If only MS Excel for Mac supported Macros we would never need Parallels !!!
Yeah, because that's the only reason why anyone would ever want or need to run another operating system.
It seems like from your first post in this thread, you keep attempting to put the blame on the users of Parallels without question. Well, I personally have been operating various computers, OSs, and applications for over 23 years, and I know how to RTFM. Regardless, there is definitely something wrong with PD4.
My system with 6 GB RAM and 2 x 2.8GHz Quad-Core Intel Xenon CPUs (8 cores) begins to crawl the moment I launch PD4 and start my Boot Camp partition of WinXP SP3. The CPUs are bouncing between 80% and 100%, and WinXP takes at least twice as long to boot using PD4 than it did with PD3. Windows skip around the screen when dragged, and it take 10 seconds or so for the Start Menu to come up when I click on it.
Simply repeating that
you had no problems with your installation doesn't help
anyone. As for backing up your VM, the conversion process clearly states that you cannot backup Boot Camp VMs.
Personally, I prefer to use OS X for daily computing. Unfortunately, there is no decent way to develop XNA, .NET or Direct X applications outside of Windows, and half of the tools I need for work don't exist on OS X. You can't even find a better diff/comparison tool than Beyond Compare, and that's Windows and Linux only. Even the Office:Mac apps are far inferior to their Windows counterparts. Excel for Mac crawls with some of the 10k+ cell spreadsheets I've worked with, yet Excel (Win) runs those just fine even when WinXP is visualized using PD3. And Entourage's support of Exchange is a joke compared to Outlook. It's sad really. Maybe some day, Microsoft will put some real effort into their Mac products.
All I can suggest to those that need to operate Windows XP on their Macs, you may want to hold off until a patch (or two) is released before making the plunge.