Networking Woes continue ...

Thread was moved from "General Discussions > User Solutions and Workarounds" to "Parallels Desktop for Mac > Windows Guest OS Discussion".
Stacey M

Hi,

The setup here is a MacBook Pro 2.16 Ghz, 2 Gig Ram. OS X 10.4.6. Have Parallels beta 4 and a VM with WinXP as the GuestOS.

If I connect to an open wireless network that does not require WPA Authentication, the VM with WinXp is able to get an IP address via DHCP and also gets the DNS server address and everything works fine.

The fun begins when I try to connect to a wireless network that has a WPA password but does not require a MAC address to be registered It's in a restaurant where customers enter in the WPA password off a signboard. In that setup, MacOS has networking normally working but the VM is unable to get an ip address via DHCP. It doesn't get a DNS server address either.

What's weirder is that if I enter a static IP address and the address of the DNC server, I still have the same problem - no networking. In fact I am unable to even ping back the MacOS host under which the VM is running.

This is driving me bonkers. Some of you experts, please help! I need to get this working for work and really don't want to use a PC

Thanks in advance!

 

The problem probably lies in the fact that the configuration of the VM makes a wireless device look like a wired device. Since the connection is "bridged" the guest and host look like two computers. Except the guest is using a wireless device that it thinks is wired. As such, it has no way to configure any of the information required to access a wireless network (such as WPA password).

Since this is beta software you can't expect this to work right away... but I doubt parallels will ship their VM for Mac OS X without getting wireless to work under the guest os with protected wireless networks.

 

"Since this is beta software you can't expect this to work right away ..."

So I guess the question really is when can one expect "this" to work? Specially since the Parallels folks are selling the MacOS product as a pre-release. Wonder how far Beta 5 is from the GA release. Without networking (and I suspect that most company networks are not open) the product is of very limited use.

In searching the web to research this problem, I've found posts in other forums where many other people are having the same problem. The lack of response from anyone on the Parallels team here on this forum is a bit concerning. Lacking such a response, one wonders if this fix is going to make it into the GA release. The Parallels team has been putting in features at a fast clip, so I suspect it will be there, the question really is when.

 

Yes. I would expect it to work by now too. Five betas does seem like a lot, but I've worked at companies were we would have as many as 10 betas cycles before releasing (long betas cycles were usually a bad thing though).

Using the AirPort on a secured wireless network didn't seem to be a problem when I was testing with the qemu virtual machine. One possible solution would be to use host only network and proxy everything through that internal network. However, I'm not certain that host only networking is functional yet since I haven't been able to get it working.

 

No relief in Beta6

Beta6 does not solve the problem either ...

Bit concerned that no one on the parallels team is either acknowledging this problem or commenting on it.

Hopefully this will be fixed before/at GA. Otherwise my prebuy is unfortunately money down the drain.

 

ChessFan,

We will investigate your problem, thanks for reporting!

 

Thanks! Hoping for a fix soon ...

Thanks Andrew!

 

ChessFan,

When you configured your VM with static IP address did you set up the correct gateway?
If you did, are you absolutely sure the router allows static addresses (the ones it didn't assigned via DHCP)?

One reason for such DHCP server behavior is that VM is sending packets using AirPort hardware address. This is not a limitation of Parallels Workstation but rather a security feature of 802.11.

The solution in your case would be to use Internet Sharing to share your AirPort connection to Parallels Host-Guest Adapter (which is name "Ethernet Adapter (en2)" in Sharing properties).
There's an issue in beta6 (which will be fixed in next public version) that may prevent Internet Sharing to work properly. To avoid Internet Sharing problems stop Parallels dhcp server before turning sharing on by issuing: "sudo killall prl_dhcpd".

 

The answer to both question is yes. I had configured the correct gateway manually when I assigned a fixed static IP address and yes, the router allows static IP addresses. In my network setup I have a mix of wired and wireless.

I think the primary problem still remains - in Beta 6, networking with XP as Guest OS works on non-secured networks. It does not work on secured networks. Another interesting bit of info is that the gateway sees the Guest OS in the VM and does in fact log that as a connected host in it's tables, complete with an IP address that the gateway/router assigned to the Guest OS via DHCP. The Guest OS for some reason is not able to see that.

Just to prevent confusion, let me restate - Networking using DHCP works fine in a non-secured wireless network environment. It doesn't in a secured wireless network.

Hoping you guys are able to resolve the problem soon. Parallels rocks otherwise!

Thanks for your efforts.

 

Works for me

Well, it works just fine with my WPA PSK network, and in another WPA PSK network I visit. Both Internet and local network access and large file transfer work fine using Win2k guest. It isn't Parallels unless it's something XP specific.

