How to disable Shared Applications?

F

Forrest Gump

Member
I have a couple of Windows guest VMs, and there seems to be some trouble with the ability to disable Shared Applications. I in no way want Mac OS applications to appear in my Windows VM, nor do I want Windows applications to appear in my host OS. But Parallels (4.0) doesn't seem to be allowing this to happen easily.

For the problem of Windows apps showing up in my host OS "Open With" menu, I found that I could delete any "Windows Applications" folder from my guest VMs, and the Windows items would then disappear from my list of possible apps in OS X. Good.

For the problem of OS X apps showing up in my guest OS "Open With" menu, I did find that I could delete the "Parallels Shared Applications" from the main user and the special Parallels user's start menu. However, that doesn't seem to have any effect on what appears in the "Open With..." context menu. I've rebooted, uninstalled, re-installed parallels tools in various combinations. The Mac apps are still in the "Open with..." menu. Not Good.

If I uninstall Parallels tools, the Mac apps disappear, so the software is keeping track of what things it changes. However, I can't seem to have the Shared Applications removed while Parallels Tools is installed. I have the VM Security set to High in Parallels, so trying to launch any of the Mac Apps from within Windows does nothing. But I'd like to have the VM be as clean as possible and not have those things there.

Previous versions of Parallels Tools allowed for a custom install, where the user could select which features to enable. But Parallels Tools from version 4.0 doesn't seem to have this option.

Does anybody know what I can do?
 
Did you upgrade your VM to PD4 from PD3?

I am having lots of problems disabling shared applications -- which keep coming back after disabling them everywhere I can. This is killing my Office 2007 <--> Sharepoint integration because Parallels keeps remapping the file associations to the Mac side or in such a way as to break Sharepoint open/save functionality.

I upgraded from a PD3 to PD4 VM 2 days ago and have had major slow downs and the above problem ever since. I will only fight it for another 30 mins before reverting to PD3.

I also had a lot of trouble getting Parallels tools to install correctly and show up in the system tray. I went through some instructions on another thread about slow performance to delete some old PD3 prl... files from the WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\DRIVERS directory, to no avail.

I am now trying to uninstall parallels tools from VM (using Add/Remove programs), rebooting and re-installing. Very s l o w and painful process...
 
For mac OS and Windows applications:
in VM window click Configure - Shared Applications and uncheck coresponding items

For Windows Applications on Mac OS side, right click on virtual machine -select show package contents - and delete Windows applications folder(s)
 
Fixed

OK, here's what I did to get PD4, office 2007 and Sharepoint all running pretty well. I had several issues all at the same time. Slow performance, incorrect application associations and networking issues.

I had an existing PD3 VM that was running well, except that PD3 always seemed to be using ~70% (out of 200% -- 2 CPU MacBook Pro). I decided to try out PD4 since users and Parallels claimed to improve CPU and battery life.

So, I downloaded and installed PD4, and opened the old VM, which PD converted to PD4. After serveral re-boots and a re-activation of Windows later, the VM was running again with Parallels Tools and Parallels Internet Security installed. It was S L O W. Very slow. I tried a few adjustments to the number of CPUs and memory to no avail. I then came across the posting on this forum dealing with deleting the old PD3 drivers from the Windows\system32\drivers folder.

I followed these instructions, and re-installed Parallels tools. This seemed to improve things a little.

Next, I uninstalled Parallels Internet Security.

Then, I uninstalled Parallels Tools from the Add/Remove programs list.

After yet another reboot I re-installed Parallels tools from the PD4 Menus on the Mac side.

After another reboot I had much better performance, but still my application associations were wrong, which causes Office 2007 and Sharepoint to no longer function together. I had disabled Application sharing in both directions but Parallels Shared Applications were still visible on the PC side.

Then, I tried re-enabling Application Sharing in the VM confuguration and rebooted, again.

Then, I disabled it. This time it took.

Then I put my Office 2007 CD in and selected "repair" -- this re-established the Office 2007 file associations. Now, Office 2007, Sharepoint and my PD4 VM are all working very well.

I have only 1 CPU enabled in the VM and am running 768 MB RAM with automatic pre-allocation. The system is about as responsive as my PD3 VM, but now CPU usage drops down very low if there is no windows activity. Before, even if I was doing nothing in Windows my CPU usage on the Mac side was at least 70%.

Hope this helps some folks out there.
 
Be advised that to disable Shared Applications completely you need to right-click on the .pvm file and empty the 'Windows Applications' folder after unchecking the relevant checkboxes in the Configuration Editor. Then you will see these applications in 'Open with...' no longer.
 
Same problem here

I've tried all the suggestions in this thread and still cannot disable shared applications.

I'm running the following:

Parallels 4.0
Windows XP SP3
MS Office 2007

No matter what I try, any .ppt file gets associated with my mac version of Powerpoint. When I try to manually change the association or open with the windows version, it won't allow it.

I know the app works fine. Can open windows ppt, do file open and load the file. Even if I create a new file with Windows powerpoint, save it to a non-shared folder in windows, it gets associated with the Mac app.

I have reinstalled the tools, done the repair operation from ms office cd, turned the shared apps on and off several times, and emptied out the Windows Applications folder from the .pvm file. Nothing has worked.

Please help. I have to use the Windows version of ppt for presentations at work.

Thanks in advance for any help.
 
Ty enabling shared applications (in both directions), reboot Windows, shut down Windows, edit the VM (with it off) to disable shared applications and start up again.
 
I also uninstalled and reinstalled MS Office for Windows. Still no luck.

Is there anyone from the Parallels team on this board? Is this a bug?
 
Fixed

Thanks to Gizzer from another thread re: file associations.

Here is the fix.

Start Menu
Run
Regedit

Search for .ppt, pptx

Change each as follows:

.pptx from 'pptx_auto_file' to 'PowerPoint.Show.12'
.ppt from 'ppt_auto_file' to 'PowerPoint.Show.12'

Reboot

Files now open properly

Thanks
 
Postscript to my my story:

After figuring out how to fix the file association problem (see previous post), I experienced a major problem with Outlook / Exchange and my VPN. So I decided to start over and reinstall ALL of the MS software. I went back to a copy of the .pvm file prior to the installation. Before reinstalling the software, I set the "Share Mac OS X Applications with Windows" off. Enable Smartselect was left turned on. I was also experience problems with performance of my shared folders, so based on a recommendation from another post, I made sure that I had the appropriate entries in the hosts file (127.0.0.1 .psf). Then I reinstalled MS Office. After the installation, I was now able to successfully set the file associations to their respective programs (they were not automatically set). Finally, to solve my VPN/Exchange problem, I switched the network setting to Bridged. This worked and also seemed to speed up access to my shared folders.

Now all is well and I have a fresh backup of this configuration to go back to in case I mess something else up.

Spending all this time with Windows makes me appreciate OS X more. Fortunately, I only need to deal with Windows for a few work related things.

Thanks to this forum. I would never had been able to figure this stuff out without your postings.
 
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