I found Parallels very usefull and fast, except concerning shared folders. The performance is so bad that I prefer to use Samba. When my laptop, is connected to a network, I use smb to share data of OSX with XP. However, when I'm on the road, since the network interface is seen off, I have to use the shared folders \\.PSF\user. Then, opening a file can take between 15 sec to 1 minute. With the Office tools, for each first save of a file comes a dialog box asking if I want to save a copy or overwrite changes. I use build 1848 and installed it as an upgrade of the first demo version when I bought the product. I removed the Parallel tools and reinstalled them after a reboot but it didn't help. Any suggestion to help me to improve the shared folders performance is welcome. Any indication on how to proceed to use smb when not using a network is appreciated too.
. When you're out of the office, you could use static ip to make networking work. Searching can help you a lot in forums. You may have been able to find: Make sure you map a network drive within Win XP to your OS X shared folder. This speeds up access considerably. (Thanks TDI). .
Thank you Constant for your suggestions. Static IP when I'm out of office only works in a Host Only Network configuration. WIth a Bridget Ethernet Networking configuration (the config I use), the same fixed address don't work and a simple ping doesn't reply. To switch between these configs means each time a XP reboot. I had an extensive look in the forum before posting this question but haven't found someone with the same problem. Concerning the map, the shared folders had a Z: map and it didn't help. Only samba folders works fast. Accessing the same Excel file via the Shared Folder map or the samba map gives very different results. A Save using the Shared Folders asks if I want to save a copy or overwrite changes. A Save using samba works fine without asking anything. Should I remove Parallel and re-install it from scratch? Has the upgrade procedure a bug? Re-installing the Parallel tools wasn't useful. I have a MacBook Pro 2.16 GHz/17" with 2G of RAM. So, the solution I work with now is: 1. Use a Host Only Network config with fixed address. 2. Do not use Shared Folder but samba mounted drives. 3. Access to remote drives via the Mac (mount them, defines once soft links and access them via samba). The bad point is: Web browsing from XP / Explorer is not possible. Any suggestion is still appreciated (from the Parallels team too) . I'm sure this will work fine one day...
See if you can ping your Internet gateway from XP. (Of course XP knows the gateway address, right)? If you can, maybe all you need it to tell XP the DNS address to use. Bridged networking has been working for me from day one at several locations, both wired and wireless, so the concept is proved.
To joem: Bridged networking works fine for me too from day one. But I cannot use samba when I'm not connected to the network. To continue to use samba when I'm offline, I need to use the Host Only Network config. When I'm connected to the network again, this config doesn't allow me to browse the network. I only can ping the Parallels Host-Guest Adapter. Switching between configs requires a reboot and I would like to avoid it. I tried from the Mac to share my Ethernet or my WIFI connection with en2 (the host guest adapter) but I couldn't. A ping of a machine on the network using its IP address don't work. It seems I have a problem on the Mac side. When I start the Internet sharing of ethernet by en2, this is stopped after a short time. If I switch to another dialog box and return to this one again, the start button is enabled again...
Now I can share ethernet with en0. I haven't change anything. I only tried to share the ethernet once with a Mac connected via an ad-hoc WIFI network. This worked and from that time I also can share en0. So today, I have a very nice and working configuration based on: 1. Use Host Only network and configure the XP IP address and the Parallels Host-Guest Adapter as fixed. 2. Do not use Shared Folders at all. 3. Use samba to share my Mac home directory. 4. Use soft links to access Mac mounted network drives via a shell script (known mount points). 5. Use Mac Internet Sharing in order to share ethernet with XP (so Web browsing, access of the Outlook calendar of my collegues,... all of this works). I hope it could help someone else.
