Really getting annoyed!!!

M

MarkHolbrook

Pro
Ok, I think MANY of the Parallels features are very cool but the Smart Select/Shared Profiles thing is driving me fricking NUTS!!!

I want documents in Mac OS to open ONLY ONLY ONLY with programs in Mac OS. I want documents in my VM to open ONLY ONLY ONLY with apps in the VM. How do I turn off this annoying crap!?!?!?

The thing that totally drives me crazy about it, is that my Excel document on the desktop in Mac OS if double clicked will bring up a dialog about opening some non-related app in the VM for the first time. It does this EVEN WHEN Parallels is not running.

I've gone to all of my VM's. I've disabled Smart Select in them. I've disabled shared profiles. IT STILL FRICKING DOES THIS!

I right clicked on the Excel document, selected open with, always use and selected my Mac based MS Excel. It works for a week then reverts back to trying to open apps in the VM.

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE provide a fool proof way to turn this stuff off. There are many users I have to guess like myself that want to consider Mac OS as one computer, Windows XP in VM as a totally separate computer.

Mark
 
While your VM is turned off, go to the "Edit" menu and select "Virtual Machine...". Go to "Security" and set the security level to high, and click "OK". Then go to your VM folder and delete the "Windows Applications" folder. You now should have ALL of the integration features fully turned off.
 
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Done all of that, EXCEPT I have no "Windows applications" folder. Still... double clicking an Excel doc in Mac OS calls up something (not even related) from the VM.

I have done those very steps in ALL VMs. I have quit Parallels, restarted the Mac, still it wants to associate Mac documents with things inside the VMs.
 
MarkHolbrook said:
Done all of that, EXCEPT I have no "Windows applications" folder. Still... double clicking an Excel doc in Mac OS calls up something (not even related) from the VM.

I have done those very steps in ALL VMs. I have quit Parallels, restarted the Mac, still it wants to associate Mac documents with things inside the VMs.
Click to expand...

The applications that Parallels creates are all in "Windows Applications" folders, so you must have missed one of those folders somewhere. Try searching "Windows Applications" in Spotlight. Also double check that the shared applications options are disabled in your VM configuration so that the Windows applications are not recreated (at least in the latest beta, the security setting of high turns off shared applications).
 
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Ok, searched using spotlight... I found a Windows applications folder on my fire wire drive which is rarely connected. Only for backups. It is not part of a Parallels VM. It is a folder I created to store some backup copies of Windows programs I use all the time (installers).

As a test, I dis-mounted my firewire drive and double clicked on an excel doc in Mac OS. It worked like I want. MS Office Mac, excel came up and loaded the doc.

I quit that. I remounted the firewire drive. Problem re-appears. So I renamed the folder on the fireware drive to "My Windows Apps". Problem still happens.

I then went looking on the fireware app and found two Parallels VM backups which had windows applications folders. I removed them and now it is working.

So my question is how/why/what for did Parallels even consider the "windows applications" on my firewire drive as enough to enable this feature!?!?

Very strange.
 
MarkHolbrook said:
So my question is how/why/what for did Parallels even consider the "windows applications" on my firewire drive as enough to enable this feature!?!?

Very strange.
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Well unfortunately it is impossible for Parallels to prevent that because it is OS X that ultimately decides how the file associations are to be handled. A direct copy of a VM with the "Windows Applications" will copy the file associations along with it. When an application from a backup VM is launched, Parallels assumes that you want the corresponding VM to be launched since there is no way to distinguish a backup VM from the original VM.
 
brkirch said:
Well unfortunately it is impossible for Parallels to prevent that because it is OS X that ultimately decides how the file associations are to be handled. A direct copy of a VM with the "Windows Applications" will copy the file associations along with it. When an application from a backup VM is launched, Parallels assumes that you want the corresponding VM to be launched since there is no way to distinguish a backup VM from the original VM.
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True OX X decides how they are to be handled HOWEVER they all worked fine before Parallels started to get too fancy with this stuff. Now it is a nightmare trying to undo it.

Example: I've done all the steps you mentioned. I've turned off everything in every VM. I've removed/renamed EVERY windows applications folder. I've rebooted. My firewire disk is disconnected.

But an insurance agent sent me an excel file .XLS in an email. The email came into Microsoft Entourage. I clicked on the XLS and said open and once again up came the stupid annoying dialog saying "this is the first time you've opened this application... BLAH BLAH BLAH..."

Since this stuff from Parallels if I want ANY of my Mac based documents to open in the Mac world I have to save them, right click and say open with and then select MS Excel (mac) and click always open with. This sticks until something changes in Parallels (who knows what) and suddenly they all pop back into the dialog behavior.

