Switch to M1 Mac, lose access to VMs with Intel-based Guest OS?

G

Gimbal

Member
Hi, I'm a long-time Parallels Desktop for Mac user, on Intel-based Macs. I am planning to buy a new M1 Mac in the near future. The documentation for Parallels Desktop for Mac v17 reads: "Supported Guest Operating Systems (Mac with Apple M1 chip): Only ARM versions of operating systems are supported."

Does this mean that if I purchase an M1 Mac and install the latest Parallels 17, I will NOT be able to open my older VMs that have guest OSes of: Mac OS 10.6, 10.11, 10.14, Windows XP, 7, and 10?

Parallels Desktop for Mac Technical Documentation & Resources
https://www.parallels.com/products/desktop/resources/#sysreq

About Parallels Desktop for Mac with Apple M1 chip
https://kb.parallels.com/125343
 
Hi Gimbal. Correct. Your Intel VMs will not work on the M1. you will need to download ISOs or VHDs for Windows 10 or 11 on Arm. At that point you'll be creating new VMs and installing your apps again. This process is easier if you have digitally linked licenses to your outlook account and data sitting in the cloud. If you want to copy data from the old VMs there is a KB article on how to do that.
 
BTW, same applies to older macOS VMs. They are not supported on the M1 Mac by Parallels. If you are on Monterey Beta, you can run Monterey as a VM (I have personally not tried it, but you'll see others on this forum have and report their feedback)
 
Thank you for the reply - it's disappointing because I do need to maintain access to some older systems that can't be updated, which will require keeping Intel hardware alive. I was expecting to be able to carry over the VMs and continue using them indefinitely. I hoped that Parallels had some "Rosetta-like" way of virtualizing the Intel-based guest OS VMs on an Arm-based processor. One hope too far, I guess. Thanks again.
 
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