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VMWare Fusion Beta
- Thread starter YoNeX
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Installing the VMWare Tools ?
I can't seem to get the VMWare Tools to install after the "Guest" OS has loaded. I select "Install VMWare Tools" from the Menubar but nothing happens.
Is anyone else experiencing the same problem?
I can't seem to get the VMWare Tools to install after the "Guest" OS has loaded. I select "Install VMWare Tools" from the Menubar but nothing happens.
Is anyone else experiencing the same problem?
Hmmm, and I thought it was down to me running it on a MacBook ( 2Ghz,2GB ). For the money I paid for it, it's a useful ( but not great ) product. However, I've found the support to be abysmal, and that's as important to me, as how it runs.
I've only had a quick scan of this thread, but does anyone with a C2D based machine have it running? Any problems? ( thinking of Parallels C2D debacle, here ).
The "Install VMWare Tools" botton is miss labled. It does not install them. What it does is replace your CDROM with an image file. Try thse steps:
1) click "Install VMWare Tools"
2) Go inside your guest OS and look at the CDROM drive.
3) From Inside the OS install what you find on the CDROM.
4) Re-boot the guest OS.
Maybe I need more RAM, but I was dissapointed to be reminded of Virtual PC, the way it totally slows the rest of my Mac down...
[click for bigger image]
kinda off topic, but i really think Vista looks a lot better without all the "aero transparency thing" making the windows titles a little too much unreadable...
So let me get this straight: You keep reinstalling the demo of Parallels, thereby ripping off the company and not supporting it to make it the best product it can be and keep the company in business, and then you have the gall to come out in public and say as such, and then on top of that you have the even greater gall to say it sucks?
Oh yeah, your opinions mean a lot to us now, that's for sure.
Not.
I'll reiterate: something is wrong with your computer, and now I can see why.
bb
I have a 20" iMac Core 2 Duo with 2GB and the stock 250GB hard drive. I'm running Parallels 24/7 with XP on a second 20" LCD monitor - OSX on the left on the iMac itself, XP on the right with the second LCD dedicated to running XP fullscreen.
I've rebooted twice in 3 weeks just because some software on the OSX side required a reboot.
To be honest, I've had more application crashes and restarts on OSX than I have under XP/Windows in the past 3 years. So much for "crash resistant" - and yes, I've had 4 kernel panics since I got this iMac home; that's more than the number of BSODs I've had under XP in 4 years.
So, in the next day or so I'll be doing the following test batch and making a thread here for the results:
- I'll be installing Parallels build 1970 clean
- I'll be installing the current beta build of VMWare Fusion clean
- I'll be installing XP SP2 *only* in default VMs under each of those two applications
- I will not be updating the SP2 at all, in fact neither VM will have Internet access to keep that aspect out of the testing
- I will install Windows Media Player 10 and Windows Media Encoder 9 as supplied by Microsoft for testing (see the next step)
- I will be installing PCMark05 from Futuremark into each VM for comprehensive testing under both applications (WMP10 and WME9 are required components of PCMark05, hence me installing them in the prior step)
I will then run the default benchmark in PCMark05 with the following stipulations:
- a cold boot of the iMac in between each testing session to ensure the most system resources possible for each VM when it's initialized
- the startup of each app and each VM will be timed by me with a watch - ok, it's not perfect but it's all I can do
- all 3D testing and graphics tests for 3D functionality will be skipped since neither Parallels nor VMWare Fusion has any 3D support at all
- I will do two runs with VMWare Fusion: one run with 1 processor support, then one run with 2 processor support
After all this is done I'll compile the data and make a thread here about the performance between and across both virtualization platforms.
In preliminary testing I did a short time ago, Parallels 1970 stomped VMWare Fusion into the ground by a wide margin - 37% higher score. But that was the first preliminary run as I just said, with other stuff running in the background (iTunes, DETOX, Toast, TextEdit, and Crossover with mIRC running for my IRC duties).
I'm not out to prove anything here, just offering up some actual performance data.
So far I'm happy with my Parallels purchase and haven't had a single problem with it. Hopefully this batch of testing will help people make a choice for the future - and yes, I'm well aware that VMWare is in beta testing and that VMWare has been around for a long long time. That's not the issue at present - the issue is which is better for the moment as both are in a continual state of development.
bb
Thanks Chris,
What the problem was is that I had installed WindowsXP from and .iso image, so after the installation and everything was up and running, the D Drive "D:\" was still that .iso. I had to change the D drive to the actual DVD-ROM and the restart. Once that was done I had no problems installing the VMWare Tools.
No I've been waiting for VM to get their butt in gear to launch Workstation. Parallels was simply a work around, a crappy one at that, until I could get VMWare. There is simply no way in heck I'm spending $80 on a piece of software that can crash my system. And before someone tells me to use Bootcamp. Yah right. Advanced Power Management does not work right under Bootcamp even with the latest version. When Parallels starts making a product that
1. Doesn't crash\freeze my system
2. Doesn't require me to force quite the application once every couple of weeks because the progress bar when I'm suspending a session has stalled.
