Rookie Questions

I am brand new to MacBook & Parallels Desktop, and I am having two big hangups...

1) Every time I go to shut down my virtual machine, parallels desktop goes dim and it says along the bottom of the window that "virtual machine is paused." Isn't the virtual machine supposed to be shut down properly after being used? What do I need to do to fix this? I have had the screen pop up a few times talking about how windows wasn't shut down properly too.

2) I can connect to the internet (wireless G router) from within MacBook, but even after following the instructions in the parallels user guide, I can't get connected. All of the virus software prompts keep popping up to try and get me to register the product, etc., but I don't know how else to get onto the internet.

Any pearls of wisdom would be greatly appreciated! Thanks!

 

1. How exactly do you shut down the virtual machine? In any case, going to Start -> Turn off the computer on the Windows side would shut down the virtual machine properly. In Parallels 4.0 there is a "shut down" button (also in Parallells menu -> Virtual machine -> Shutdown) which practically does the same.

2. As usual, the first suggestion would be to try switching to the bridged mode (virtual machine -> configure -> network adapter 1). You can also do the following:
- On the Windows side, go to Start -> Run.
- Type "cmd" (without brackets), press Enter
- In the windows console type "ipconfig /all" (without brackets again), press Enter and post here the output. You can try doing this in both modes, Shared and Bridged.