[whitedog]

Anyone used Parallels or Fusion with Windows games?
The reviews I've read say it's a mixed bag. It may be fine for older games, but anything new and demanding will do much better in Boot Camp. Just be sure your new MBP has plenty of RAM - 2 GB minimum - and the best video card available. If you cheap out you'll soon live to regret it.

[REO]

Whitedog,
I believe you will like Fusion. I also tried Parallels, but it could not "see" my dive computer when it was connected (USB). With Fusion, I can "see" my dive computer and download my dive data.
When you download Fusion, it includes a well-written Getting Started, with a section on using Fusion with your Bootcamp partition. Follow the instructions regarding installing VMware Tools, and you will only have to reactivate Windows once.
Ron

[Peter Cohen]

Quote:

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Anyone used Parallels or Fusion with Windows games?

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http://www.macworld....llels/index.php

[one_technologist]

I've experienced the same issue on a corporate image that I imported but not on one I created from scratch.
Here's what worked for me:
1. Make sure you have a shared directory
2. Install update
3. Choose your image
4. Select Optical drive and disable it. This prevents Parallels Tool from loading
5. In the [Your HD Name]/Library/Parallels/Tools/ directory, double-click on vmtools.iso
6. Copy contents into shared directory folder of choice
7. From within Windows, navigate to the directory and run PrlTools.exe
8. Reboot after install and it should work
9. Enable optical drive again
You'll have to perform this after every update that updates Parallels Tools.

[whitedog]

I followed the procedure you recommended carefully, but after the tools update Parallels continues to crash every time I launch Windows. After trying it I had to revert to a snapshot again to get to a version of Windows that doesn't crash Parallels. In any case, I'm not clear how disabling the optical drive prevents Parallels Tools from loading or how this is supposed to affect the subsequent install. There is nothing in the designated optical drive. But thanks for trying.
By the time Parallels comes up with a solution, if they ever do, I'll be using VMWare Fusion. If it proves more stable and at least as easy to use as Parallels used to be, I'll be steering clients to Fusion in the future. Though it apparently doesn't bother the folks at Parallels, who have yet to respond to any of my problem reports, I'd hate to have a client blaming me because a product I recommended started crapping on them the way Parallels Desktop has been crapping on me. For those clients I do have who use Parallels I have not recommended the version 3 upgrade - nor will I.

[one_technologist]

What disabling the optical drive does is prevents loading of the iso image as a disc and running Tools installer. For me it blue screens before I get to the Windows XP desktop on this particular image I have.
But the work around allows me to update successfully on that image. On another XP image, it's never an issue.

[whitedog]

After all the confusion I went back to the Parallels Support Forums and found the solution I had tried after the previous update - and forgotten. Ugh! Disabling Shared Applications solves the problem of Parallels crashing on Windows startup after updating Parallels Tools. [Shut down Windows; go to the Edit menu in Parallels, select Edit Virtual Machine; select the Shared Applications item in the left-hand list; uncheck Share Windows Applications to Mac and Share Mac Applications to Windows.] I had turned these off before but I guess the build 5060 beta update turned them on again. Since I had no reason to expect this, I was struggling to solve the problem all over again and forgetting the solution I'd found before. The moral? Too much troubleshooting muddies the mind. Sigh....
I hope this works for others who are having similar problems. Personally, I have no use for sharing applications anyway. Clearly the potential conflicts outweigh any possible benefits. In my opinion this feature should just be stripped out entirely.