Recently bought Parallels - so far useless

F

F-Prot

Bit poster
Our company bought Parallels for OSX. Running on MBP DC with 3GB Mem. We were unable to mount *any* external USB HDD inside the XP System. We always get the infamous "please wait 5 or 10 sec". We tried this with 25 DIFFERENT external USB Disk's - none worked. Since we have to access a lot of files accessing this files "on need" via shared folder is no option. Please advise what to do, otherwise we are afraid that we simply have to return the licenses. I contacted already support - so far no reply so i'm hoping that we get some help here.

Mike
 
USB support was really only added in the recent set of Betas... Anything USB 2.0 didn't work. But even now with the recent Betas some USB devices are not working. However I've had no problems with USB thumb drives on the recent betas.

What version are you running? I'm on build 3120 (which is a beta and has warnings as such) and it allows USB 2.0 drives just fine so far.

Mark
 
Well since we are developers ourself we are used to use the latest stable version.
I wouldn't mind to try the beta but i would have a few questions to that.

Does this beta have any limitations? (Such as runs only 3 months as preview)
Can i use our license code with this version?
Is there anything that is different (except from features and fixes) that is different from the current release? I mean in particular something like a messagebox or a watermark that it's beta.

Thanks for response so far m8!
 
Build 3120 is RC1 status

The current beta build 3120 is at Release Candidate 1 status. Information on it is here:
http://forums.parallels.com/thread7585.html
Click on the link in the first posting to get to the download page.
Your current license will work without issue with the beta build.
There are no "limitations" with the beta -- its a full working copy without time limits.
There is a know memory leak that has already been identified and will be fixed in the next build. The work around is to go into the Parallels Desktop preferences, Appearance tab, and select "Show Live Screen Shot in Dock".
I'm sure you'll be much happier with the current build than the first release.
 
F-Prot said:
Well since we are developers ourself we are used to use the latest stable version.
I wouldn't mind to try the beta but i would have a few questions to that.

Does this beta have any limitations? (Such as runs only 3 months as preview)
Can i use our license code with this version?
Is there anything that is different (except from features and fixes) that is different from the current release? I mean in particular something like a messagebox or a watermark that it's beta.

Thanks for response so far m8!
Click to expand...

The first thing and since you are a developer this should ring true is that a beta is a beta. There has been discussion as to whether a Parallels beta is really a beta or more like an alpha. For me personally the "betas" have worked very very well however I stick with a pretty limited use of Parallels. I run Outlook, Excel, Delphi, and a few other apps. No games, no wierd BootCamp partitiions etc.

That being said I have seen no limitations with the Betas at all. They have only added abilitiy or m especially the coherence which makes Windows look like its running on Mac OS X directly almost.

The license code issue is difficult. Mine has worked just fine. When I downloaded the beta and ran the install it recognized that my 1970 version was there and said it was going to do an update. It has never asked for a new code. I have read on this forum that people have had troubles with this. I would pick one machine with a working copy of Parallels and try the beta install. I'll bet it will work.

I pretty much do that anyway. I have a MacMini and I always try all new Parallels installs there before trying them on my MBP which must work.

The beta does not come up and say hey I'm a beta and as I said above mine shows up as fully registered under my name. Again I would try installing on one known machine, follow the directions carefully and see how it goes. For me and many othes it works beautifully.

M
 
Personally I have found the beta is reasonably stable and the pros outweigh the cons. USB is not an issue for me but I would assume that you should at least try it. I have it running in a lab of a dozen student computers. I have backups of the disk images so if it proved problematic I would go back to the old stable version. Now in our setting students are not saving to the disk image so if it imploded that would not be an issue -- not that this seems to be happening. If I was a developer I would probably use it but would make sure I back up my disk image frequently. Also the build is at RC stage so in my books it is pretty stable for a beta. Why not give it a try (again with your disk image backed up frequently!)

You can use your licence with it and it is not a crippled version in any way. I believe that when it goes golden the RC version will update itself when you (or it) checks for updates.

By the way, I know it can be frustrating that tech support are hard to get responses from, I am sure it is because they are working like crazy on this product. It has really come far and if someone asked me a year and a half ago that I would have virtualization on the mac that was this good I would have said they were crazy!

