[PetitPaul]

My upgrade to version 4 from version 3 has been very painfull. The automatic upgrading process failed and suggested to switch to manual, then the VM logged itself into an unknow user making me fear that I'd lost all what was in my account, then it asked me to re-register Windows, and finally it took the manual installer 3 attempts to finaly complete without hanging somewhere with no indication of failure or what-so-ever. Now, it seems that it's done (it took about 3 hours), but how can I be sure?
This was ugly and scary. I suggest anyone tempted to upgraded from 3 to wait for a while until Parallels comes up with a more reliable and stable upgrade process.
Message was edited by: PetitPaul
[Follow up]

Actually, it's not finished! Parallels keeps saying that Parallels Tools are not installed while the vm is starting and that I need to choose "Install Parallels Tools" from the menu. Then it takes forever to download and unpack the installer, then it installs it, only it keeps you with no progress screen for quite a while, and then it ask to reboot and then.... it says the Parallels Tools are not installed. Installing from the disk image is the same.
I'm stucked with a half upgraded system, with no Parallels tools installed. Which means it's even slower than version 3, which wasn't very fast!

[lenbanks1964]

This is also what has happended to me and I spent 2.5 hours on the phone with a tech in Siberia and it still isn't working. We did recover my image file, but it still can't upgrade or convert!

[wcf3]

The big problem is the windows re-enable that requires a new key. I have several windows keys, and have yet to find a key that works for another upgrade. This is crap and m$'s fault. I bought the software and now am screwed because can't re-activate winblows... I have yet to get an answer to the telephone number... I'm in a world of hurt until I get past this.
any help would be awesome!!!
Chuck

[martinvictor]

Recommendation, Don't upgrade. This is absolute crap. I have wasted an entire day and probably the night as well reinstalling everything. I just can't believe they couldn't get it right. How hard is it to actually test before you release.
They have to be just plain incompetent. There is so much damage caused by this "upgrade" that I can't even use Boot Camp Assistant to partition my drive anymore. I just can't wait until Apple's market share increases to the point that these guys at Parallels are out of business. This is the second time this company has screwed me with updates.

[whitedog]

If you look at the receipt carefully, the $10 discount should be there. But I couldn't get the web site to finish processing my purchase. I'll have to call them tomorrow.

Parallels 4 compares favorably with VMWare Fusion 2. It finally supports multiple processors - in fact, more than two, which is the current limit in Fusion. That would certainly be useful if you needed to do some heavy lifting in Windows - and have more than two CPUs to work with. The total RAM and the video RAM have also increased substantially. You can now dedicate up to 256 MB of RAM to video. This is useful for 3D graphics, of course, but also helps utilize large monitors - like my 24" NEC.

When upgrading from an earlier version of Parallels, it's a good idea to take advantage of the upgrade software's offer to back up your old virtual machine before converting it to version 4 (the older version of Parallels is removed, but it would be easy to reinstall if necessary). The only hiccough I encountered was when the upgrade process threw up an error message that turned out to be due to the presence of the Kasperski security software I already had installed. After a little confusion, it politely offered to remove the security software and complete the conversion. Then the Kasperksi installer ran again to restore the software.

The Kasperski security software, along with two programs from Acronis, True Image and Disk Director, are now included with Parallels 4. They were a discounted add-on to version three. The retail value of these apps, or their equivalent, more than makes up for the cost of the Parallels upgrade. Certainly it's a good idea to run Windows with some protection.

I had a problem with the most recent build of Parallels 3 - it broke my internet connection in Windows. I wasn't able to solve this problem before trying the version 4 upgrade. Whatever the problem was, it was gone after the conversion. Which was great, because I had cleared out all my snapshots to save space on my hard drive and hadn't gotten around to making another one before the problem showed up.

Which reminds me of another version 4 improvement - like Fusion, Parallels can now make automatic snapshots. You can set how often this is done and how many are retained.

Interestingly, Parallels' interface has been updated to resemble that of Fusion, with a gray, Leopard like toolbar at the top of the window instead of at the side. This tool bar is also now highly customizable. And the Windows window remains full size after shutting down, like it does in Fusion - though this is an option that can be turned off.

One final thing - the distinctive Parallels cloverleaf icon has been replaced with a tacky pseudo-iMac image with two parallel vertical red bars on the right side. Sigh....

[AndrewRodney]

Good news is indeed, I was able to upgrade for $39. Bad news is the download link doesn't work (last night or this morning). Maybe the servers are overwhelmed. Not good.

[deilers]

I actually did get something to download yesterday after about 4 hours of trying and retrying. A .iso file that is 298 MB in size, with the filename "Parallels-Desktop-4.0-Novadevelopment-4.0.3522.iso". Sounds like the correct app, right? Problem is this iso file is format for Windows, not Mac, and there is no installer file. I'm very Mac literate, and know a Mac installer when I see one, and this is NOT a Mac installer. I even had to jump through hoops to get the iso file to open (had to mount it using Toast). Disk Utility could not read it.

