Upgraded to 4.0 - No Problems At All !

I was apprehensive about Convert and thought I might have to clean install XP - but after switching to Manual, following the very helpful help file, I installed and upgraded no problems whatsoever ! The only issue was the discovery of my Airport connection - which I had to manually identify.

And I must say - Wow !!! What a nice app 4.0 is ! Well done Parallels ! I have been with you since day 1 of release and will continue to use and recommend your product.

Excellent job !

There are a lot of people on here with issues - my advice - read the documentation and dont rush it ! I had a very smooth experience with my iMac.

 

Good advice, syntrak.

Oh, and back-up your computer and VM first. Really.

 

Lucky you! It's a shame none of the troubleshooting guides told us with problems how to get into Manual mode.

My XP image is very basic as I only use it for a VPN connection but I had issues even though I read the docs and didn't "rush it". I'm sure an update is in the works to resolve these issues, but considering the hours I've lost, I really wish I would have waited for 4.1!

Everyone -- please backup you VM's first.

 

The Troubleshooting Guide is very clear in my opinion. Thats what I followed in order to complete the upgrade.

Of course I backed up during the install...

I think most people are in such a hurry to have the latest and greatest that they forget to remember that they 'survived' this far with an earlier version, and that another hour or so, reading, understanding and preparing, isnt going to hurt !

No offence intended - consider what you are doing here - you are re-configuring an operating system and the way it behaves inside another operating system !! Its serious high technology !

And I think Parallels have done an excellent job making that possible.

 

I'm sorry but the sloppy QA effort they did on this commercial release of software is certainly NOT an "excellent job". If this were a beta or open source software I could be a bit more generous.

On the bright side, once I got beyond the "upgrade" bugs, the new PD4 does seem a bit snappier.

 

Personally I didnt have any show-stoppers during my migration to 4.0

 

Benign error dialogs?

When I upgraded a VM I first got the manual step (I logged in and answered no / cancel on all dialogs). After some processing I got an error dialog that the conversion failed. I had a window with an empty XP machine, I again cancelled all dialogs and then the conversion resumed. I got two more similar error dialogs with the same outcome. In the end I have (an apparent) working VM. On the positive side it seems to be quicker than version 3 (the main interest for me in upgrading).

Compared with other upgrades (I've been using Parallels from first betas) this one was the most worrisome. That is, I've made the mistake in the past to upgrade paused VMs but remembered to stop all VMs this time around.

 

Its definitely much quicker booting XP !

I had to use Bridged Connection in order for the shared Airport on my iMac to work in XP.

 

Sorry, but most of us followed the manual and trouble shooting guides that you are referring to. So i don't think its our trigger happy behavior to blame here. Let me put it another way ... You got lucky and we didn't, simple as that. Remember luckiness is random. Thank your lucky stars. Of course no one doubts the difficulty of creating any OS or OS virtualization software, but to suggest that just because of that difficulty then we should somehow accept this buggy output is a little ridiculous. Yes, we all understand the difficulty that the guys at NASA must go through to launch rockets to outerspace ... but if any of it blows up mid-air and even injures a couple of people .. we all get outraged and rightfully so ... with the opportunity to do complex stuff comes the responsibility to make it work and above all good QA to avoid disasters like the ones we are seeing with this version of parallels.

 

Well maybe its something to do with type of install of guest OS on the Mac, tweaking, add-ons etc etc. I have a simple XP installation, no mods, no weird drivers etc

Also all of my XP software is genuine and not cracked....so no weirdness with DLL's (that brings back some very bad memories of my life with Windows...glad its all over !)....

 

Yes, its definitely a windows problem. Those overly-tweaked dlls, cracked software that we don't have. It's everything else but Parallels itself. NICE ....

 

Well the only variable is the Windows OS. The ver 4.0 download is the same for all of us, the Macs are pretty much bomb proof, so that only leaves 1 culprit....billgates.com would be your best bet !!!