What I am asking for is a definitive way to turn it off and fix the problem. I do see it as a problem because it has in my opinion broken functionality that once worked.
 
Doesn't uninstalling and then re-installing Parallels plus disabling smartselect get rid of the problem?
 
Leauki said:
Doesn't uninstalling and then re-installing Parallels plus disabling smartselect get rid of the problem?
Click to expand...

That is a step I'm not willing nor should I have to take. My Parallels install is solid and critical to my day to day work. I have read some of the horror stories people have had with uninstall/reinstall issues. I'm not willing to take that chance and would rather put up with the problem.

I just feel that posting here should alert Parallels that there is something seriously wrong with their implementation of this stuff. IE I can't figure out how to turn it off.
 
I assume you have done a Get Info on a .xls Excel document and ensured that it is set to open with Excel for Mac, and that Change All ... has been used to set this as the OS X file association for all such files?
 
AlanH said:
I assume you have done a Get Info on a .xls Excel document and ensured that it is set to open with Excel for Mac, and that Change All ... has been used to set this as the OS X file association for all such files?
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Yes numerous times. I've done this via GetInfo, I've down "always use". It seems that sometimes it just magically switches back.

By changing all VMs to high security and removing all Windows applications folders it has gotten better but twice today it decided that an unrelated app in my VM should be used to open a .xls and a .doc. It didn't even correctly pick Excel or Word in the VM. It picked one of my programs I wrote!!!

It is very frustrating.
 
MarkHolbrook said:
That is a step I'm not willing nor should I have to take. My Parallels install is solid and critical to my day to day work. I have read some of the horror stories people have had with uninstall/reinstall issues. I'm not willing to take that chance and would rather put up with the problem.
Click to expand...

Well, uninstalling and reinstalling is the common way to solve that sort of problem.

I just feel that posting here should alert Parallels that there is something seriously wrong with their implementation of this stuff. IE I can't figure out how to turn it off.
Click to expand...

It doesn't seem to be a common issue.
 
jackybe67 said:
Just unistall + reinstall parallels !!!!!!
Click to expand...

It's doing this on two completely separate installs... Two completely different machines exhibit this behavior running to complete different VM's...

Hum... Ok my car just sputtered.... I'm gonna take the engine out and put it back in...

Sorry I don't agree. Perhaps it is NOT a common issue but it is an issue. Even if I'm the ONLY user to have it. Parallels needs to know it exists and as far as fixing it, well I'd like them to consider some better ways to disable this stuff in a future version.

To me this is a way more important "bug" (if it is one) than not being able to play Quake in a VM. It's all in how you see it though. For me the whole beauty of virtualization and running WinXP this way is that it is isolated and acts as very much like a true separate machine.

When they started to mix profiles and applications it went a direction that is probably valuable to other users but not to *all* users. I'm simply asking for a way, a procedure (and I'm sorry uninstall / reinstall is NOT a valid fix for something this simple) to solve the problem.

But to satisfy you guys, I'll take machine number 2 today since it is not as critical in function and I will do just that. I'll see if a complete removal, reboot and re-install will solve the problem.

I'll let ya know.
 
same here..

I had a similar problem, not as persistent but still I felt really frustrated that the software allows you to create this strange setup but doesn't easily allow you to reverse the result without deleting the windows parallel reference files... Until I did that no matter what the swf association I set it would try to start parallels to run explorer.
 
MarkHolbrook said:
Yes numerous times. I've done this via GetInfo, I've down "always use". It seems that sometimes it just magically switches back.
Click to expand...

I'm not sure that's a Parallels issue - I've had it a few times without Windows apps being involved - change the setting in "Get Info", go back to "Get Info" and its changed back... Grrr...

However, Does chucking the contents of the "Windows Applications" folder in the directory next to the .pvs files improve things?
 
itsdapead said:
I'm not sure that's a Parallels issue - I've had it a few times without Windows apps being involved - change the setting in "Get Info", go back to "Get Info" and its changed back... Grrr...

However, Does chucking the contents of the "Windows Applications" folder in the directory next to the .pvs files improve things?
Click to expand...

Things are improved now that I've got security set to high and I've chucked all windows application folders.

On the machine I agreed to uninstall and re-install parallels the issue cropped up again AFTER the install. Hence my earlier belief that this was NOT the solution to this issue.

On the machine that has not been re-installed things are ok unless I double click on an email attachment, say a DOC or an XLS (of course only from a client or co-worker). Then I get the same old dialog saying this application is being opened for the first time.

