Problems gaming over LAN using Parallels 4.0

Hey everyone!


I have parallels 4.0 for my Macbook Pro. I installed Windows XP express on it and a few days ago and then installed A few games.
I am currently trying to play Dawn of War Soulstorm on the XP express virtual machine. The game itself runs fine, but when I try and play with other PCs over my home LAN, I am unable to see their games or them see my games in the lobby. We all have the same game version etc, so I am wondering what the problem is. I am connected to the LAN on the virtual machine and can access the internet, I cannot however see their computers in the 'My Network Places' folder thingy.

Can anyone help me with solving these issues?

Many thanks,

Westy

How do you have your ethernet setup on your virtual machine?

I posted this to another problem with someone in parallels not able to talk to other local machines:

1) In a VM you have various options for handling ethernet connectivity. In parallels you have: Shared, Bridged, Host Only and no networking. Assuming you can access the internet, then you have either shared or bridged. If you have shared, that's probably where the problem lies, especially if you can't see other computers in the network or their shared resources but can ping other computers and access the internet. shared networking basically turns your mac into a mini router and between parallels and osx you are doing nat - this can (and usually does) break windows networking. If it's set to shared, try setting it to bridged (will have to be done with vm turned off I'm sure) and then making sure your windows VM has an appropriate IP on your network.

Click to expand...

You might want to check it out. I know VMWare defaults to a shared configuration, and its possible that parallels does the same and that will probably be your problem. Change the network from shared to bridged, and assign your vm comp an appropriate ip on your network.

That's just a guess, but that is honestly what it sounds like.

Thanks for the help.

I changed the networking type from Shared to Bridged.
However, I now cannot connect to the wireless LAN at all. I configured it for use with Airport.

I clicked repair, but it failed because Windows was unable to renew my IP address.

It also does not recognise the WLAN as its name, just as Local Area network, with limited or no conectivity.

Im really concerned with this, especially as Bootcamp is not an option because I am unable to partition my hard drive for whatever reason.

You're probably unable to partition your harddrive due to excess file fragmentation and a lack of space to shuffle the files around as needed... at least that's what it's been in my experience.

Hmmm, you could be right.

However, I did try and partition after a fresh erase and install of Leopard for the second time.

Im slightly worried that my hard drive has a mechanical fault, in which case it would seem that I need to get a new one

Westy123 said:

Thanks for the help.

I changed the networking type from Shared to Bridged.
However, I now cannot connect to the wireless LAN at all. I configured it for use with Airport.

I clicked repair, but it failed because Windows was unable to renew my IP address.

It also does not recognise the WLAN as its name, just as Local Area network, with limited or no conectivity.

Im really concerned with this, especially as Bootcamp is not an option because I am unable to partition my hard drive for whatever reason.

Click to expand...

With regard to bridging your connection onto a wifi adapter, that I'm not sure of - I've always bridged over to a wired ethernet. I assume that with the bridge on wifi, it will still depend on the Apple making the wifi connection, then on the parallels, it makes it look like a wired ethernet. Try setting a manual IP rather then getting a DHCP assigned address and see if you can access the network that way. Also make sure you've bridged to the correct interface on your mac (ie: you're not bridging to the ethernet interface).

If you can't get the bridging to work, you may have to let them host a game and then in your game lobby (I've never played DoW multiplayer) you might see if you can specify the server ip address and key in their address and see if you can access the server that way.

I'm pretty sure you should be able to get the bridging to work. I want to say I had it working on my fusion (granted, I know it's different then parallels, but I don't see a reason why it wouldn't necessarily work) when I was first setting up my mac and was getting everything in place before taking down my old system (I had created a vm from my old system and transfered it and tested it before decommissioning my old computer).

Try setting a manual IP address, and make sure you're bridged to the proper device on your mac and see what happens.

Thanks! That seems to have sorted it. I can now see connections in the My Network Connections folder and can connect to the internet.

However, I still don't seem to be able to connect to games from the DoW Soulstorm LAN Lobby. I mean, I can see them, but when I try and connect, the game drops out of the lobby and it says that it cannot connect, but then when I close the window saying that it cannot connect, It reapears in the Lobby.

It says something about having the two computers' firewalls, routers and connections properly configured. But I know they both are, hence I can see the computer over the network!

Could it be that there are two types of connections being used? Me using Bridged ethernet, and the other PCs using some other type of connection similar to that of the Parallels shared connection?

Thanks

Re the partition issue: you need to defragment your hard disk. Reinstalling Leopard won't fix that issue. You are likely getting "files cannot be moved" or similar error. Once you defrag, you can run Boot Camp - and in any case, gaming under Boot Camp will be better than gaming under Parallels or Fusion because you'll be able to use your video card fully. I would start there. That will likely solve all your issues, assuming you don't need to be in the Mac OS at the same time you're gaming. You can use this software for it:

iDefrag 1.6.8 software download - Mac OS X - VersionTracker

Cheers

Thanks for your advice, I used iDefrag like you sugested. Upon looking at the little bar diagram at the bottom, it seems that over 25% of my drive was fragmented! I guess this is probably because i did not delete Tiger or whatever before upgrading to Leopard.

I ran the Quick (on-line) degrag algorihthm and it ran for around 3 hours, doing its thing. However, it was unable to defrag the drive completely given that some of the files could not be moved... annoyingly the same excuse boot camp gave me when it was unable to partition my disk. I ran the quick defrag again, it took about half an hour and was still unable to complete due to files being unable to move. I am unable to do the compact algorihthm due to not having a bootable CD/DVD or any space on my external hard drive.

Im extremely frustrated by this, its not an old machine, I have treated it well. Why is this happening?

I don't know what to do now!
Help!