3. Doesn't have sharing between folders that takes a good 5 seconds to parse the files and doesn't drop a file mapping in your file explorer.
4. Doesn't have the world's crappiest networking passthrough. I can't count how many times I've gone from one network to another to another and had it get confused telling me I might have limited network connectivity. So I need to repair the connection.
Parallels sucks but until now its been the only REAL game in town. Boo hoo I'm not paying for an app that IMHO is half baked to begin with.
At least I'm not outright going in search of a seral number and pirating the thing. Again its a tide me over until VM gets their butt in gear and releases this thing.um.... nope
so i just installed vmware... and ive got to say... its really not up to par with parallels... its sluggish on my MBP 2.0ghz with 2gigs of ram.... and i mean real sluggish... rebooting doesnt seem to want to work.... i do like the interface though but overall, its not that great to work with compare to parallels.... i do realize that this is a private beta but even in the beta stage parallels was much better.....
hope that the next build is more promising
also... i didnt see a way to change the amount of ram dedicated to the virtual machine other then by creating a new vm....
so i just installed vmware... and ive got to say... its really not up to par with parallels... its sluggish on my MBP 2.0ghz with 2gigs of ram.... and i mean real sluggish... rebooting doesnt seem to want to work.... i do like the interface though but overall, its not that great to work with compare to parallels.... i do realize that this is a private beta but even in the beta stage parallels was much better.....
hope that the next build is more promising
also... i didnt see a way to change the amount of ram dedicated to the virtual machine other then by creating a new vm....
Um... this is a private beta for a reason. Also, none of the Parallel's beta builds were built with debug symbols on and they were meant for public release.
Um, as a "private beta" it might be considered a "public alpha". I'm sure they're just making sure that things work before the public beta...
I have to agree, the Video Refresh rate is also noticable compared from Parallels. The Mouse is more sluggish and it just doesn't give you the feel that Parallels does.
I didn't notice any difference from running 2 Cores either
It is only a Beta right now so maybe they will have everything up to par soon enough.
so i decided to try to reinstall windows on vmware this time giving it 1gig of ram to work with.... and surprisingly enough, parallels with 512mb of ram still felt smoother and snappier....
i hope that vmware reads these
cuz i decided to uninstall vmware and stick with parallels for now... the latest build runs really really well for me
ps: i also note that not a lot of people on the forum seem interested in this topic... (and instead go for threads like RUMOR! C2D MACBOOK, NEXT TUESDAY (OR THE ONE AFTER, OR AFTER! )
i hope that vmware reads these
cuz i decided to uninstall vmware and stick with parallels for now... the latest build runs really really well for me
ps: i also note that not a lot of people on the forum seem interested in this topic... (and instead go for threads like RUMOR! C2D MACBOOK, NEXT TUESDAY (OR THE ONE AFTER, OR AFTER!
)
They want screenshots and numbers, but since the EULA says we cannot disclose numbers, not much left but screenshots. Oh and for the record, I was not able to get my XP to install properly. Tried about 3x. As for my choice, Parallels for stability, but VMware for the multi-core support. I'll leave it at that.
Could it be that you re using Filevault to encrypt your hardisk? Parallels really messes up my Macbook Pro if I try to use it in conjunction with filevault. I've gone around the problem by moving my virtual machines to a non-encrypted folder.
I don't get close to the performance those guys are talking about with my notebook. Resuming and suspending seem to take about 30 seconds, but I guess my hardisk is slow.
I have to agree, the Video Refresh rate is also noticable compared from Parallels. The Mouse is more sluggish and it just doesn't give you the feel that Parallels does.
I didn't notice any difference from running 2 Cores either
It is only a Beta right now so maybe they will have everything up to par soon enough.
Atleast on their server products the Beta releases have very heavy debugging and logging running on the background non-stop. There is no way to turn it off (atleast simple way). The final release has better performance due to this...
This can also be why they don't want performance comparisons, as it won't be indicative of the final product.
I have alot of trust in VMWare. Don't know what the pricing will be, but I am 100% sure that by release it will be an extremly robust product with only a very small overhead (I consider Parallels to have a fairly large overhead). I use most of VmWares server products at work, and can't remember any of the (release) versions ever failing me. With this I'm talking about running around 40 virtual production servers 24x7 on 3 servers with only 2 service breaks per server during the last year (planned maintainance breaks for upgrades).
No I've been waiting for VM to get their butt in gear to launch Workstation. Parallels was simply a work around, a crappy one at that, until I could get VMWare. There is simply no way in heck I'm spending $80 on a piece of software that can crash my system. And before someone tells me to use Bootcamp. Yah right. Advanced Power Management does not work right under Bootcamp even with the latest version. When Parallels starts making a product that
1. Doesn't crash\freeze my system
2. Doesn't require me to force quite the application once every couple of weeks because the progress bar when I'm suspending a session has stalled.
