I've tried both Win95 and Win98 and can't get Parallels (last try 3188) to work seamlessly yet. In 95 Parallel Tools won't start because it's missing a symbol (dynamically linked against a symbol that doesn't exit in 95 but does in later Windows versions) which I reported during the betas. In 98 I do get Parallel Tools to start but no matter how many times I tell it to load the video driver it says the video driver status is Unknown (which means no seamless mouse transitions in/out of Parallels). Anyone have some suggestions on how to get it to work? P.S. Anyone notice that coherence stability is reduced (Parallels and Mac OS X crashes) when you have lots of Windows apps running (3+).
I don't think Parallels has come around to providing automatic mouse cursor transitions in Win9x. That's why I stuck around with either Win2k or WinXP for my VM.
The "seamless mouse transitions" are part of Coherence. Coherence requires at least Windows 2000 or higher to function. Installing the video driver under Windows 98 will cause the VM to freeze at shutdown/restart. The video driver installs automatically when you install Parallels Tools, unless you specifically tell it not to. You can tell that the video driver is successfully installed because you will no longer be stuck at a resolution of 640x480x16; the Parallels video driver emulates an SVGA adapter To install Parallels Tools: 1. From Apple's menu bar, navigate to Devices | CD/DVD-ROM | Connect Image... 2. Navigate to /Library/Parallels/Tools, select vmtools.iso and click Open 3. The tools should install automatically and place sound and video drivers that you can manually install at C:\Program Files\Parallels\Parallels Tools 4.0 If you need/want to manually install the video driver: 4.1 Right click on the Windows 98 Desktop; select Properties; select the Settings tab; click the Advanced... button; select the Adapter tab; then click the Change... button. 4.2 At the Update Device Driver Wizard, click Next >; select Display a list of all the drivers... then click Next >; click Have Disk...; navigate to C:\Program Files\Parallels\Parallels Tools\Video and select PrlVideo.inf; then click OK, OK, OK, and Next >.
Thanks for the info -- quick bit of added information: In Win95 Parallels does not install the video driver by default (says it can't). In Win95, the Parallels Desktop Center fails to start with a missing symbol error. I'm using Win95/Win98 to play some old games that don't run on anything later than Win98. I'd prefer to use Win95 for this purpose if it works because it has a smaller disk footprint than Win98. I do use WinXP for all my regular Windows application uses.
If it's activation you want to avoid, there's always Windows 2000. At least you'll get all the nice video doohickies Parallels provides. Unless you want to do very specific things in the VM with minimum footprint, using Win9x won't be ideal.
