Hi In VPC when I set up shared folders they were allocated to a disk letter. This meant they were available from anywhere and everywhere within VPC including open/save dialog box's. Maybe its me but when I try to open a document in a shared folder or save to it I cannot FIND THEM in the open/save dialog box. Am I doing something wrong???????? Cheers. Robin
I've found that starting with RC2, it's actually much more reliable to use Windows networking to connect to my Mac and transfer files using file sharing, instead of using shared folders.
Well, if I turn on Windows Sharing in the Mac's "Sharing" preference panel, I can then access my Mac just like any Windows file share, by opening "My Network Places", then "Entire Network", "Microsoft Windows Network," then the workgroup. You should then see your mac on the list. This will let you open and access user directories from your Mac in Windows.
It actually works quite well for me. But the location is fairly hidden if you try to find it directly. I allowed it to put an alias on the Desktop so can always find the shared folder that way.
I've had trouble with strange errors from Windows using the shared folder, or having files disappear, so I switched to using networking.
Files in the shared folder, for me at least, ended up with a file date stamp of December 31, 1969. And this was even after following advice here to uninstal and reinstal the tools. I'm going to try the networking angle and see what happens.
This will only work if the Mac can register it's host name with the DNS. Otherwise you won't be able to resolve the Mac's name or browse it in the guest using NetBIOS. To use the network share method (without an open DNS registration), you need to get the IP address of the Mac side. There are several ways to do this, here is one easy way: 1) Open Utilities -> Network Utility 2) Select the adapter you are using in the (en0 is wired Ethernet, en1 is wireless) 3) Note the IP address you see (e.g., 192.168.100.23) 4) Go to the guest OS and choose Start -> Run... 5) Enter "\\<the IP address>" (e.g., \\192.168.100.23) Because the IP address can change (assuming DHCP from a router or something similar), you'll have to do this each time you start up parallels. If you map to a drive letter (Tools -> Map Network Drive...) and the IP changes, the map will no longer be valid.
As an fyi, if you use BonJour on Windows, this gets a LOT easier... http://forums.parallels.com/thread2984.html
By the way, if you're running host-only networking, and your Parallels host-guest adapter is "en2", then the following two lines added to the "global" section of your /etc/smb.conf file should make sure that your SMB service is seen only by your Parallels guest and not by the outside world: bind interfaces only = yes interfaces = en2 If you ask me this is a must-do. As OSX warns you when you fire up Windows File Sharing, SMB passwords are stored less securely than OSX native passwords. Plus, who knows what vulnerabilities remain in OSX's samba software. So it seems like a good idea to me not to expose your use of SMB to the outside world.
I used bridged networking (have to) but decided to work the firewall instead of Samba to solve this problem. I altered the firewall to only allow SMB traffic that originated from the XP guest OS. Otherwise, the response is stealthed and the outside world get's no reply. Take a look at this whitepaper and let me know what you think. There are still holes to close but it seems to be fairly solid. You can find the white paper here: http://www.microdeveloper.com/html/parallels/share_howto/index.html
