The Lounge - CodeProject

I bought Parallels last night and tried to use some of its features. If it weren't rife with bugs, it would be pretty fantastic.

One nice feature in theory is that it can run the Windows you have installed via Boot Camp (on an alternate partition) inside of a virtual machine. That means you can either boot directly into Windows or run that very same install of Windows while booted into OS X. Parallels also supposedly supports Windows 8, which is handy since I installed Windows 8 to my Boot Camp partition.

Only problem is, Parallels apparently only supports the preview version of Windows 8, not the release version. So instead of making my life easier, it trashed that partition and I had to restore from a backup (which, by the way, is completely screwy, but I got it working eventually).

Some other nonsense I've noticed with Parallels, for your amusement:

It says to run "Setup.exe", but the file is actually something like "Autorun.exe".
During the VM setup, I got a dialog saying "this version of Windows isn't supported" multiple times (once would have been fine).
The Parallels installer window wouldn't go away until I restarted (didn't even show up in the "force quit" list).
On many occassions, dialogs would pop up and then another would pop up (causing the other to disappear before I could attend to it).
While I was typing in another window, Parallels moved itself to the front and I dismissed a dialog or two before I realized and stopped typing.
While creating a VM, I set the virtual hard drive size, but got an error message saying the resize failed (however, the drive ended up being the size I set).
When I had the Windows 8 VM partially working, clicking the "Desktop" tile in the start screen would either show a gray screen or show my Mac interface rather than the Windows desktop.

Hopefully this software becomes more stable, as it's pretty crappy right now and not what I'd expect from commercial software. Anybody have experience with VMware Fusion?

Thou mewling ill-breeding pignut!

Just curious... what made you decide to buy Parallels versus using VirtualBox for free?

Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master. ~ George Washington

I tried VirtualBox and the performance was terrible. Even with 12GB and 4 processor cores allocated to it, the mouse was lagging and the frame rate was choppy. Also, I created some VirtualBox VM's and after restarting my Mac at some point, I was subsequently unable to open the VM's (got some obscure error code, and Google was pretty useless). Basically, it seemed even less professional than Parallels.

Thou mewling ill-breeding pignut!

Wow. It's always worked perfectly for me...

Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master. ~ George Washington

I guess this is just a bad week for VM software releases. Roll eyes | :rolleyes:

Thou mewling ill-breeding pignut!

When trying VirtualBox, did you install the guest additions after installing the guest OS?

I have an i5 iMac w/ 8Gb RAM and Windows 7 Pro, Windows 8 Preview and various distros of Linux all work just fine in VirtualBox. No lag whatsoever.

Odd.

Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master. ~ George Washington

Never got the chance. I was running Windows Server 2012 in the VM. I have the newest 15" MacBook Pro with Retina display and 16GB of RAM (i7).

In any event, I got WS2012 working in Hyper-V on my Windows 8 Boot Camp install, so I don't need to worry about that anymore. And I'm installing Visual Studio 2012 in a Windows 7 Parallels VM right now, so I guess I'm good to go for the time being. Still, whenever Parallels fixes their support for Windows 8 hybrid Boot Camp/VM, I'll probably use that instead.

Thou mewling ill-breeding pignut!

Almost identical setup to mine - and mine runs fine too, with the exception of a very small mouse lag occasionally (when running in seamless mode) tghat I notice when selecting text blocks with the mouse.

In fact, I find it good enough to not use bootcamp at all.

MVVM# - See how I did MVVM my way
___________________________________________
Man, you're a god. - walterhevedeich 26/05/2011

.\\axxx
(That's an 'M')

AspDotNetDev wrote:
the mouse was lagging and the frame rate was choppy

Don't blame the virtual box, it's the hardware. $Shucks | :-\$

People say nothing is impossible, but I do nothing every day.

Guess I can't expect to run server software on a laptop (or so I'm told). It seems 12GB of RAM and (4) 2.7 GHz processors are just not enough to move a mouse pointer at a reasonable frame rate. D'Oh! | :doh:

Thou mewling ill-breeding pignut!

