You broke it -- Please fix it, parallels

Please fix it, parallels

Short version:
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Updated to current parallels 8 for mac, installed a VM against my Bootcamp partition (win7 64bit) on my mac mini 2010.
Works fine in VM -- saving rebooting when I have less intensive tasks to do.

But --> wifi device gone from Device Manager/broken in Bootcamp; completely gone.
No local drivers, no downloadable drivers are available.

And, your website fails to accept my trouble ticket or my online chat choices.


Long version:
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So, I am currently working on a wifi chip/board and hacked an antenna-less wifi card to work on USB. Drivers exist in Windows. So it works - barely. I had it laying around and the other usb wifi dongles weren't recognized.

Now, I spent my time trying to fix this silliness.

I downloaded apple bootcamp drivers 3.1.
They won't install because *somehow* it thinks I'm using bootcamp 3.0 or need to install 3.0 drivers before upgrading.

Catch 22 -- no apple 3.0 drivers available. Nice ....

So, I open the Parallels support page:

1- Says I have some hundred days of email support ---> but won't let me email a ticket in!
(problem ID? really ... you want me to reboot back to Mac, just so you can get a problem ID? -- really?)

2- Says I should call ... so I click the chat w/Tech support widget ---> but won't let me because I'm past 30 days and wants to sell me premium support.

REALLY? You're going to fight with me -- after you broke my wifi and wasted a couple hours of my time (so far).


EDIT --------------------------------------------------
Trying to extract the drivers from an Apple PKG file under windows ...
http://www.cafe-encounter.net/p860/opening-a-bootcamp-driver-download-on-windows-7-or-8-with-7-zip
Its the 041-2011 file.

This appears to work. So, Win 7 under Bootcamp is back using internal wireless/broadcom.
I do not know if Parallels 8's VM based on the bootcamp partition continues to work, though.
I've not booted back into Mac for a couple boots now.

 

(I'm not sure I actually understand what you are saying, I'm not sure I'm able follow your line of reasoning, but here it goes, just the facts)

1 - Apple Bootcamp Drivers come in one of of the DVDs that came with your Mac Mini. The downloads Apple offers are patches to these, not complete downloads. I think they should offer the complete downloads, but this is not something that Parallels broke.

2 - "problem ID? really ... you want me to reboot back to Mac, just so you can get a problem ID? -- really?"
I don't see what's the problem with this, Parallels as a system in their software to gather the necessary data to help you, but it requires the software to be running, obviously. If you want your problem to be resolved it doesn't seem like such an awful thing, to reboot your computer.

3 - I don't see any evidence that your specific problem with your hacked wifi adapter is related to upgrading Parallels from your description.

4 - "the other usb wifi dongles weren't recognized." This is rather weird, considering all USB dongles are supposed to be recognized and work on Windows.

5 - Speaking of hacked wifi adapter, I personally have done this before, back in the days, added an RP-SMA plug to a Wifi USB dongle, so I could plug an external antenna. That dongle is completely dead now, the chip fried, adding an external antenna has its dangers, lasted about 2-3 years thou, problem with electronics is they are very sensitive to voltage.

6 - I'm glad it only fried the adapter and not the USB port. Which leads me to my conclusion coupled with #4, you might have permanently damaged a USB port or the USB bus itself, because I find it very weird these other dongles aren't recognized anymore. Do they work in other PCs? If they don't I guess they are dead too. If they do, there's something wrong hardware wise with your mac. Same for the hacked dongle, it might be dead already or a problem with the mac itself.

 

more detail

Maybe I wasn't clear. Bootcamp and separate file-based VMs under Parallels have been working fine.
That is, until I decided to install a new VM today -- based on the bootcamp partition.


Details ===========================================================

Long ago (year?), I bought parallels 7.
Got upgrade to parallels 8 in last months or so.

Been running VMs now for a while (parallels, virtualbox, etc.) - 3-4 VMs in parallels for the last 2 years (ubuntu, win8 trial, win 7).

A month ago, I bootcamped my mac mini, since VMs just were not cutting it for all tasks.
So --yes-- bootcamp installs the drivers.
Life is good -- all working great with these separate instances of Windows 7.

THEN --------------------------

Recently, I clicked the update button (like 1 day ago). So, I'm current.

Today, I clicked the "new vm" in parallels. Win 8 expiring & I do NOT like my existing Win7 installation.

Hey: whats this? I can click an icon that says it'll use my BootCamp partition!
OK, lets try that. Maybe I get a Bootcamp-cloned VM or maybe I get a VM that *uses* my Bootcamp partition.

Bingo. It was the later. So, I'm happy enough.

I kick up the VM. Works fine. I did my stuff.

