Parallels 10: Select boot device on startup

W

WillMo

Junior Member
Hi

I have a Mac OS X virtual machine with three hard drives, each with a different version of the operating system. The "Select boot devce on startup" option is checked on the Bott Order configuration screen.

With Parallels 9, I got a screen telling me to press Esc to choose s disk for booting, followed by a screen listing the hard drives with the names I have assigned to them.

With Parallels 10, I do not get the screen telling me to press Esc. If I am very fast after the screen saying "Parallels EFI x64 10.0.0-27675" appears I can get into the Boot Manager and select a disk there. However, the disks are listed as "EFI Hard Drive", "EFI Hard Drive 1" and "EFI Hard Drive 2" so I do not have any way to identify which version of the operating system is on each disk.

I can still get into each version of the operating system by allowing the system to start, using System Preferences to select a startup disk and then restarting the virtual machine. This is much less convenient than selecting at boot time.

Am I missing something here?

As I only have experience of this with a Mac OS X virtual machine, I'm posting this to the Mac FOrum. Perhaps the same thing happens with all virtual machine operating systems.

William
 
Hi Eugene,

I do not see any difference when pressing the Fn key, although perhaps I pressed it too soon (before I clicked on Start) or too late (after I clicked on Start). I'll try some more experiments later today.

When the virtual machine starts up it displays some text on top of the grey apple screen in white on black. The text is:

Code: 
 Loading kernel cache file 'System\Library\Caches\com.apple.kernelcaches\kernelcache.8D1313A9'
......................................................................................................
root device uuid is `1D6830ee-79D5-3B11-8650-ADC71791E4B3'

William
 
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WillMo said:
I have a Mac OS X virtual machine with three hard drives, each with a different version of the operating system. The "Select boot devce on startup" option is checked on the Bott Order configuration screen.
Click to expand...


Means this that there is one Virtual Hard Drive with 3 Partitions, each for a different version of the operating system?

If so, what is the benefit of this solution?

Why no 3 separate VMs? Parallels Desktop has a start window for the VM selection, you can also start a VM by simply clicking on the Icon of the VM in Finder, Parallels Desktop starts automatically then.
 
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No it is three separate hard disks in one virtual machine.

Yes, perhaps I could set up three separate virtual machines but that is not the point. This arrangement was more convenient for me to set up under Parallels 9 and now it does not work under Parallels 10. The "Select boot devce on startup" option has no effect.

I have not tried to add images to this forum before, but if it works here is an image of the Boot Order window for the virtual machine: OS_X_Boot_Order.png
and another of the Startup Disk from System Preferences inside the virtual machine OS_X_Startup_Disk.png.

William
 
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WillMo said:
No it is three separate hard disks in one virtual machine.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the explanation.

Maybe (and hopefully) it's only a Bug that the "Select boot device on startup" option has no effect and Parallels will fix it in the next release.

I remember last year when PD9 came out, the "Don't show this message again" checkbox of the 'Ctrl+Cmd+F' window didn't work first, but Parallels has fixed it in the next release.

Have you tried the current PD10 version ParallelsDesktop-10.0.1-27695.dmg?
 
PD_usr said:
Have you tried the current PD10 version ParallelsDesktop-10.0.1-27695.dmg?
Click to expand...

The version I have says "Version 10.0.0 (27675)" on the About Parallels Desktop window. When I click on "Check for updates..." it says there are no updates available. My internet access is a bit limited this week, but I'll see if I can get the newer version next week. I wonder why it doesn't see version 10.0.1.

William
 
No, it still doesn't work with "Version 10.0.1 (27695)". I will try "Report a Problem..." from the Help menu.
 
May I ask why don't you have 3 separate VMs instead of one VM with 3 separated disks? I just don't see any advantage, in terms of space usage it would be about the same, it would be easier to boot directly to the version of OS X you need (not because of this problem, but it would eliminate the extra step of choosing what partition to boot from), and finally you could even run two or the three at the same time (depending on your RAM). I mean, the fact that you are running a virtualizing environment allows much more flexibility, the only reason people multiboot is because there's no way, on a normal PC, to run two, or more, OSs at the same time.
 
Specimen said:
May I ask why don't you have 3 separate VMs instead of one VM with 3 separated disks?
Click to expand...

Isn't this the same question as PD_usr asked at #4? The same answer as I supplied at #5 is applicable.

What I really want to know is whether this is a fault in my setup (and how to fix that) or a fault in Parallels.

I'm not sure of "Report a problem..." is the correct approach. Perhaps I'll try "Request support" instead.
 
WillMo said:
Isn't this the same question as PD_usr asked at #4? The same answer as I supplied at #5 is applicable.

What I really want to know is whether this is a fault in my setup (and how to fix that) or a fault in Parallels.

I'm not sure of "Report a problem..." is the correct approach. Perhaps I'll try "Request support" instead.
Click to expand...

The only reason you gave is simply that that arrangement was more convenient to set up on P9 (?). Personally, I really don't see how it can be more convenient to set up that way, which means, that, for me, there's really no good reason to have it setup like this.

However, I think I enumerated the reasons why different VMs make more sense.

Am I missing the point here? Possibly, but it's my opinion that this problem is 'exotic', as it shouldn't be encountered if you are setting up multiple versions OS X on Parallells the most efficient and easy way possible, which would be, different VMs.

Anyway, good luck with solving that problem.
 
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Specimen said:
Am I missing the point here?
Click to expand...

Yes. I set this up and it fitted well with my workflow but it does not function as I expect in Parallels 10.

If it's something wrong with my set up, then I want to fix that.
If the functionality has been removed, then the release notes should say that.
If it's a fault in Parallels 10, then either Parallels should fix it or say that it does not work in this version of the software.

I suspect the first is the most likely cause of the problem.
 
WillMo, please check private messages folder.
I've sent you some instruction that might be helpful.

Regards.
 
Well I found a workaround to this. It seems that "Select boot device on startup" does not work on Parallels Desktop 10 with Mac OS X as the guest operating system.

As there has been so little interest in this thread, I expect very few people (perhaps only me) use a set up like this so I don't expect Parallels to put a lot of effort into fixing it.

I think they should at least say that it does not work but the download page https://www.parallels.com/eu/products/desktop/download/ does not include release notes for Desktop 10 (although it does for Desktop 9).
 
PD_usr said:
Maybe you could try from time to time the newest version (currently ParallelsDesktop-10.0.2-27712.dmg) to see if it has been fixed
Click to expand...

Sorry for the delay in replying. I've been away for a few days.

No, it's not fixed in Version 10.0.2 (27712).

William
 
WillMo, I can easily see myself wanting to do something very similar. Biggest difference is that I am wanting to use Parallels on the Mac to emulate a Windows machine. But the configuration that I would want would be identical to yours, and yes, being able to select the boot device at startup is certainly a fundamental capability!
Two questions:
  • With your configuration, when it was all working in PD 9, were the two hard drives that were NOT selected as the boot drive still visible within the running VM once it was booted up and running? E.g. could you read from and write to the two other drives?
  • If you happen to see this post, could you please provide the workaround that you said that you came up with?

Thanks
 
Hi Greg
Sorry I did not reply to your question. I pretty much gave up on this thread. The problem still exists in Parallels 11, but here are the answers to your questions.
  • Yes, the non-boot drives are available, bot for reading and writing.
  • The workaround is to set Hardware->Boot Order->Boot flags in the configuration to vm.bios.efi=0.
William
 
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