 

Yes, definitely windows is quite the variable ... I agree with the analysis, Except .... ah, lets follow that logic a little further ... We all use these "bomb proof macs" (well depends how you look at it, I have 3, airbook, macbook, imac and they are great ... but yes sometimes they forget they are suppose to be bomb proof too and just like my sony vaio they also sometimes mis-behave) ... Anyway we all using macs, we all have XP (be it with some config differences), and yes, just before this Parallels version we were all happily working without problems with Parallels 3.x. Then along comes this great 4.0 release and it works for some but not for many others. Seems to me, there is no doubt what the real variable is in that whole equation .... uh! could it maybe be Parallels 4.x .... Just a thought ....

 

Oh, and by the way, If I was Parallels, I wouldn't even begin to point fingers at billgates.com ... Yes, without it ... well, Parallels is toast ... Windows is the main business ...

 

I have had no real issue either, except converting an existing V3 Parallels XP disk to V4 was not with out some bumps. I think the migration/upgrade tool they built has the problem of blanking out the screen and putting up the pretty wallpaper. That one issue alone makes the upgrade a mystery if things go wrong, you have no idea what happened, and for some users they will be completely baffled and "pissed" when it happens to them. If the migration/upgrade tool had not been built to make a marketing geek happy and had been more aimed at the poor old enduser, I bet alot of the upgrade issues would have been solved by the end users them selves. But hey, you do not get to see what is happening, so that means that the Parallels team then automatically owns the problem when things go bad.

 

Just for your information Syntrak is not a parallel employee, neither am I, we are just trying to help folks. If on the other hand, you have nothing intelligent to suggest but are just here to rant, please feel free to go away.

If on the other hand you have a specific issue, please explain it, and maybe we can try to help.

 

Again, I had no problems migrating to 4.0 so I am a very happy customer ! Its running great on my iMac. The whole process took about 45 mins including the backup of prev version.

billc80015 is just annoyed that it wasnt as simple as installing MSN Messenger ! FYI, XP is one of many OS's that can be run in 'Parallel' to OS X. So no, its not Parallels' problem - its yours, the customer, as they dont force you to install Windows, just provide the method.

I guess the VM Convert procedure is somewhat daunting - but, I say again, RTFM...! (R stands for Read and M stands for Manual)

 

No Problemo

I also had a successful upgrade from my XP on 3.0 to the new 4.0 Parallels. The new version definitely uses less CPU than 3.0 (judging by Activity Monitor's report).

At one point during the conversion process, Parallels said that "there was an error" during step 4 of 4. I just played it cool and when I clicked "ok" it just went into the booted VM, where XP was still working it's way through finishing the Parallels Tools install. It took a long time, but after everything was done, I rebooted XP and everything is working fine.

After booting up, I had to reactivate my Office 2007 Enterprise, but not Windows XP.

Everything is working great now!

 

Are some of the reported issues with people converting virtual VM's or upgrading when Parallels uses just bootcamp. I like the idea that Parallels 4.0 offers better performance but I am running 3.0 on Bootcamp and don't have any major issues.

 

Frederic,

Actually didn't think you were all employees of Parallels. If you notice I say there is only one technical support guy from Parallels (John@Parallels) and that's actually one of my constructive complaints (or as you might like to call them .. "rants") .... Just like all the frustrated people on this site I am going through all reasonable suggestions and trying them out to fix my corrupted image. I am sure with 15 years experience you are certainly an expert technical person and that's good to know. But please don't assume just because we are stuck that we are any less tech savvy and are any less literate enough to read the manuals than you .. this is definitely not a place for resumes but yes some of us code anywhere from embedded OS software, desktop and Server OS systems .. and quite complex dev work (Parallels does some pretty techie development but trust me its not rocket science to some of us). And yes, I am definitely not a cheerleader .. I call it the way I see it ... The V3 version was good ... This v4 Parallels version .. at least up to now ... really sucks .. Just because I disagree with you doens't me mean that you are any more entitled to using these forums than I am .. Parallels needs both cheerleaders and critics .. every company needs both of us so until they disable my account ... i am certainly not going any where ....