Parallels Won't Work

After I loaded the program and tried to launch it, it failed a few times.

Then I was able to begin the Express installation of Windows XP, but the installation sort of hung up at the end and locked up the whole computer. The cursor turned into a spinning wheel and nothing was happening.

I re-booted the computer, but the Parallels Desktop won't launch. It just keeps failing.

My MacBook is brand new, running Leopard. I just bought version 3.0 of Parallels.

When I installed Parallels it said the installation was successful, but then it quits each time I try to launch.

Any ideas? I'm about ready to give up on the whole project and return the software for a refund.

 

Hello,

when you tried to launch Parallels and it failed were there any error messages?

Please, try to reinstall Parallels Desktop.

 

The only error message I got was from the Mac system, telling me that Parallels Desktop was forced to quit, and that other programs were not affected. There were buttons for Relaunch, Ignore, and something else. The same thing kept happening no matter how many times I tried to re-launch.

I did try re-installing Parallels and, again, the installation procedure went fine and said the installation was successful. But again, it refused to launch.

As I say, I did manage to install Windows XP using the Express Install, but that hung up at the end and wouldn't complete, so I had to re-boot the computer. And now Parallels still won't launch.

 

I had exactly the same problem yesterday, with a brand-new out-of-the-box MacBook black + all OS updates installed. Same experience as you, Parallels quits unexpectedly after launching it for the first time, than managed to get it going somehow by following some advices from a forum (rebooting, running disctool to repair disk permissions, etc) and then the Win installation hung up and it appeared that it had problems to access the DVD drive.
I solved it by downloading the latest build from the parallels website. Then I was able to launch Parallels, but again the windows installation stopped after a while. After restarting the computer, Windows installation could be continued and finally everything worked.
So, my solution was (i) downloading and installing the latest build, and (ii) resume the Win installation even after it has stopped for whatever reason.
Good luck!

 

Thank you, Axxelerator. I downloaded the software from the Parallels website and everything went through. Keeping my fingers crossed, but it looks as if this is working at least for the time being.

Tonight I'm going to try to install a couple of Windows applications. Do you just launch the virtual machine (i.e., start Windows) and then put the CD in the drive, as you would if you were working on a Windows PC?

Thanks again for your help.

 

I am glad it worked this time! I was just as frustrated as you when it didn't work in the first place.

I installed only programs which I downloaded from the internet so far (povray etc). After playing with Parallels briefly last night I would say yes, installing programs should be just as simple as you describe it. You should see the CD on the "My Computer" under Windows and be able to launch the setup, if it doesn't do so automatically.

The only thing I do not understand at this point is what I bought the box for. The downloaded Parallels version never asked me to enter a registration key and doesn't look as if it is only a trial version...