Shared profiles/Smart Select AGAIN!!!

Dear Parallels,

Without a doubt your product has allowed me to do things on a Mac I never dreamed of. I've had great success running Windows and keeping my Windows development environment tucked away in a nice clean virtual machine that I can easily backup and maintain.

I have purchased Fusion but still remain with Parallels because in general it works and conversion to Fusion would have some issues as well.

BUT... and that word is in capitals on purpose... The SmartSelect/Shared profiles stuff is a nightmare that I have still not recovered from.

Your intent to provide a smoother linkage between Windows and Mac may be wanted by some but certainly not all. I would like my VM to be 100% separate from MacOS UNLESS I decide to map/share a network drive.

What absolutely kills me about your "feature" is that it was enabled (ON) by default and when the update was installed that contained this feature it basically decided to completely break all associations that were present in MacOS X.

ANYTIME you intend to futz with something you really need to ask at least once if that is truly what the user wants AND you need to provide a fool proof way to go back to the way it was should the user decide it is not for him.

In the case of SmartSelect/Shared profiles it has without a doubt completely hosed my MacOS X associations. I cannot seem to successfully tell MacOS that anytime it sees an Excel file being double clicked that I want to use the Mac version of Excel to open it.

Sure I can right click, select Open With... for that specific file and if I check the always open with, I have fixed that ONE file. But the next Excel spreadsheet that comes along will again prompt to open using something with in the VM.

This is also the case for .DOC files, .PPS files, just about anything that was used in Windows is completely messed up.

I have followed all the hints given in these forums to disable these "features" (read crap) but still suffer from a system that cannot figure out how to open simple documents. For each new document I must manually open with and check always open. I receive probably 5 Excel spreadsheets a day from clients and for each and every one I must do this silliness.

I have completely lost the ability to open attachments within Entourage. Doing so ALWAYS brings up the detested dialog stating it is the first time... blah blah blah...

I'm going to come right out and say it: Smart select/Shared profiles are CRAP. In my opinion they broke what was a great marriage between Parallels and MacOS. They make no sense... Why in the world would ANYONE want to wait for the time it takes to open some document they double clicked on if the VM is not started!?!?

This is my request to Parallels:

1) Don't ever futz with ANYTHING on the MacOS side of things again unless you CLEARLY tell me what will happen and how it will effect operation on the MacOS side of things. Make sure such a feature is defaulted to OFF.

2) Make damned sure you give users a way to "reverse" the damage done by such a feature.

I used to be a big fan of Parallels and recommended it to over 25 people I know. I am very close to calling each and every one of them and asking them to switch to Fusion. Two of the people I know have access to (influence on) PC Magazine press. I can't say my word would cause a negative report but it certainly might cause them to investigate.

Fix this problem and fix it soon!

 

Dear Mark,

I'm sorry for giving you troubles. To fix the problem please do the following:

1. Open your VM configuration.
2. Open VM configuration editor.
3. Disable all SmartSelect and Shared Profile options.
4. Close VM configuatation editor.

4. Open Terminal application in Mac OS X (/Applications/Utilities -> Terminal)
5. In the Terminal window type the command: /System/Library/Frameworks/ApplicationServices.framework/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Support/lsregister -kill -r -f -domain local -domain system -domain user

(It should be one string)

The step 5 will reset your Mac OS X file associations database.

Best regards,
Alexander

 

Alexander,

I've done steps 1-4 at least three times. This morning I included the script and things are sort of better.

I'll continue and let you know what I find out. Thanks for the help.

 

I totally agree. You guys should know that Mac users are very picky about their systems. I admit, I was stupid and enabled smart select, not understanding what it would do. But the lack of a clean way to fix the issue is annoying.

I've done the steps you've outlined, and the windows apps STILL show up as apps for opening files with.

 

Ok, guys. I can NOT get smart select disabled in parallels tools in windows. I turned it off in vm edit. I started windows. I uninstalled the parallels tools. I reinstalled the parallels tools. It is *STILL* enabled with no way to disable it.

AND I still have all the windows apps showing up in my list of apps for opening files with in OS X.

 

Ok, I finally got rid of the apps in launchservices by:

1. Turning it off in the VM editor (still shows as on in parallels tools with no way to disable).

2. Removing the Windows Applications folder from my VM directory on my external drive.

3. Running the following command in terminal:

/System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Support/lsregister -kill -r -domain local -domain system -domain user

Interestingly, the command I found elsewhere (not here) that was SUPPOSED to work for leopard given the new location of lsregister did not work. I have a feeling it's due to the way stuff is linked and located in Leopard.

So it looks like your directions above should work. It's just really annoying.

And in hindsight, it was my fault for not realizing/finding out what smart select really did.