Shared Folders in beta5

Shared folders are folders in your MacOS X file system that are visible to the guest OS also. These folders are used for exchanging files between the primary OS and virtual machine or between several virtual machines.

To make shared folders available for your guest OS, the following steps are necessary:
1. Set up the Shared Folder for your VM. To do so power off the VM, then click Edit->Shared Folders.
2. Select the Enabled option. Click OK in the Configuration Editor, then click Save to save the Virtual Machine configuration.
3. Power on the guest OS. Сapture input in the Virtual Machine.
4. After logging on to the guest OS, right-click on “My Computerâ€, click “Explorerâ€.
5. Expand “My Network Places†in the left tab.
6. Expand “Entire Network†in the left Tab.
7. Eureka! You see “Parallels Shared Foldersâ€.

Please note that it is not recommended to share any system files (such as Applications) with your guest OS.

For now, there are three known issues about the Shared Folders:
* Shared Folders feature is not available for Windows 2000 guests.
* It is not possible to create subfolders in Shared Folder from inside guest OS.
* It is not possible to clear “read-only†attribute for the file in a Shared Folder from inside guest OS.

 

Does this post mean we are about to get our claws on b5?

 

Is having shared folders working under Win2K still on the bug list for a future release?

 

It is on the bug list. It will be fixed soon.

 

Personally I like that the guest OS can't change attributes on files (such as read-only) I would like to keep Windows tightly in its box!

 

You can specify read-only attribute for whole shared folder in VM configuration.

 

On mine you can't get to "entire network" that easily. I know what I am looking for since I use it all the time but in my Parallels machine I need to go to "view workgroup computers" and then on the address bar work my may back up to entire network. Does anybody know why this is? On all my other machines I have the option 5 and 6 as described in the instructions.

 

Itunes in a shared folder

Wow! Can't wait to get home and try out B5.

A Question:

Will I be able to put my Itunes music files in a shared folder and see them from both the host and wiindows xp. It would be nice to be able to buy from itunes store whilst in xp

 

Not working...

I can't seem to get it to work. I'm using PVM b5, and my guest OS is WinXP SP2. My guest OS was installed originally under b1, and has been used under every beta since. I shut it down, went it to the settings and activated shared folders and added my home folder and another folder, and restarted. Still no Parallels folder listed under Entire Network. I also reinstalled Parallels Tools hoping that might do the trick. Still nothing.

Also of note, with this latest beta, whenever I start up WinXP, it detects new hardware and tries to install drivers for it (PCI Bridge and VGA Controller). Any ideas?

Thanks - can't wait for the final release!

 

Found a way to get this to crash

If you open up internet explorer and type

\\.host

in the address bar, Parallels will crash. I tried this because I wanted to see if I could get directly to the share without going through the Network manager.

Michael

 

I set up the shared folder as described in the original post here, but I see no folder when I drill down in the XP network.

Other bugginess:

Beta4 was much more responsive - the cursor moved fluidly in the VM, and I didn't have to crtl-option to move back and forth from there to OS X, as I must now do again in Beta5.

And Beta5 asks me to install a couple of things upon initial loading - PCI bridge and a VGA monitor. Why?

 

A4Cab,

Please install/update Parallels Tools. It will fix your mouse and add Shared Folder fuctionality.

 

Sorry, I spoke too soon - I didn't realize I should Parallels Tools upon installation of the new Beta.

I take it all back after updating the Tools - I now SEE the shared Parallels folder - Eureka indeed!

And the jerkiness is gone - while the smooth pointer movement in and out of the VM is back!

So it seems Parallels Tools should just be part of the overall installation, not an option.

 

Ditto.... In fact mine is crashing every way I attempt to get to the share. I actually got it opened once - but as soon as I tried to access a file, the VM just dissappeared and I had to restart parallels.

 

Ftp?

Is there any real benefit to using this method over, say, FTP to the Mac side?

 

It has to be installed in the guest OS, so it has to be installed after the guest OS is installed. They make it pretty easy from my POV. Upgrading betas is seldom smooth, but they're betas.

I discovered that many post upgrade errors went away when I rebooted OSX.

 

Access Denied - Shared Folder

I have an external 250GB USB Drive - I have about 6GB of files on it to copy to the Parallels Hard Drive (C:\).

When I map it as a shared folder, I can see it in Windows XP, but when I try and copy anything from it it says, Access Denied. I have another folder in my home directory on the Mac that I have successfully shared with the VM.

The external drive has 2 partitions, a Mac and a PC partition. The PC partition comes up on the Mac as read only. The Shared folder is a folder in the PC partition.

Here is my work around:
I copied the files from the PC partition to the Mac partition, and then share the folder from the Mac partition. Next map the drive in Parallels VM and then copy to the C Drive.

Is there any other way to make the PC partition on this Firewire / USB 2.0 drive appear directly in the VM? When connecting it in the VM, Windows XP recognizes that a USB device has been connected, but the drive never shows up and it complains that it is a USB 2.0 device on a USB 1.0 bus. I assume you are working on this.

Would it have been possible to add the drive as a Firewire device?

 

IF you move between multiple networks the MAC's IP and or DNS Name changes frequently. This makes it hard to map shares.

 

I posted a shared folders crash log in another thread but wanted to post a couple of comments here as it seems more appropriate.

Parallels just crashed again after I tried to access the shared folder that I created. I was able to see the Parallels Shared Folders node in Windows Explorer but when I clicked on it Parallels crashed.

I also noticed that there was no folder created in OS X. So the next time around I manually created the folder in Finder. I started up Parallels, checked that the shared folder information was the same and booted up the VM and XP. This time I was able to get the Parallels Shared Folders node to expand and it showed //hosts. with what looked like an IE icon next to it. I clicked on it and Parallels crashed again.

Any thoughts?

 

The other way is just use standard windows/mac sharing by way of sharing on the windows side and mounting from the Mac side. It seems like this shared folders thing is just a shortcut for accomplishing the same thing.