Multiple monitors in Parallels 8

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ErikOlo

Bit poster
The performance on secondary displays is abysmal in Parallels 8. Dragging a window is fast on the main display, but as soon as you get to a secondary monitor the performance goes down to about 10-20 FPS (depending on hardware).

On my Retina MBP it is slowest at 10 FPS. On my Mac Pro I would estimate to about 20 FPS.

Also when you drag a window between monitors the mouse pointer snaps to the wrong location. When you release the mouse button the Window snaps back to the original monitor.

This is on 10.8 with Windows 8.

There is also a problem with mixing retina and non-retina displays where the position of the displays become incorrect, and obviously you cannot get Windows to display correctly as you can only set one DPI for all displays on Windows. This should be fixed by parallels adding an option to double the resolution on non-retina displays and scale it back to the original resolution. So a 2560x1440 display would be rendered at 5120x2880 and scaled down again to 2560x1440.
 
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I've just noticed that if you have more than one VM up, Parallels 8 confuses a VM's state of being in a full-screen mode as applying to all running VMs and the menu options easily become inconsistent and incorrect. (It should be per instance state, not global state.) Urgh, so untested!
 
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Can't use RDC in more than one monitor

I believe related to this issue with Windows snapping back to the main monitor, when using RDC and setting the option to use all monitors in RDC, I still only get the use of the main window. Very frustrating and defeats the purpose of using Parallels on my laptop. I was using RDC for Mac, but it does not support dual monitors... so upgraded and got a copy of Win 7 just to do this.
 
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Regarding moving windows between multiple monitors, the only way I got it to work was to move the window to the other display and then up to the top to maximize the window. Then you can move the window down and it will resize on the desired display.

I also noticed that you can't get to the Parallels Menu Bar if you are using multiple displays.
 
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Workaround

I too have the same issue. Doesn't matter the originating window, when I drop an application window on my desktop on the other monitor, the app snaps back to the original screen.

However, if you first position the window so it appears on BOTH screens, you can then pull it into the other screen.

as long as the drag and drop originate AND finish on the same monitor, it will work.

Weird. But there you go.
 
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Hi All,

A hotfix has been released to address most Retina issues. If you are not automatically prompted to install the update, go to Parallels Desktop Menu - click Check for Updates... and install the fix.

This release was made available September 6, 2012.

Chris
 
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Trial version can't download updates

Hi - had this exact same issue. Running Parallels in Trial mode (thinking of switching from Fusion). It seems I can't download the hotfix/any updates when in Trial mode? Honestly I was pretty close to purchasing a license but the multi-monitor issue kind of killed it for me. Any chance to get a link to the Hotfix?
 
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