So far Parallels was absolutely brilliant for me until I upgraded to v3. My problems are so basic however that it could not have passed any QA, so the root cause must lie with me. What I do is: Open Parallels, no VM's left so I get the screen to start a new one. I select Express Install of Win XP Follow all the defaults, install from a XP v1 CD, which worked beautifully with Parallels in the past, and still does with the other brand. Click OK, and it does its thing, installs XP, reboots, boots XP, starts installation of Parallels tools (all of this without my intervention, or even touching my MacBook Pro) And then next thing I know, Parallels unexpectedly quit. Restarting the VM does boot it, but when I install the Parallels tools again (in the assumption something probably has not completed because of the above) it quits unexpectedly again. ??? My machine is a Core2Duo MBP 2.33 GHz, 2Gb RAM, latest OS X 10.4 with all updates. The above was reproduced with the last three iteration of P3, including the latest beta. Can anyone tell me what I did wrong? Thanks!
The first thing that seems wrong is that your VM's from your Version 2 installation should be available to you. You shouldn't have to start all over again. It is recommended that you make a backup of your version 2 vm's before upgrading, but once you upgrade, the version 2 VM's should be there and upgraded in Version 3. Secondly, there are a couple of documented problems with V3 that seem to especially affect MPS's and Mac Pro's. Check Macwindows.com for these glitches and fixes. Third, this is off the wall, but just to cover the bases: Have you tried to open V3 by clicking the icon in the Parallels application folder? I wonder if you could be clicking on a Version 2 icon. Find your version three folder, click on the icon there, and make sure that is the icon that is in the dock. This happened to me on earlier versions, but not on the V2 to V3 upgrade, but might be worth a check.
Thanks, to clarify: I moved all my VM's to an external HD, so they don't get corrupted with all the instability I find. So when that drive is not connected, I don't see them. And I can use them when I disable all stuff, but at that point I feel more secure with the Other Beta than with this Parallels Release. I have not checked MacWindows, I'll do that. I kind of assumed that in the Fresh Start scenario I could steer clear from workarounds. And finally: I first uninstalled v2 before I installed v3. Reason was that I used the UK localized (and lousily supported) version, so i bit the bullet and started from scratch with a new US-license.
May be worth trying... I had this problem on my MacPro, with a tried and true VM. The trick for me was to do a custom install of tools, disabling the "shared applications" checkbox. Once I did this, all was well.
Thanks. But it is strange that this should be necessary on a virgin install using a quality app, isn't it?
Yes, it is indeed. However, as another poster pointed out, both 4650 and 5060 are unstable compared to 4128. That same poster suggested that they both be considered as "alpha" releases, largely untested, and not even beta. From this point of view, it's a situation of use at your own risk.