Then -*cue ominous music here* I reboot to run under Bootcamp directly.

And there you have the beginning of my tale.

1- Parallels installed something that made my Wifi not work under bootcamp
2- Apple won't let you re-install Bootcamp drivers outside of the actual running of the Bootcamp Wizard

Hence, the posting.

 

Huh?

OK. I just posted a reply. It never showed up.

Short version:

* running parallels win 7 guest on mac os x for a long time (year?)
* running bootcamp win 7 for some time (month)
* clicked new VM and installed a VM based on the bootcamp partition

Now, wifi drivers do not work under bootcamp.
All else was fine under VM, though ... just not under bootcamp.

My thought = Parallels installed something that broke the native drivers.

My course of action =
(1) Reinstall bootcamp drivers themselves (can't, darn);
(2) open support request with parallels (can't, darn);
(3) post here (worked)
(4) never really believed Parallels/forum would help -- so found hackers links to direct download of Mac PKGs that bootcamp uses; extracted out the ISO and hand-installed the bootcamp drivers.

Your mission, should you decide to accept it:

a- Figure out why your VM install broke bootcamp. Something removed my Apple drivers in the bootcamp partition.

Note -- Yes, I fully shut down the VM before rebooting under Bootcamp. I saw the warning from Parallels app about such a thing.

b- Fix that support web form from requiring the (entirely optional) Problem-ID -- it won't allow folks to submit tickets WHILE UNDER BOOTCAMP WITH YOUR DRIVERS BREAKING THINGS. Really? you want me type in the whole request and hit cancel, so that I can reboot just to get a string from the Parallels app?

Dude, its a computer. What if it was broken and I cannot run the Parallels app to get the Problem ID ... or to reboot back into my hosting OS where its installed.

Option aa = Parallels tool in the guest OS to perform the same darned function that the host OS's parallels does to produce that Problem ID

c- Online Support Chat -- page says I have many days of email support; and the ticket form suggested that I do NOT enter a web-based support ticket ... but to CALL into support. So, why does the site not allow me to contact support chat w/o paying for support?

Dude, at least accept the web chat and then tell the person their account CAN or CANNOT use that method of direct support.

 

Hope this helps you understand better...

a - From your description I still don't think the upgrade of Parallels Tools in the VM (it's all it does) would mess with Bootcamp drivers, never saw that happen, but, who knows, if that's true, it would be a bug and it have to be reproduced, as such, the next reasonable step is for the program, Parallels, to use it's ability to collect the necessary information and send it for analysis, that leads us to b.

b - I don't understand this, there's no real impediment except the hypothesis of not being able to boot into OS X and run Parallels? If you couldn't boot into OS X than you would have bigger problems to worry about, if Parallels wouldn't start, a simple reinstall would fix that. There's no real impediment here, why create another problem?
If I read you correctly, you are saying "I demand you to help me, but it must be on my terms, I don't want use any of the tools you created to simplify the process".

c- I'm a Product Expert, I don't work for Parallels, there are a lot of support options in www.parallels.com/support
There are many option in support, as a user I've personally only used the Support Request, which doesn't require any of the things you mentioned, only an active account: https://www.parallels.com/support/request/

My personal belief, and because I have experience with hacking wifi adapters, is that this erratic behaviour is related to voltage oscillation beyond the spec that lead to the USB host/device(s) to not be recognized, hence the builtin wifi disappeared also.

Good luck!

 

vm?

Thew new bootcamp based VM isn't like the others. It appears to have made a VM with the disk partition as the hard drive. So, there is no separate "clone" of the bootcamp.

Therefore, when it installs the Parallels Tools, it would be installing them in the actual hard drive (in with the files, etc that already existed).

This is why I believe it mucked up the wifi driver. And, yes, I could be wrong in this.
However, between creating that VM and starting it up (... and it auto installing the parallels tools), there were not other changes to the bootcamp partition.

While in the VM, I used an editor and changed some user files inside my Dropbox folder.

Later, I shut that down ... shutdown the Mac itself ... and booted into the Windows 7 bootcamp.

THe first thing I did was to notice that Dropbox can't connect (to pull down those files). That started the evening's work of fixing the wifi drivers.

note -- I will not re-Bootcamp this thing to simply fix a driver. So, i've since fixed this problem.
I did pull down a mac pkg buried on some apple URL, unpacked it in windows, and found the embedded drivers.

also note -- this fixed the wifi drivers under bootcamp. It also did not affect the Parallels VM, when I booted back to Mac and kicked the VM on.

 

Yes, this is what's called a Bootcamp based VM, it shares the same partition, I understood that this was the case from the start, but in terms of hardware it creates a different profile.