This NEVER happened before the upgrade to 3.0 Parallels. I have to blame the attempts by Parallels to "merge" the OS X and Win environments. Like I said I think it is a cool idea and some people may really desire it. For me I definitely want them 100% separate.

I know there are folks out there that would say, if you want 100% separation then use a MacBookPro for OS X and get a windows laptop for WinXP. Not an answer to my problem. My problem is that I need both, I don't desire to carry two laptops. I develop for both OS X and Windows.

Anyway I just feel that anytime Parallels messes with the OS X environment (like adding icons to the OS X desktop) or vice versa in windows there needs to be a way to turn that behavior off.

I can do all the file sharing I want using standard windows disk sharing. It works beautifully. I can copy files to/from my WinXP to OS X. It simply looks like a network drive to me.

I just want Mac documents to open with Mac applications. I want Windows documents (within the VM) to open with windows applications. If I want interaction then I'll copy the doc from one environment to the other.
 
MarkHolbrook said:
Things are improved now that I've got security set to high and I've chucked all windows application folders.

On the machine I agreed to uninstall and re-install parallels the issue cropped up again AFTER the install. Hence my earlier belief that this was NOT the solution to this issue.

On the machine that has not been re-installed things are ok unless I double click on an email attachment, say a DOC or an XLS (of course only from a client or co-worker). Then I get the same old dialog saying this application is being opened for the first time.

This NEVER happened before the upgrade to 3.0 Parallels. I have to blame the attempts by Parallels to "merge" the OS X and Win environments. Like I said I think it is a cool idea and some people may really desire it. For me I definitely want them 100% separate.
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Well if it indeed is a Parallels issue, there are a couple remaining possibilities:
- You reverted to a snapshot in one of the VMs. It is easy to forget, but reverting to a snapshot also reverts the VM settings to what they were when the snapshot was taken, and could be turning the shared applications feature back on. To solve this, revert to each of your existing snapshots, shut down Windows, set the security setting to high, recreate the snapshot (you can boot back into Windows if you want), and delete the original.
- The shared applications settings got turned back on somehow. Double-check to make sure it is still turned off in all VMs.
- Some of the applications that were in the Windows Applications folders got separated from the folder. This isn't something that Parallels itself would cause however. In that case you will need to locate them and delete them.
 
brkirch said:
Well if it indeed is a Parallels issue, there are a couple remaining possibilities:
- You reverted to a snapshot in one of the VMs. It is easy to forget, but reverting to a snapshot also reverts the VM settings to what they were when the snapshot was taken, and could be turning the shared applications feature back on. To solve this, revert to each of your existing snapshots, shut down Windows, set the security setting to high, recreate the snapshot (you can boot back into Windows if you want), and delete the original.
- The shared applications settings got turned back on somehow. Double-check to make sure it is still turned off in all VMs.
- Some of the applications that were in the Windows Applications folders got separated from the folder. This isn't something that Parallels itself would cause however. In that case you will need to locate them and delete them.
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Unfortunately (or fortunately...) this is a new VM that has never had snapshots done. After I had such issues with the slowness of snapshots I gave up using them. That particular VM has been retired and I started with a fresh XP VM and re-installed all Windows software I desired. So I don't believe that snapshots had anything to do with it.

I have validated #2 definitely is not the case. Whenever this happens one of the first places I check is the prefs and I quit the VM and check the settings. So far (and this has been my experience in general) the settings seem to be staying put in Parallels VMs.

Lastly windows applications is always a possibility. I have spotlighted for those folders and right now have none. I have not tried to look for the apps themselves. I know for a fact that I never copied them out of the folders. But it is possible.

I will restate again that this behavior began after upgrading to 3.0. Prior to 3.0 all of the functionality I desired worked perfectly. The only sharing that occurred was through mapped drives.

After installing 3.0 and converting VMs this began to happen. It is true that I didn't fully understand what some of the 3.0 settings did, for example I upgraded to RC2 recently and didn't know what the shared profiles did. I turned them on to check them out and saw links to desktops between the two OS's. So I turned the back off.

My point is that once you've turned some of these things on, getting them to turn off seems to be difficult. And from what I can see above there is at least ONE other person that has suffered with this.

If nothing else, if Parallels is going to do something which effects how OS X operates then the checkbox to enable the feature should have a very nicely formatted dialog saying "If you enable this feature then x, y, z will happen in OS X... To disable this feature will require changing 1, 2, 3, in OS X as well as disabling this checkbox".

M
 
I agree

I'm uninstalling parallels as we speak. It kept stealing the default browser setting in osx - so that EVERY SINGLE TIME I start a VM, it sets Parallels as the default browser. I do NOT WANT THIS, but parallels insists on doing it.
 
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