Parallels Tools problem in Windows 95

[tharpold]

Hi all,

I am not able to get the Parallels Tools installed in a new Windows 95 VM. Choosing "Install Parallels Tools" from the "Actions" menu seems to have any effect -- rather, the Tools *appear* to launch, but then nothing happens for minutes and minutes. Launching the Tools directly from a connected vmtool.iso image has the same (non) effect...

It appears from browsing discussions on this forum that this was/is a long-standing problem in Parallels 3 (I'm running build 4560). Has anyone found a solution?

TH

[tharpold]

Hi all,
I am not able to get the Parallels Tools installed in a new Windows 95 VM. Choosing "Install Parallels Tools" from the "Actions" menu seems to have any effect -- rather, the Tools *appear* to launch, but then nothing happens for minutes and minutes. Launching the Tools directly from a connected vmtool.iso image has the same (non) effect...TH

Here's sort of a partial fix I worked out on my own. -- this at least gets the Tools installed, though it doesn't fix a long-existing bug. What you need to do is burn the Parallels Tools disk image to a CD-ROM, then attach that under a running W95 VM *without* auto-launching, then run Parallels Tools from Windows Explorer

1) Drag a copy of the file "vmtools.iso" from /Library/Parallels/Tools/ to your Desktop. Be sure to drag a copy so as to keep the original in place
2) Launch the Terminal app (from your Utilities folder)
3) Insert a blank CD-ROM into your Mac (allow it to mount to the Finder)
4) Type "hdiutil burn " (note the space after "burn"), then drag "vmtools.iso" to the Terminal window to copy its file path. Press Return. This will burn a CD-ROM from the .iso image
5) Eject the CD-ROM and delete the vmtools.iso file from the desktop
6) Start your W95 VM in Parallels.
7) After it has booted, insert the CD-ROM *while holding down the Shift key* (this keeps the CD from auto-running)
8) Using Windows Explorer, navigate to the contents of the CD-ROM, then double-click on PrlTools.exe. This should launch the application and load the Tools on your VM.

Note, however, that this does not correct the obvious bug in the Parallels 3 Tools for Windows 95 that causes it to fail to launch when the VM is run, resulting an an error message of "Parallels Tools fails to start -- "The PARALLELSTOOLSCENTER.EXE file is linked to missing export KERNEL32.DLL:GetDiskFreeSpaceExA."

(How was that missed in testing?)

TH