How to create an OS X El Capitan Guest VM (Parallels 11, Host is El Capitan)

rcstevensonaz

Junior Member
I am having no luck so far creating an El Capitan virtual machine. Are there specific steps I need to follow to do this successfully (I have not seen many guides for post-Beta).
 
That article does not discuss El Capitan.
That article is about installing 10.6 from an installation DVD; but El Capitan is not distributed as an installation DVD.
 
IS this why I cannot use Parallels because of EL Capitan? I am pretty well sunk on bookkeeping right now. My El Capitan was installed through the internet as well. I am able to open parallels but I am not able to open IE or Quicken, which is all I use. HELP?

SO when the box comes up saying there is no application set to open the document and it is the MAC face on the box, I choose the application on the MAC Side for Quicken and it opened. But I have no application for IE on the mac side? It still wants an app for that too. ???? AND why the black blinking screens?
 
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IS this why I cannot use Parallels because of EL Capitan? I am pretty well sunk on bookkeeping right now. My El Capitan was installed through the internet as well. I am able to open parallels but I am not able to open IE or Quicken, which is all I use. HELP?

SO when the box comes up saying there is no application set to open the document and it is the MAC face on the box, I choose the application on the MAC Side for Quicken and it opened. But I have no application for IE on the mac side? It still wants an app for that too. ???? AND why the black blinking screens?
Hi LaurieP, please try re-installing Parallels Tools and check how it goes. Refer to this KB article.
 
I too have been unable to create a working El Capitan virtual machine. My host system is the latest version of El Capitan, 10.11.2. I'm running the latest version of Parallels Desktop, 11.1.1. When I try to create a VM from the recovery partition, it starts to boot; the progress bar under the apple gets a little more than half way; then I get the circle with the slash through it. Re-installing Parallels Desktop did not change anything. What must I do to create an El Capitan VM?
 
Try creating an Yosemite virtual machine and thus upgrading to El Capitan. Please let us know how it goes.
Thank you.

But how am I to create a Yosemite virtual machine, since I'm using a host that is running El Capitan, and so its recovery partition is that of El Capitan?
 
Thank you.

But how am I to create a Yosemite virtual machine, since I'm using a host that is running El Capitan, and so its recovery partition is that of El Capitan?
Hi @DanP1 you can get it installed from an .iso image file too. Please contact Apple support for the .iso image file for Mac OS X Yosemite.
 
Hi @DanP1 you can get it installed from an .iso image file too. Please contact Apple support for the .iso image file for Mac OS X Yosemite.
It is poor product support like this that makes me consider switching to VMware Fusion every year when the new versions of each are released and I need to decide if I am going to upgrade to the new version of Parallels or switch to the new version of Fusion, which, by the way, supports OS X 10.11 El Capitan as a host and a guest. El Capitan has been a public release for 3 months and according to this support document it is not a supported guest OS for Parallels Desktop 11. Instead of supporting El Capitan, Parallels forces a paying customer to contact Apple to get an ISO, which is not even available. Apple may make the Install OS X Yosemite.app install available in the Mac App Store, but there is no ISO. Ridiculous.
 
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