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josiemorehouse

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Oct 11, 2012
11
0
It seems such a trivial thing, but it's driving me absolutely batty. I installed Parallels 10 (running the trial version) on my Mac. I've got Yosemite 10.10.2, running Windows 8.1 with Parallels. I like the performance of it, except for one very very very annoying 'glitch'. Every time I click on the Windows window, I get a very loud beep. It makes me cringe, and it's the only thing keeping me from purchasing the full license to Parallels.

I want to use the Windows environment for gaming, since my options for the Mac are limited (I like action/adventure RPG, hack-n-slash, platform, puzzlers, etc). The only way I've been able to get the beep to stop is to mute Parallels, which negates the whole reason for using it in the first place (can't really play games with no sound). I've tried posting in the Parallels forum, and got one response telling me to set a bootflag of "devices.audio.clock=1" but that didn't work. I find it hard to believe that this is a normal function of Parallels, it seems like people would've complained about it before. But then again, maybe I'm not very tolerant.

And I've tried VMWare Fusion, and the performance was so awful, I know there is no way I can play any good game on it (I couldn't even run The Talos Principle without it stuttering every 3 steps, ugh). It sucked because I liked VMWare's user interface better than Parallels', but the poor performance is a deal breaker. I've got an 4.3GHz (OC) Intel i7-4790k quad-core processor, GeForce GTX760 4GB video card, and 8GB of memory (will probably upgrade to 16GB soon), all running on a Gigabyte G1 Gaming 7 motherboard, so I know the VMWare Fusion issue isn't with my setup, my benchmarks are off the charts.

I'm just really annoyed with this beep. PS - I don't want to do Bootcamp. I'd like to be able to have the VM thing fixed. I don't want to have to reboot every time I want to start Windows, plus I don't want to have to again create a new partition on my 4TB storage drive because I have backups already on it and wiping it to create a new partition just isn't going to happen. (My Mac OS is on a 256GB SSD)

Any ideas out there? Thanks.
 
Still no ideas, eh?

It seems such a trivial thing, but it's driving me absolutely batty. I installed Parallels 10 (running the trial version) on my Mac. I've got Yosemite 10.10.2, running Windows 8.1 with Parallels. I like the performance of it, except for one very very very annoying 'glitch'. Every time I click on the Windows window, I get a very loud beep. It makes me cringe, and it's the only thing keeping me from purchasing the full license to Parallels.

I want to use the Windows environment for gaming, since my options for the Mac are limited (I like action/adventure RPG, hack-n-slash, platform, puzzlers, etc). The only way I've been able to get the beep to stop is to mute Parallels, which negates the whole reason for using it in the first place (can't really play games with no sound). I've tried posting in the Parallels forum, and got one response telling me to set a bootflag of "devices.audio.clock=1" but that didn't work. I find it hard to believe that this is a normal function of Parallels, it seems like people would've complained about it before. But then again, maybe I'm not very tolerant.

And I've tried VMWare Fusion, and the performance was so awful, I know there is no way I can play any good game on it (I couldn't even run The Talos Principle without it stuttering every 3 steps, ugh). It sucked because I liked VMWare's user interface better than Parallels', but the poor performance is a deal breaker. I've got an 4.3GHz (OC) Intel i7-4790k quad-core processor, GeForce GTX760 4GB video card, and 8GB of memory (will probably upgrade to 16GB soon), all running on a Gigabyte G1 Gaming 7 motherboard, so I know the VMWare Fusion issue isn't with my setup, my benchmarks are off the charts.

I'm just really annoyed with this beep. PS - I don't want to do Bootcamp. I'd like to be able to have the VM thing fixed. I don't want to have to reboot every time I want to start Windows, plus I don't want to have to again create a new partition on my 4TB storage drive because I have backups already on it and wiping it to create a new partition just isn't going to happen. (My Mac OS is on a 256GB SSD)

Any ideas out there? Thanks.

I was really hoping that there were other folks out there that use Parallels, that could have some sort of insight as to why this beep happens. Maybe it's normal, maybe it's not. I don't know. I'd love to fork over the $$ to purchase the full version of Parallels, but jeez, I'd really hate to spend that much money if I can't fix this annoying nuisance of that beeping when I switch between my Windows and Mac screens.

Is there anyone out there who has any ideas? I took a Vimeo video of the sound, posted on the Parallels forum (with pretty much no response), and I'm out of options. I really want Parallels to work, but that beeping makes me want to scream.

Any ideas would be a big help. Thanks.
 
Actually, I'm all fixed now!

Just an idea - couldn't this in any way be a feature of the trial version?

Actually, after working with Parallels support (finally, had to reach out to them via Twitter/FB), I was able to discover that there was a Windows 8.1 setting that makes a beep when turning the caps/num/scroll lock on. I always keep my numlock on my keyboard turned on because I use it for work, so of course, every time I clicked out of the Windows 8.1 Parallels window, then went back in, Windows was detecting my numlock being turned on, giving the beep. I went in to PC Settings, turned that off, and voila, no more beep. Since that was the only thing keeping me from purchasing the full version of Parallels, I now have the full version. Unfortunately it doesn't support DirectX 11 yet, which is a bummer, but most games are capable of running DirectX 9 or 10. Hopefully an update to Parallels will allow DirectX 11 support, so we'll see.

Anyhow, I'm very happy with my choice of using Parallels. Despite the lack of DirectX 11, my gaming options are now much more broad since I can run both Windows and Mac games. :) Yay!!! I did a test run through of The Talos Principle, since I played that through and the graphics are great, and it was just as smooth through Parallels with Win 8.1 than it was with my native Mac OS. It's a much better alternative to me than Bootcamp. Rebooting in order to switch my OS?? Ehh, no thanks, that's a pain. LOL.
 
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