Hello, I've just installed a copy of Parallels with XP within OS X 10.4 under an an admin user. I've installed XP in the users/shared directory in the hopes that all users on the system could use it. When I'm logged in as admin (under which I installed Parallels and XP) I can run it no problem. But, if I log out, then back in as a regular user, when I launch Parallels, it launches right into the "Install OS" screen asking what OS you want to install and I can't boot the version of XP I installed under the admin user. Is there a way to run Parallels so it's accessible to all users? Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks, Kristin.
You need to use the same configuration file... Which means you have to have permissions to access both that file and the HD.
Think Unix permissions. Put the vm folder in a publicly readable/writeable location. Change the permissions of the contents to ugo+rw. As any user, create Dock objects to the .pvs file associated with your already installed vm(s). Optionally consider hand-editing the pvs files to point to a common area, and place them it Parallels's established directory trees in each user's home directory. There are multiple trees to play with. After a user has shut down their instance you will have to use some method to change the ownerships of any shared files that were created by the application while it was running. Obviously it is not a multi-user friendly product. Expect problems. Note too, it would be a violation of the Microsoft license to allow multiple simultaneous instances of Windows vm's to run.
How to do all this I want to do all this but I am new to mac and dont understand all the terms used or the instructions. I installed parallels to the main admin user of the macbook and got it to work just fine. After creating another profile I installed paralles on that profile and was asked to create another VM. This uses too much space on the HD so I asked parallels tech support if there was a way to share the windows image file. I was told to copy the VM to a shared folder. I went back to the original profile and moved the paralles folder to the shared folder. When I ran parallels it again asked me to create a new VM. I was able to choose existing image from the shared folder and it ran fine. I then shutdown that windows VM, closed parallels and logged off then back on as the other profile. When I chose to run paralles it gives me several errors. Something about the image geometry is bad. I think I need to do what is says above or maybe even more (like uninstall paralles all together and start over. Anybody willing to help a new MAC user?