I have a stupid question to ask about your USB issues. Don't be offended by it, but some of my users did not realize that the USB does not automount. Once insterting the USB drive you have clicked on it from the popup list of USB devices to mount it, right?


good luck...
don
 
Ok guys, thanks very much i will try then the beta. But one more question regarding this memory leak... So i have to have "Show Live Screen Shot in Dock" enabled to avoid it?
 
dsmccrac said:
I have a stupid question to ask about your USB issues. Don't be offended by it, but some of my users did not realize that the USB does not automount. Once insterting the USB drive you have clicked on it from the popup list of USB devices to mount it, right?


good luck...
don
Click to expand...

yes of course i did that. i noticed there also that not every disk was even recognized. 7 or 8 disk were not listed that they can be activated. The most success i had with small external hdd's. they were at least listed - but as i said already i was unable to mount them. Tried everything. Waiting until no disk access from osx anymore - tried to mount - 5 - 10 sec message... then unmounted from osx - tried again and again, nothing. As i said i tried it with around 25 completely different drives... From 30 GB upto 200GB, all 2.5" external HDD's.
 
F-Prot said:
yes of course i did that. i noticed there also that not every disk was even recognized. 7 or 8 disk were not listed that they can be activated. The most success i had with small external hdd's. they were at least listed - but as i said already i was unable to mount them. Tried everything. Waiting until no disk access from osx anymore - tried to mount - 5 - 10 sec message... then unmounted from osx - tried again and again, nothing. As i said i tried it with around 25 completely different drives... From 30 GB upto 200GB, all 2.5" external HDD's.
Click to expand...

Early versions of Parallels had a limit of two connected USB devices. This is gone in the current release candidate. Just another data point.
 
Am I the only one here who DOESN'T use any USB devices with Parallels? USB support has never been an issue for me, since there are no USB devices I want to use with it. I just want to run a few windows applications and connect to the office VPN and Parallels works beautifully for me.
 
F-Prot said:
yes of course i did that. i noticed there also that not every disk was even recognized. 7 or 8 disk were not listed that they can be activated. The most success i had with small external hdd's. they were at least listed - but as i said already i was unable to mount them. Tried everything. Waiting until no disk access from osx anymore - tried to mount - 5 - 10 sec message... then unmounted from osx - tried again and again, nothing. As i said i tried it with around 25 completely different drives... From 30 GB upto 200GB, all 2.5" external HDD's.
Click to expand...

Just curious - have you tried the VMWare Fusion beta yet? I'd be curious to see what might happen as any shared failure the products have could suggest an inherent limitation of the hypervisor technology. In other words, there may be some problems we're stuck with.
 
F-Prot said:
yes of course i did that. i noticed there also that not every disk was even recognized. 7 or 8 disk were not listed that they can be activated. The most success i had with small external hdd's. they were at least listed - but as i said already i was unable to mount them. Tried everything. Waiting until no disk access from osx anymore - tried to mount - 5 - 10 sec message... then unmounted from osx - tried again and again, nothing. As i said i tried it with around 25 completely different drives... From 30 GB upto 200GB, all 2.5" external HDD's.
Click to expand...


Have you tried using a "hub" to extend one of the "onboard" USB ports? I'm not where I have access to that kind of equipment just now so can't perform the experiment but I'm wondering whether that would work or not.

It may just be a limitation of the current implementation of hypervisor.
 
F-Prot said:
Ok guys, thanks very much i will try then the beta. But one more question regarding this memory leak... So i have to have "Show Live Screen Shot in Dock" enabled to avoid it?
Click to expand...

Yes.........
 
I downloaded 3120 on my intel MAC, and now my firelite USB when hooked up will not show on windows and i can't access, though parallels program sees it and lists it. With 1970 build it did show up on windows though it would not run at USB2.0 speed.

Any suggestions?
Randstar
 
randstar said:
I downloaded 3120 on my intel MAC, and now my firelite USB when hooked up will not show on windows and i can't access, though parallels program sees it and lists it. With 1970 build it did show up on windows though it would not run at USB2.0 speed.

Any suggestions?
Randstar
Click to expand...

Reinstall 1970.
 
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