Fullscreen apps and application switching

A

ArielGe

Bit poster
Hello,

In coherence mode (OS X 10.7.4, Parallels 7, Windows 7 VM), I often open guest windows applications (and some of the mac ones) in the native lion fullscreen mode. All in all it works pretty great, but I have some problems when using the mac application switcher to move between the different applications (mac and windows).

A lot of the time (the behavior is not consistent), the application switcher (cmd+tab) has issues switching to/from a guest windows application. When trying to switch to a windows app, it often switches to a different app instead, and when trying to switch from a windows app it sometimes stays within the app and fails to switch.
The problems only occur if at least one of the open apps (windows or mac!) is open in fullscreen. Otherwise, switching to and fro between mac and windows apps works without a hitch.

Has anyone else encountered this problem?
 
I had an issue where if I click alt & tab to switch between 2 fullscreen apps within the vm and let go of the tab or alt button too quickly, it failed the app switch. Try pausing for a second with alt/tab held down before releasing....
 
This is primarily because some Windows apps are not polite. I have this issue with UltraVNC, for example, when it is in full-screen mode you can use the Windows alt-tab function (this is on an actual physical Windows machine, *not* a virtual machine) to select some other window, and UltraVNC promptly pops itself right back into the foreground again and pushes the other window back behind UltraVNC. Well, if it's in the background, Unity can't switch to it because if it's in the background, Windows will not allow the application's window to draw its contents. No window contents, Unity's stuck with the old contents from before you opened the full-screen app and won't let you switch to it.

In short, this is a Windows problem, not a Parallel problem. This is why you bought a Mac, after all -- because Windows has problems :).
 
Not a windows problem

Sorry to dredge up an old thread, but this isn't a windows issue. I just switched from VMware Fusion to Parallels. With Fusion, I had no problems at all using command+tab to switch between all of my open applications: windows or mac. The same application that currently have open in Parallels had absolutely no issue in Fusion. Now when I am in the application command+tab has no affect. This is a Parallels problem.
 
same problem here

it only started to happen a couple of months ago. until then parallels allowed switching very nicely. now the application i'm switching to in win xp vm stays invisible and I have to use alt + tab to move within windows from my application to another one and back.
 
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