Parallels 8 on Yosemite

[cutter74]

Out of curiosity, I decided to upgrade to Yosemite without paying Parallels for yet another upgrade. I wanted to see whether there was any way to troubleshoot my Windows 8.1 VM myself and make it boot. I don't know if anyone else has tried it, but the steps required to access your Windows VM are actually... zero!

After upgrading to Yosemite, I booted my VM in Parallels 8 with complete success. The first time it took a few seconds longer but that's about it! I also rebooted to Bootcamp and them back to Yosemite and used Parallels again to boot the VM, again without a single problem.

Granted, it may be very early to tell what problems I may encounter down the road, but I'm just saying that it seems that Parallels 8 being unsupported does not necessarily mean that it won't be accessible, as Parallels so conveniently is declaring. Just though to share my experience...

 

[Glassed Silver]

I personally wouldn't risk boring my BootCamp with unsupported software, but good to know that Yosemite is more backwards compatible than I had expected.

Glassed Silver:ios

 

[D.T.]

Out of curiosity, I decided to upgrade to Yosemite without paying Parallels for yet another upgrade. I wanted to see whether there was any way to troubleshoot my Windows 8.1 VM myself and make it boot. I don't know if anyone else has tried it, but the steps required to access your Windows VM are actually... zero!

After upgrading to Yosemite, I booted my VM in Parallels 8 with complete success. The first time it took a few seconds longer but that's about it! I also rebooted to Bootcamp and them back to Yosemite and used Parallels again to boot the VM, again without a single problem.

Granted, it may be very early to tell what problems I may encounter down the road, but I'm just saying that it seems that Parallels 8 being unsupported does not necessarily mean that it won't be accessible, as Parallels so conveniently is declaring. Just though to share my experience...

Interesting. I’ve been debating the hassle and cost of upgrading to PD10 (from PD8) to be able to run Yosemite (rambled about it a bit in this thread: https://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?p=20169184#post20169184), and you’re the 3rd person I’ve seen indicate their PD8 VM(s) continued to run.

I wonder if it’s just going to break at some point, or if there’s some specific config, etc., that will cause it not to start. I’d also hate to see it corrupt my VM (my Windows VM is actually 7).

Hahaha, some cranky folks posting on the Parallels support forum:

http://forum.parallels.com/threads/parallels-desktop-8-and-osx-yosemite-guess-what.326153/

 

[cutter74]

I wonder if it’s just going to break at some point, or if there’s some specific config, etc., that will cause it not to start. I’d also hate to see it corrupt my VM (my Windows VM is actually 7).

Well, given the fact that it's officially unsupported, it may very well do so in one of the future Yosemite updates. For me it's not the cost of Parallels that drives me NOT to upgrade, but their business tactics, which I find misleading (at best) and borderline extorting. I know that next year (when Windows 10 and/or the next version of OS X comes out), I will eventually have to upgrade Parallels and then, I will have to pay the full price instead since I won't be eligible for the "Update" discounted price. I'm not really saving that much money in the long run, but I downright detest their business tactics.

Having said that, Parallels is an excellent application and if I were running critical VMs, I would update to Parallels 10 (or move to a competitor with a more decent update policy, but that's another story), just to have piece of mind and be eligible for support if something breaks.

If on the other hand, you are just a home user like me and just like the convenience of running both OSs concurrently, I see no reason to give in to extortion as long as the software you legally paid for, still runs without a single glitch. Worst case scenario for me, I will upgrade when a Yosemite upgrade finally breaks compatibility with Parallels 8. And by the way, be extremely wary of any Parallels 8 "updates" coming your way in the next few days or weeks. I wouldn't be surprised if they went out of their way to push towards the remaining P8 users with an update that kills the product under Yosemite.