and this needs to happen unattended. I further need to have my USB settings come back up so that a Windows program which autostarts when the VM starts can have access to an external device withoud my having to re-attach it using the USB icon at the bottom right of the Parallels window. This also should happen with the machine unattended. Thus if an automatic Mac system update which requires restart occurs, or if there is a power failure which causes my Mac to restart, my mission-critical Windows program will start running again without my intervention. This also requires that Windows be shut down unnattended when the Mac restarts. I need this to happen when I might be asleep or out of town, and therefore unable to type my password or otherwise interact with my Mac. Norman
There's more to it than that: when you use bootcamp, you are giving the VM unrestricted, direct access to a physical disc partition, completely bypassing any access rights on that partition. The VM effectively has "root" access to that partition - proteced only by whatever access control the guest OS provides (Even if you trust Windows' security implicitly, Harvey the giant invisible rabbit points out that you can easily boot the VM into console/repair/install mode or from a live CD). Potentially, someone could write a trojan that - with only "user" privileges - altered your .pvs files to mount any hard disc partition and stomp on it. (It may even be that Parallels itself has to run with escalated privileges in bootcamp mode...?) Its entirely and completely correct that Parallels requires the admin password before starting up a "real device"-based VM. To do otherwise would break the OS X security model. Remember, folks, bootcamp support is nice and convenient in that it avoids you having to maintain two windows installs (and possibly haveing to shell out for two copies of windows) but it also negates several of the Unique Selling Points of using a VM, including the "suspend" facility, the "sandbox" effect of the guest OS' influence being restricted to easily backed-up, virtual HD files, and (in V3.0) the snapshot and undo disc facilities. If you don't need Bootcamp, don't use it. Virtual Machines (Parallels or otherwise) work best with virtual disks!