AspDotNetDev wrote:
It seems 12GB of RAM and (4) 2.7 GHz processors are just not enough to move a mouse pointer at a reasonable frame rate.

This isn't even a reasonable expectation... Poke tongue | ;-P

The United States invariably does the right thing, after having exhausted every other alternative. -Winston Churchill

America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between. -Oscar Wilde

Wow, even the French showed a little more spine than that before they got their sh*t pushed in.[^] -Colin Mullikin

Years ago when I first got my Mac I bought Parallels and Windows XP.

The problem with bad software, from my perspective, is that you never think it is the product. They are selling it, so it has to work, right? So for a long time I thought it was me or my configuration.

Finally, when I got fed up with Parallels, I googled the product (probably should have done that first) and found that, yes, the product sucked and I was not the only one who thought so.

What me worry?

AspDotNetDev wrote:
...in theory is that it can run the Windows you have installed via Boot Camp (on an alternate partition) inside of a virtual machine. That means you can either boot directly into Windows or run that very same install of Windows while booted into OS X...

AspDotNetDev, you've achieved what I've not even been able to get started on. Is there somewhere I can ask you questions one-on-one about BootCamp, etc?

I've got Apple's BootCamp document on my desk but there are some things that are preventing me from using it and installing Doze 7. Are you able (asks he with cupped hands raised and on his knees a-beggin') to help me with some questions?

Whispered: I fear the Forum Police will object to The Lounge being used. Smile | :)

"I do not have to forgive my enemies, I have had them all shot." — Ramón Maria Narváez (1800-68).
"I don't need to shoot my enemies, I don't have any." - Me (2012).

Sure, fire away.

Thou mewling ill-breeding pignut!

Righty-oh, here's my first question. I'll keep them in digestible chunks.

Is it possible to install Doze 7 using a USB memory stick? When I last tried it seems the BootCamp assistant only recognises DVD drives. I have the full Doze setup files and my MSDN licence keys. I'd like to install using a bootable memory stick but I can't see any option in BootCamp that lets me select the preferred media. There, that's the first question. I suspect this might be a drawn-out affair.

"I do not have to forgive my enemies, I have had them all shot." — Ramón Maria Narváez (1800-68).
"I don't need to shoot my enemies, I don't have any." - Me (2012).

Yes...

I have the new MacBook Pro Retina 15", which does not come with an optical drive. I used this USB 3.0 flash drive to do the Boot Camp install of Windows 7 (I later repeated the process to install Windows 8).

It was easy. I opened Boot Camp Assistant in Mac OS X (I have Mountain Lion 10.8.2) and selected the option to install Windows using the flash drive and gave it the path to an Windows ISO (downloaded from MSDN). Interestingly, I had the ISO saved to my desktop, and the assistant found it automatically.

In the first window that launches for Boot Camp Assistant, there is a button to print out instructions... do that. I didn't notice that the first go around, and had to Google some things. For one, when you install Windows, it will say the Bootcamp partition can't be used because it's not in the correct format. All you have to do is select the option to format it as NTFS.

Also, once Windows is installed and running, there is some program you have to run on the flash drive... you must run that manually (it installs drivers and utility programs and such).

You will get a little Boot Camp icon installed in your system tray that will allow you to restart into OS X. To restart into Windows from OS X, you go to Finder, System Preferences, Startup Disk, select "Bootcamp", click "Restart".

If installing Windows 8, the little restart icon won't work, so you have to hold down the "Option" key during boot to see the boot drive selection screen.

One thing that's nice is that you can backup your entire Windows Boot Camp partition using Disk Utility in OS X (the backup file is compressed, so doesn't take up too much space). I did that and ended up having to restore later (restore is easy if you know what to do, but it took me a while to figure out).

Thou mewling ill-breeding pignut!

Welcome to the Lounge