installing xp in multi user mac

[murali]

Hi,

I have two user accounts on my mac. One of them is administrator and the other is standard account. I use standard account mostly. I am planning to install xp via parallels. I understand that when I install xp via parallels, the hard disk image is stored in the user/library folder. Does this mean that if xp is installed in the administrator account, I will be unable to access it from the standard account? Is it possible to access XP from both accounts?

Thanks.
Murali

 

[joem]

Your VM is installed wherever you want it. It defaults to the user library, but you can put it in a shared folder if you like. You can also install Parallels from an admin account, then run it from another account, create and install a VM. If you have a good understanding of permissions, you can install the VM anywhere.

 

[murali]

Hi Joem,

I am comfortable with changing file & folder permissions via "get info" window. Other than hard disk image & configuration file which other files have to be modified (i.e whose permissions have to be changed)?

Also, if I want to get rid of xp that I installed on my machine, what is the procedure? Uninstall parallels and then delete the xp and parallels related files?

Thanks for your response.

Murali

 

[orbison]

I am really underwhelmed by the lack of documentation for this product -- what documentation there is is unclear... but stuff like this (multi-user account macs) is not even mentioned anywhere. You can barely find it on these boards -- when you do, you read to the bottom to find out that the question was only half answered.

 

[rinconj]

I don't work for Parallels, but I don't think there is a need for this. You can safely remove VMs by simply deleting them. This is a fundamental difference between windows and OS X.

There is no system registration that the applications have many hidden files or hidden fields in system files somewhere. You can remove any applications and their corresponding preferences files in ~/Library and/or /Library.
With traditional UNIX applications like emacs, there are configuration and history files in ~/.emacs.

I am really underwhelmed by the lack of documentation for this product -- what documentation there is is unclear... but stuff like this (multi-user account macs) is not even mentioned anywhere. You can barely find it on these boards -- when you do, you read to the bottom to find out that the question was only half answered.

 

[joem]

Also, if I want to get rid of xp that I installed on my machine, what is the procedure? Uninstall parallels and then delete the xp and parallels related files?

Think of Parallels as an application and the VM as a document. You can delete the VM from the Parallels menu, or from the Finder. In the Finder, just find the directory with the .hdd file in it (assuming you accept the defaults, it will be ~/library/parallels/vm-name) and delete it. You can then proceed to create and run other VMs.

If you have installed the .hdd file(s) in a user selected directory, you might have to delete the .hdd file(s) and the VM configuration file (.pvs) separately.

If you really don't want to use Parallels any more, you can run the uninstall that comes with it. The uninstall will leave a preference file behind so that if you reinstall Parallels, you won't have to reenter your license key, but it will remove the app and the kernel extensions so they won't load at startup.

If you do uninstall it, reboot OSX and empty the trash to complete the uninstall (standard procedure for uninstalling Mac applications).