(submitting a support request to parallels is not easy but hopefully this will help others) I have been running server 2012 on Parallels v7 without a single issue for months now. Today, I accepted an upgrade offer to move to Parallels v8. Downloaded the upgrade, and upgraded (including tools). The first thing I noticed was that VisualStudio2012 started to issue "can not write to directory" messages. Even simple copy statements failed. Running "Directory Opus" or "VS2012" is also extremely slow. No messages displayed or logged. I wanted to bail out and safe some source code with Subversion (ANKH). No luck, the directory was "locked". However, starting VS2012 as administrator solved the issue and I could compile, submit source to subversion and copy files around. There was a noticeable increase in processing speed. I trashed the virtual machine and copied a 2 weeks old copy of Server2012 and launched it with the new Parallels v8. While the machine was NOT rebooted (to install the new parallels tools) everything worked perfectly. After windows was rebooted and the new version of parallel tools became active in the VM, the exact issue re-appeared again. I have the feeling that all directories in the VM are set to read-only. Looks like server 2012 is not a supported platform with parallels v8. Anyway, I wasted a lot of time already and switched back to Parallels v7 which run's just fine. I have no intention to give v8 another try.
