Safe/Good way to uninstall?

S

s.cresswell

Junior Member
Is there a recommended uninstall process?

I've heard rumours that Parallels may have "changed" Mac OS, so was expecting an unistall function, or at least it to be mentioned in the (128 pg!) user guide....
 
Script to remove. From discussions on apple

Will this work? I'm trying it anyway to see

> As best I can tell this shell script SHOULD uninstall
> most or all of the components, including your
> installed VMs. I'm still doiung a little research on
> some artifacts.
>
>
> #!/bin/sh
> sudo /Library/StartupItems/Parallels/Parallels stop
> sudo rm -rf /Library/Parallels
> sudo rm -rf /Library/Receipts/Parallels.pkg
> sudo rm -rf /Applications/Parallels.app
> sudo rm -rf /Library/StartupItems/Parallels
> sudo rm -rf
> ~/Library/Preferences/com.parallels.Parallels.plist
> sudo rm -rf ~/Library/Parallels
> sudo rm -rf ~/.parallels_settings
 
I manually uninstalled those files, and my mbp isn't being a stinker about getting on my wifi network anymore. Between that and the sleep=reboot issue, I'll keep my eye on this product, but it's not for me yet.
 
Parallels Workstation Kernel Extensions

Here's a dump of kextstat:

92 0 0x500a3000 0x10000 0xf000 com.parallels.kext.hypervisor (2.1) <11 6 4 2>
93 0 0x500b7000 0x7000 0x6000 com.parallels.kext.vmmain (2.1) <11 6 4 2>
94 0 0x500c2000 0x4000 0x3000 com.parallels.kext.Pvsnet (2.1) <5 4 3 2>

Apparently, these are kernel extensions loaded from somewhere. It may come from /Applications/Parallels/.app/Drivers/hypervisor.kext but I'm not sure.
 
Parallels does not "alter" the kernel. It uses kernel extensions. This is supported functionality in Mac OS X/Darwin, and once you uninstall Parallels, there is no need to "reinstall" anything.
 
s.cresswell said:
Parallel alters the kernel, so I'll probably end up re-install Mac OS
unless another solution is available?
Click to expand...

Yes, and those can all be unloaded by issuing:

sudo /Library/StartupItems/Parallels/Parallels stop
 
s.cresswell said:
Will this work? I'm trying it anyway to see

> As best I can tell this shell script SHOULD uninstall
> most or all of the components, including your
> installed VMs. I'm still doiung a little research on
> some artifacts.
>
>
> #!/bin/sh
> sudo /Library/StartupItems/Parallels/Parallels stop
> sudo rm -rf /Library/Parallels
> sudo rm -rf /Library/Receipts/Parallels.pkg
> sudo rm -rf /Applications/Parallels.app
> sudo rm -rf /Library/StartupItems/Parallels
> sudo rm -rf
> ~/Library/Preferences/com.parallels.Parallels.plist
> sudo rm -rf ~/Library/Parallels
> sudo rm -rf ~/.parallels_settings
Click to expand...

Yes, that's a script that I posted elsewhere. There should be no artifacts (unless you changed the default location of the VM directory manually). That is literally everything Parallels could have installed or created.
 
Thanks for all your help Dave.
Just wondering, in your opinion should Parallels supply an uninstall tool?
I think that it should a) because it's a beta and b) because its using Kernel extensions
Your thoughts?
 
I do think Parallels should supply an uninstall tool, and really all it has to be is something as simple as my shell script with some sanity/safety checks...
 
Installing a kernel extension is an Apple supported method of adding device support or kernel-level functionality. Other things like mouse drivers, etc. also install kernel extensions. Parallels does it in a very clean way by loading them at startup using kextload rather than placing them in /System/Library/Extensions.
 
The kexts are in the Parallels.app "application folder". Here's a listing:
levis-computer-2:/Applications/Parallels.app levi$ ls -la *
Contents:
total 16
drwxr-xr-x 6 root wheel 204 Apr 8 11:40 .
drwxr-xr-x 4 root wheel 136 Apr 8 11:40 ..
-rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 859 Apr 8 11:40 Info.plist
drwxr-xr-x 3 root wheel 102 Apr 8 11:40 MacOS
-rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 9 Apr 8 11:36 PkgInfo
drwxr-xr-x 3 root wheel 102 Apr 8 11:36 Resources

Drivers:
total 472
drwxr-xr-x 7 root wheel 238 Apr 8 11:40 .
drwxr-xr-x 4 root wheel 136 Apr 8 11:40 ..
drwxr-xr-x 3 root wheel 102 Apr 8 11:40 Pvsnet.kext
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 15124 Apr 8 11:40 drvexport
drwxr-xr-x 3 root wheel 102 Apr 8 11:40 hypervisor.kext
-r-xr-xr-x 1 root wheel 223720 Apr 8 11:40 nm
drwxr-xr-x 3 root wheel 102 Apr 8 11:40 vmmain.kext

What does this mean you ask? If you drag the parallels application from your Applications folder to the trash and reboot everything is gone. This is the Mac way! The only thing left is a hidden file in your home directory and it only holds last used VMs and window positions - .parallels_settings

SO Essentially not having an uninstaller is a NON-ISSUE.

-Levi
 
Actually, there's a lot more left from Parallels than just that:

/Library/Parallels
/Library/Receipts/Parallels.pkg
/Applications/Parallels.app
/Library/StartupItems/Parallels
~/Library/Preferences/com.parallels.Parallels.plist
~/Library/Parallels
~/.parallels_settings

Whether these are operational items or not is moot. Further, ~/Library/Parallels is home to the VMs, and could have some files that are quite large that you probably wouldn't want to keep if your goal is *removing Parallels* from your system.

Also, putting the kexts inside of the application package and then hardcoding paths to them breaks Parallels when it's moved anywhere other than /Applications. That's not the Mac way.

So, in summary, there's a lot more items than just Parallels.app and a dotfile in your home directory. Of course, these items were already explicitly named twice in this very thread.
 
New unwanted Network Port in OSX

Parallels also adds new Network Port - Ethernet Adaptor (vi2). It is still there after using all scripts from this forum... Cannot be deleted manually form Preferences. Does anybody know how do get rid of it?
 
Uninstall script?

Apologies for my lack of understanding, but I am having a lot of problems with Beta 4 and need to do a complete uninstall.

I see this script listed (thanks), but honestly do not know how to run a script - can anyone give me a quick hint or two (either in the forum or through direct email)?

Thanks in advance for any help.
 
To be completely honest with you - I think it's entirely unprofessional of Parallels to not include an uninstaller from Beta Release 1. I think this is unacceptable that you make users try to delete everything themselves. My opinion of this product and this company has dropped because of this. I understand it's a BETA, but you need to give people a successful option to uninstall, and not have to rely on a script.

This is just wrong, IMHO.

Off my soapbox now...
 
Yeah but most Mac apps don't include an uninstaller. Take Firefox. Does it have an uninstaller? I'd say 90% of my apps are removed by dragging to trash. And even then there are probably a file or two that would needed to be deleted if i wanted to have a "complete" uninstall.
 
Agreed, but any *major* app needs to have an uninstaller, to cleanly remove all traces of it (especially when the app affects the way the OS runs).

Maybe it's just me, but I stand by my opinion - any app that controls this much of the computer needs to have an uninstaller, otherwise I won't support it - it's too easy for them to write the uninstaller app - it makes one think that maybe it wasn't written/included in order to force people to be more than simple Beta testers...?
 
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