HOW-TO: Upgrade to 4 with Happy ending/What to avoid!

The following is my personal experience, I am just trying to help those who can't wait to upgrade, to a smoother upgrade. Please fill free to add your knowledge, I wish I had read this before I tried!

I had the kind of upgrade that test the nerves ("Continue manually" (read-Troubleshooting-ignore all restarting request from inside the VM, etc), then stuck in "Step 3 of 4" forever) and afterwards watching things run so slow you feel like pulling your hair and kicking yourself for not waiting longer to upgrade.

But amidst all this V4 behaved like a trooper after "Force Quit" several time, and every time I restarted it kept plugging away until finished the upgrading.

But this is what I recommend you do BEFORE starting:
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1- MAKE SURE YOU HAVE AN EXTERNAL BACKUP!!!!!!!!!
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2- THIS IS THE 2ND MOST IMPORTANT: make sure you have not upgraded lately to a new computer or hard drive, because this will bring the stupid: "... hardware has changed and XP needs activation", if you get caught in this the upgrade will stall (AND IT WILL SEEM LIKE YOU LOST EVERYTHING) ---> keep trying every time upgrade stops ---> use "Force Quit" and restart until finished (no damage caused) WHAT DO YOU HAVE TO LOSE, YOU HAVE THE BACKUP, DON'T YOU?

3- ALSO VERY IMPORTANT: Make sure you have your VM in "Autologon" (no password needed to log in)
(on Win XP, go to Start--->Run and type: "control userpasswords2" and uncheck something that says " Password needed to login" or something like it (top-left) and when asked for Name and password enter YOURS not "Administrator")
THIS WILL SAVE YOU FROM: " ... Continue Manually", the first stumbling block!
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WHEN UPGRADE IS COMPLETED:

Things may run slow and you may get "… not enough Virtual memory" and/or freezing of screen; things running SLOW, feel free to kill Parallels as needed and restart, and the first chance you have to open "Karsperky Internet Protection" (something like that) make sure you stop it from scanning, in my case I completely got rid of it and I am using AVG free antivirus (works great) and is never on the way-slowing my VM.

But to be honest I do not use the Internet or e-mail on XP so I am not so concerned with Internet protection.

Try to follow all the steps, then you will be glad you upgraded!

Cheers,
Emilio

PS: in case anybody is wondering I use Win XP for business not games (at all), mainly MS Access custom program to run my business (plenty of backups), I jump to upgrade, but I am careful to always have several backups!

 

I think this is a massive one. It seems like a massive one. I can see that PD4 is trying to drop you in to log in and then take over again, but it seems massively complicated (and isn't working the best right now). Wouldn't it be easier to instruct customers to login however and then just autorun the Parallels Tools installer?

 

Upgrade to 4?...read this.

Installing the update crashed. Lost version 3 in process. Multiple installs and uninstalls of version 4 and no joy. Hours spent today (from 11 AM to 6:05 PM EST and still not fixed). I'm on hold with tech support now BTW the number is 866 248 8906. Reaching tech support confronts user with another unexpected problem...the language barrier between you and the techs. I couldn't understand 50% of the instructions offered due to lack of ability to speak English clearly. An unbelievable experience for me personally as my business depends upon reliability and efficient resolution to such issues. At the rate this is going I'll be on hold waiting for their second level of support for another hour. Productivity arrested with upgrade. WAIT until Parallels gets the bugs out of this. So much regret that I was an early upgrader.

Hope this helps you avoid what I'm going through.

Scott

 

It gets worse!

Is is now 8 PM EST. Three calls have been dropped after wait time of 30 mins. for the 2nd tier support. THE ABSOLUTE WORST UPGRADE EXPERIENCE I have have had.

 

Sorry to hear it didn't work for you

Like I stress above:

BACKUP FIRST
BACKUP FIRST
BACKUP FIRST
BACKUP FIRST
BACKUP ALWAYS

And then try!

I know is not perfect yet, but I wanted a feature so bad, I couldn't wait.

 

i hate to say it but these are the same damn issues that happened last time things went to a new major release.

You would think these guys would learn a lesson or two..



I am stuck in the same exact problem, but I CAN NOT AUTOLOGIN DUE TO GPO. Seeing how I WAS STUPID ENOUGH to purchase this horrible product FOR ENTIRE TEAMS @my work i have a bit larger of a headache. The only saving grace i have is that this time i purchased one copy to test on. Guess who is getting the renewal contract?

(hint vmware)

 

Possible Step 4

I would add two steps.

First, record the MAC address of the network interface of each VM you plan to upgrade/convert.

Second, after upgrading a VM but before converting it, change the MAC address back to the value that PD3 used.

After working with the process for the past couple of days, I have found that PD4 is re-generating both the network interface definition inside the VM along with change the MAC address in the configuration. This may lead to either Windows activation requests or failed DHCP requests which may be tied to the MAC address of the VM.

By changing the MAC address before converting it, I was able to avoid a Windows re-activation for some of my VM's.

 

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Back up version 3

Can you tell me EXACTLY how to back up my "current" version 3 - I am not installing until I know I can get back to my version 3 w/o a hitch. And, but the way, would "Time Machine" work??? And, how would you do this with Time Machine - still new to this Mac thing

 

Good question. I let the installer back up my v3 version with disastrous results. I was having so much grief that I uninstalled v4 and tried to reactivate my backup of v3 - but I couldn't make the backup open!! Mercifully I managed to get v4 working (I think - I haven't made it do anything demanding yet).

 

Has anyone tried to use Time Machine as complete backup

Does anyone know if I have a complete Time Machine backup prior to installing version 4 - will that work as replacing everything????? I haven't used time machine yet to back up anything yet.

 

So what you're trying to say is... people should backup their data before making major updates?