Unable to resume shared Win XP Pro VM after loggin onto Mac as another user

Unable to resume shared Win XP Pro VM after logging onto Mac as another user

I'm running Mac OS 10.4.9 and PD build 3212.

After installing PD and creating a Win XP Pro VM using the quick start guide, I followed the instructions in the user guide for sharing the VM among all the users on my Mac. I've tested and the VM works just fine for all my Mac users *provided* the VM is stopped each time they exit PD. However, if a user exits PD with Windows suspended, logs out of the Mac and a different user logs on and tries to restart the VM, they get an error that PD is unable to allocate virtual memory.

After researching the problem on my own, I discovered the error message is due to the fact that the <VM name>.mem and <VM name>.sav files associated with a running VM are owned by the user who launches the VM, with no read or write permission for group or others. These two files remain when the first user logs off with the VM suspended and when the second user logs on and tries to resume the VM, PD doesn't have the permissions to modify these files.

I tried to find a workaround in the PD preferences and on the support forum and KB, but no luck. Does anyone know of a a solution for this?

 

Parallels deletes and recreates the .sav when suspending. The .sav won't get write permissions for the other users due to OS X only setting the creator to read/write.

These instructions will make the inherited permissions give read/write to a group that both users are in.

http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=2006010714524168

I used the workgroup manager per the recommendation further down in the comments, it made creating the group much easier.