Now if USB pass through worked, I'd really be happy <Grin>

 

Don't know a lot about networking, it's something I set up a long time ago and I very rarely tinker with. My home network is password protected and XP on my MPB works OK, but I never used my password (think the OSX side took care of that)

I don't know if this will be of any help, but here's a bit of strange behavior for you. My ISP address is dynamic and now and again I used to lose access to the internet and email, although I could still log onto other computers over the internet and my idisk works as does skype. I solved this issue a long time ago by specifying a DNS server and search domain in my TCP/IP net pref pane.

My new MBP only arrived Wednesday, loaded up parallels and XP and a whole bunch of stuff and everything was just fine until I lost the internet and email in OSX, I opened up my net prefs and specified a DNS server and search domain as I have done on all my other macs and instantly gained my email and internet back.

However I shortly discovered that I no longer had internet or email on XP although I did have skype working. It was not until I returned to my OSX prefs and deleted the specifications that the internet and email were available on XP.

I can live with this for now, I am not really sure where the fault lies, but it will be rather awkward when my provider throws an ISP address at me that OSX doesn't like, because the solution will disable XP. Not really sure whether it will ever be solved, but I just wondered if the DNS server and search domain were specified in your set up and whether my experience helped you in any way.

 

This appears to work for me. I have a mixed network of both wired and wireless devices (4 linksys 54g's and wireless repeaters) The machine i am sending this on is accessing this secured network via the airport connection. it took a bit of fiddling within the vm configuration screen as well as the installation of parallel tools (i have no idea why). I am pretty sure I did not have to enter the WPA encription key's or the ssid within the virtual machine. I did have to enter them on the mac osx side.

 

Networking is Parallels 'Achillie's Heel'

It is a serious short-coming and prevent my commitment to purchase and I really want to buy this product.

I use a WPA-protected wireless network in my home and bridged network from either SUSE 10 or XP doesn't work--no DHCP, no DNS. While I can access the internet using host-only networking and connection sharing, that is merely necessary but insufficient. Let me explain why.

It is not sufficient because I am a contractor at a large software company and I need to run Windows and (Linux infrequently) front-ends to SAP, CRM, and other applications through a VPN--both on site and remotely. The VPN software has no Mac version so I cannot setup the VM in OS X and share the connection. I need bridged networking straight from XP and SUSE to have full secure networkign flexibility and it broke with Beta 6.

While I like to believe Parallels will fix it once more, it concerns me that they had such s serious regression between Beta 5 and Beta 6. What promsie can Parallels make that they won't break it in a service pack or update one day? I need this capability for a living so as much as I really like this product and hope it will allow me to use one laptop, right now it doesn't and would create a real pain in that I would have to migrate data back and forth to a Windows laptop each time they break networking. I never had such problems iwth VMware.

Come on Parallels, you have a huge market cheering you on. Don't fumble in the 'red zone'--get the ball in for that TD.

 

Have to agree with Daniello ...

I had logged my networking problems as a bug with parallels support a while back and did receive a reply that it was being "looked into". Haven't heard anything back and a gentle reminder reecently has also not elicited a response.

Networking still doesn't work for me. I've now reintalled Mac OS X, just to make sure that it wasn't some weirdness on my system. No luck.

Also this morning, I plugged in a HP laserjet printer into my USB port and OS X sees it. WinXP (guest OS) does not. This is very frustrtating, specially since I did the pre-buy a while ago and am a paying customer.

Sure, I understand that the software is currently not a released product. My concern is whether these bug/anomalies or whatever you want to call them will be fixed in the GA release. They sure aren't fixed in RC1.

 

WPA networking (in Win2k) works fine for me.

USB support is a known problem in this pre-release product,

 

"WPA works for me" as if that's it?

What's your config? Host-only or bridged? What version of Parallels VM? RC or Beta 6? etc., etc., etc.

Just saying "it works for me" doesn't tell most of us _anything_ about the topic or issue.
It is actually just equivalent to voicing an _opinion_ not a fact or anything otherwise helpful at all in a forum people visit to share insights and answer to problems.

 

Bridged networking, RC1, config in my sig. It's a data point that it is working for at least one installation, which I thought was a useful proof of concept. Networking was established with no difficulty in Beta6 as if the VM were a PC, and it continued working fine after upgrade to RC1. I did nothing special. I'm using the MBP built in airport -- WPA says it isn't wired. There's really nothing more to say except that I've seen reports here of airport not working when the OSX machine name and the VM machine name were the same, and mine are not.

What else would you like to know?

 

wpa works for me

I have only just joined this forum and this was the first thread I read. So I tested it.

I have a 2ghz intel imac,

I created a new network location so it had default settings.

the only thing I checked was to make sure my airport interface was above the en2 interface in my network port configurations.

I then connected my imac to my wifi network using wpa, I then startup up my virtual XP and it was online without any problems.

I have not tinkered with any of the network settings on the virtual machine It is all set at its factory defaults.

I am using parallels Desktop for Mac Build 1832 Release candidate (18 May 2006)