Does anyone out there know what's up with the above mentioned file? Did you have a similar experience?

Also, does anyone know whether or not we Upgraders can download the Full TRIAL and just enter the upgrade key to activate? I know you can do this if you order the FULL version, but can you also do this with the upgrade?

Thanks in advance!

[wcf3]

The file is 480.4 MB, so your download failed. It took me 2.5 hours to finally get it downloaded and worked fine.

Also, I was able to get past the need to re-activate winblows by selecting the 'do it later' option and finishing the parallels upgrade process. After shutting down and restarting the session it stopped asking for reactivation. Go figure...

It is working fine for me so far, not seeing any speed improvements but certainly less load on the Mac. Nice new interface as well.

Chuck

[vintagegeek]

One of the most painful upgrades I've ever done. I should not have tried it day one. Broke my own rule. Upgraded from 3.x to 4.0. First, Activation Key I purchased would not work. It accepted it and then asked for prior 3.x activation key. It would not accept that. I kept pasting activation keys until it did work. About an hour into it I was sent a new e-mail with new key (entered that after I finished the whole upgrade). Then the real "fun" began. I elected to upgrade my simple Win XP Home VM (16GB). There were numerous messages and links to Parallels Web Pages along the way as it kept telling me after each step I had an error and proceed manually. As I could not figure out what the precise nature of the error really meant (30 years of IT for me) I just let the computer run and run after each step. Sometime leave it along is the best posture. Well eventually it completed (2 hours). Oh, by the way, in my case Windows needed to be Re-Activated. Oh what fun. But luckily that worked. I must say it appears to run quite nicely. But I will be trying more programs tonight.

[vintagegeek]

I had nearly the same events as you but eventually the Tools Installed and it seems to run nicely. But what a messy path for 2-3 hours. Half way through they sent me a new Key too. See my post for other shannigans I had to go through too.

[vintagegeek]

I had many of te same issues. What I can't understand is why everyone is getting the Manually Convert intructions. It should know how to work through this. REALLY NOT ready for the faint of heart.

[ptsapralis]

I started dealing with the upgrade process earlier this afternoon (after I accidentally found out that a new version was out...). No problems regarding purchasing the upgrade key or downloading the DMG file (maybe I got a little bit lucky on this...). I encountered some of the difficulties described in earlier messages in here when converting a Microsoft Windows Server 2003 virtual guest - for example, I went into manual mode after a while. However, I do not really consider any of these issues to be major - especially taking into account that the content of my virtual system is rather complex (lots of special software installed, both MS SQL Server 2k & 2k5 instances, etc.). All in all, I understood that part of my difficulties originated from some auto-starting software (Microsoft FOLDERSHARE client) being unable to connect to the Internet right away (maybe because I had replaced my password earlier and had not updated the virtual guest...) and the Parallels Tools not installing correctly on their own. A reboot of the Mac after some crash of the virtual guest helped considerably: right after that I was able to correctly install the Parallels Tools and the virtual system has been running quite nicely during the last few hours.

It feels like it now runs a bit faster than before (I regret not having measured some quick benchmarks - SQL query times, etc. - before upgrading). I also use VMWARE Fusion and Sun Virtual Box on my MBP laptop and I run an IT infrastructure at work that relies heavily on VMWARE ESX Server 3.5 but I now feel glad for my recent decision to leave both VMWARE Fusion and SUN Virtual Box behind and standardize on Parallels Desktop because this thing definitely runs smoothly, has an intuitive and slick interface and feels robust and reliable.

One last thing: when purchasing Parallels Desktop, one also gets Kaspersky Internet Security suite and some disk / partition management software by Acronis in the bundle. I do not think that you get anything similar when going with VMWARE - so, there is some added value in there that should not be neglected...

Panos, Athens, GREECE.

[vintagegeek]

This is an additional post (3 others) after running the new 4.0 upgrade all evening (day 2). It really does appear to run much faster and more smoothly than 3.0. No stutter from the OSX side when executing programs. I installed a few games on the Windows XP side I could never run before on my MacBook. Nice results on those. I needed more disk space on my XP VM so I ran the Image Tool and added an additional GB (start off with a small dose). It completed the add of space in a few minutes and all seems well. When I started XP up afterward a message popped up saying found new hardware. Seems anytime you touch the XP image it thinks its new hardware. More trials to come. By the by I run Time Machine before every change.

[beluga1]

I got 4.0. the upgrade is completely automatic, and it completely doesn't work. at least so far. The last part of the upgrade install fixes your 3.0 "virtual machine" to work with 4.0. When i did it, the virtual machine upgrade kept quitting, although not before it erased my old virtual machine. I wrote Parallels tech support, for help. I have a strong suspicion that this "crash" within the upgrade process (that is what it is) is nothing that i did wrong. So be careful. And be sure to backup your old virtual machine.