I need to keep macOS Monterey around for a little while so I've been trying to virtualise it. On an intel Mac with Parallels Desktop all works well, but I'm looking for a solution for when intel Mac's no longer work. With Apple Silicon I can let Parallels download a macOS 12.6 restore image and install from that and so far so good, but I can't get it to apply macOS updates. I have tried so far: • Installing macOS Monterey inside a VM from an ipsw with the latest macOS as a host which works, but then attempting to upgrade the guest to macOS 12.7 it fails and can leave the guest non bootable (black screen) • Installing macOS Monterey inside a VM on an Apple Silicon Mac running macOS Monterey 12.7 as a host by downloading from the Parallels Desktop application works fine, but then it will not apply software updates to the guest; macOS 12.7 will appear to go through the update process, power off, then starting it up brings it to the old version of macOS (12.6) and the software update is still listed as available for download. Is there a way to get a macOS VM on Apple Silicon to successfully update? ...particularly Monterey?
Did you manage to sort this problem out? I am experiencing exactly the same issue. I have incidentally just upgraded to Parallels 19 and went to update my windows 11 and Monterey VM's. The Windows updates when fine but the Monterey VM is currently on 12.6 and goes through the whole process (in the VM) of downloading the update and preparing it (takes about 30mins). It then does a restart and comes back at 12.6. I have repeated the process several times with the same result.
Unfortunately I haven't got this working. I think that we both need to open a support request with Parallels as this issue sees to be present on newer macOS releases also. Good luck with yours!
I opened a support request and went through a number of tests and now it has been referred to their developer team and the ticket closed. The problem was identical on Parallels 18 and 19. I even created a brand new VM and it would only install a 12.6 version, not 12.7. With the update to 12.7.1 this week I tried again but got exactly the same results. Whilst Parallels is great on Intel, the Arm version seems to be hobbled and barely worth having.
