Quick Parallels and Windows XP questions...

Warning -- die-hard PC user here! (eek, that's one ugly smiley! ;-))

Question: Let's say you've got Parallels and Windows XP installed on your Mac. You turn on the Mac, check some email, and decide to go into Windows XP for whatever reason.

1. How exactly does this happen? Do you launch Parallels, then Win XP? Do you just launch XP? Or something else? And is it launched from an icon, or ???

2. From the first click on whatever you click on (based on the above answer) about how long does it take till Windows XP is fully launched, ready to open a Windows program?

Thanks!

Check these PDF's out.

http://www.parallels.com/files/upload/Parallels Desktop for Mac User Guide.pdf

http://www.parallels.com/files/upload/Parallels Desktop for Mac Getting Started Guide.pdf

and this site: http://www.parallels.com/en/products/desktop/

Assuming you would have already INSTALLED XP in Parallels...

You would click the Parallels icon, then select the "XP" Virtual Machine. Then click the Green Arrow (which is essentially the "power" button for the Virtual Machine")... XP will then Boot in the Window, no different than it looks on say a Dell PC.... Mine is up and running in just under 20 seconds.

Check out (THIS) video... It looks like this guy has tweaked XP a bit to get it to boot in "8 Seconds", but you get the general idea of how it operates.

SoundsGood said:

Warning -- die-hard PC user here! (eek, that's one ugly smiley! ;-))

Question: Let's say you've got Parallels and Windows XP installed on your Mac. You turn on the Mac, check some email, and decide to go into Windows XP for whatever reason.

1. How exactly does this happen? Do you launch Parallels, then Win XP? Do you just launch XP? Or something else? And is it launched from an icon, or ???

2. From the first click on whatever you click on (based on the above answer) about how long does it take till Windows XP is fully launched, ready to open a Windows program?

Thanks!

Click to expand...

Well let me try it:

1) Click the Parallels icon in the Dock. Up comes my VM list, oops don't have XP so let's choose Vista instead.

2) Click green play button in the VM window ... One thousand, two thousand, three .............

Almost 2 minutes later ...

3) Doo Doo Dah (Vista's start up chime is quite cute I think).
4) Choose View->Coherance from Parallels window (Vista task bar thingy drops to bottom of screen, takes a few more seconds).
5) Select Start->Games->FreeCell and we're off ...


... Some time later ...

6) Parallels->Actions->Suspend ... One thousand, two ....

... Tens seconds later VM is suspended (i.e stored off to disk and memory freed up for other uses)

7) Click Green play button in VM window ... One thousand, two thousand, three thousand ... Vista is Back!

So about two minutes first time up (about the same time it takes to load on my PC) then around ten seconds to suspend and 4 seconds to resume.

Amen-Moses

Cool. Sounds easy enough. Thanks for the help, everyone!

By the way, what is "VM" (as in VM list, VM window)?

"Virtual Machine"

caribiner23 said:

"Virtual Machine"

Click to expand...

I thought it might be that. Just checkin'.

Thanks!

SoundsGood said:

I thought it might be that. Just checkin'.

Thanks!

Click to expand...

Yep, Parallels lets you create as many virtual machines as you want so you can have say one with Vista, one with XP and one with Linux and have them all running at the same time, each having its own window.

"Coherence" mode ony works with Windows (probably only with XP and Vista but maybe with earlier versions) and only one VM at a time. In this mode Windows shares the screen with OS X and it's really cool.

Also worth mentioning (and again this only works with windows) is that you can drag and drop files from OS X to Windows and vice versa.

Amen-Moses

Amen-Moses said:

Also worth mentioning (and again this only works with windows) is that you can drag and drop files from OS X to Windows and vice versa.

Click to expand...

Very cool. Gotta look into this further.