Moving Programs and Folders from Parallels

Apologies in advance. This will be a long tale of woe but I would appreciate hearing from anyone that can come up with a solution

I bought my iMac three years ago, having used PCs for years. I am delighted with my choice. However, there were two programs on my PC which I considered essential and had been using for years. They were Microsoft Money 2005 which contained my investment records since 2004 and Microsoft Office Accounting Express 2009 which contained my small business accounts since 2006.

After some research including looking on forums here I decided to use Parallels and created a partition and migrated my Windows Vista operating system including these two programs and Microsoft Office for Word and Excel. I have been using this system ever since and am currently using Parallels 7. However, I have found that Parallels can be incredibly slow and when it's open can slow down my Mac dramatically to such an extent that it was driving me mad. I thought that I had found a solution when my daughter offered me her old laptop, running Windows 7. My theory was to move the two programs above across to the laptop together with the backup files, check that everything was working and then rescue my partition (and my sanity!) from Parallels by getting rid of the horrible thing!

Too easy! The original installation disc for Microsoft Money was not recognised by the laptop. I downloaded the Sunset version because it is no longer available or supported by Microsoft but when I tried to load the backup it asked me for my Windows live ID password which was part of a Hotmail account which I deleted years ago so I can't access it to create a new password and try as I might using all the passwords that I can think of I haven't been able to get past the screen and restore the data!

Microsoft Office Accounting was no more successful. This also is no longer supported by Microsoft but I found a version on the web and downloaded it but, again, I haven't been able to restore a backup in spite of innumerable attempts

The only solution that I can think of is somehow to extract/copy the two programs from the Parallels partition on to the laptop so that I would be using the same programs rather than introducing new programs which for whatever reason won't accept backups. I'm pretty non-techie and haven't a clue if this is possible and would appreciate if one of you knowledgeable types out there would lighten my darkness!

One final footnote! I've been receiving Kernel Panic messages and, although I have managed to restart my Mac each time so far, having tried all the suggested solutions with no success the only one remaining is to update to Mavericks. If I do that I have to update Parallels to version 9. I'm fed up to the back teeth with Parallels and don't want to do this but I need to update to Mavericks pretty soon before I can't deal with the next Kernel Panic message myself because it has locked up my Mac! Help!

One quick question, how much ram is installed, Parallels can run slow on a mac with inly 4 gig of RAM

Maybe not what you want to hear..... but the real solution to your problem was to convert to using Mac programs instead of plodding along with MS Money and Accounting Express. And before you say that there are no Mac programs to fill the bill, we have had numerous folks who converted from MS Money (myself included). The MS Accounting Express program likewise can be replaced by a Mac program.

However, if you wish to continue fighting the battle, more memory for Parallels is likely needed as you've been advised. By the way, if I remember correctly, both Money and Accounting Express can export your data as QIF which is accepted and imported by just about every Mac program that I'm familiar with.

Thanks for the suggestions. I've only got 4GB RAM so I need to look in to getting some more, although as I have a mid 2011 21.5in iMac I read somewhere that I might have to use expensive Apple components rather than someone like Crucial. do you know if that is correct?

As for finding alternative programs, with the benefit of painful hindsight you're probably right but I've looked at a lot of alternatives, particularly for MS Money and haven't found anything that comes close. As for MS Accounting I was feeble and couldn't face changing to and learning new accounting software half way through a tax year! It's called learning the hard way!

chrbyr said:

...although as I have a mid 2011 21.5in iMac I read somewhere that I might have to use expensive Apple components rather than someone like Crucial. do you know if that is correct?

Click to expand...

If you are talking ram…not correct. You can use ram from crucial.com, macsales.com, or anyone else that sells compatible ram for Mac's. There is absolutely no mandatory need to use ram from Apple.

- Nick