3. Doesn't have sharing between folders that takes a good 5 seconds to parse the files and doesn't drop a file mapping in your file explorer.
4. Doesn't have the world's crappiest networking passthrough. I can't count how many times I've gone from one network to another to another and had it get confused telling me I might have limited network connectivity. So I need to repair the connection.
Parallels sucks but until now its been the only REAL game in town. Boo hoo I'm not paying for an app that IMHO is half baked to begin with.
Dude, your doing something totally wrong. I've got Parallels running a 1.83ghz , 1gb MacBook and its pretty much instant at everything! Never hung on me every, suspending takes only a few seconds, likewise from resume. Sharing of files is instant, well no differenace than working on it nativly.
I have XP SP2, Office 2003, Sage, Visio, Project, Money and Autoroute all running and never have any probs.
Your doing somat wrong mate.
Just FYI.
The "private" beta that's being circulated is a very old beta in the development stage. VMware has big plans, and is working closely with Apple to have a true Mac look and feel.
Things VMware Final version will do:
Be 100% Free
Support Adjusting how many processors you use.
64bit support and optimization
Drag and drop into the VM window (just try dragging a file off your desktop into the VM now)
***And full support to use your bootcamp volume. So you don't have to have two disks anymore or one for Virtual Machine, and another for bootcamp with full video accelerations. You can just run your bootcamp volume right inside of VMware for those times when you don't want to reboot, and just need to do work. That way you only have one copy of windows on your machine! No VM needed!
**Support for "Virtual Appliances" which VMware has a bunch of on their site. Thousands of companies make ready-made Virtual Machines, that you can download and run in VMware, such as a lamp server, special build of RedHat, or a Ubuntu for graphics, or a mail server, or anything you can imagine, there are over 100,000 Virtual Appliances available on the VMware site, and you can create your own "Virtual Appliance" and share it with your friends!
The "private" beta that's being circulated is a very old beta in the development stage. VMware has big plans, and is working closely with Apple to have a true Mac look and feel.
Things VMware Final version will do:
Be 100% Free
Support Adjusting how many processors you use.
64bit support and optimization
Drag and drop into the VM window (just try dragging a file off your desktop into the VM now)
***And full support to use your bootcamp volume. So you don't have to have two disks anymore or one for Virtual Machine, and another for bootcamp with full video accelerations. You can just run your bootcamp volume right inside of VMware for those times when you don't want to reboot, and just need to do work. That way you only have one copy of windows on your machine! No VM needed!
**Support for "Virtual Appliances" which VMware has a bunch of on their site. Thousands of companies make ready-made Virtual Machines, that you can download and run in VMware, such as a lamp server, special build of RedHat, or a Ubuntu for graphics, or a mail server, or anything you can imagine, there are over 100,000 Virtual Appliances available on the VMware site, and you can create your own "Virtual Appliance" and share it with your friends!
To be honest, I've had more application crashes and restarts on OSX than I have under XP/Windows in the past 3 years. So much for "crash resistant" - and yes, I've had 4 kernel panics since I got this iMac home; that's more than the number of BSODs I've had under XP in 4 years.
Which means -- as everyone is saying -- that there is something wrong with your computer. I have a MacBook, two Intel iMacs, and a Mac Pro in my house, and they do not crash despite heavy daily use. My poor Mac Pro is running three different operating systems right now using Parallels, with nary a complaint. If you are getting unexplained kernel panics on a clean install of Mac OS X, then you have a hardware problem.
Hardware problems can affect any OS -- I've seen Windows systems that get daily BSODs. It's not because "Windows sucks", it's because there was a sub-par memory chip or somesuch in the system. Likewise Mac OS X crashes, when nobody else is experiencing a problem, are not an indication of the stability of the OS but rather of your hardware.
Which means -- as everyone is saying -- that there is something wrong with your computer. I have a MacBook, two Intel iMacs, and a Mac Pro in my house, and they do not crash despite heavy daily use. My poor Mac Pro is running three different operating systems right now using Parallels, with nary a complaint. If you are getting unexplained kernel panics on a clean install of Mac OS X, then you have a hardware problem.
Hardware problems can affect any OS -- I've seen Windows systems that get daily BSODs. It's not because "Windows sucks", it's because there was a sub-par memory chip or somesuch in the system. Likewise Mac OS X crashes, when nobody else is experiencing a problem, are not an indication of the stability of the OS but rather of your hardware.
I don't know about the free part though. If its just a player (like the current Beta), I can see that being free. But if they add all those extra features I don't see it being free at all. But then again, Macs aren't targeted towards the Corporations, so they might just make one version with a lot of features and not charge as much as VMware Workstation (for Windows).
Yes, the current version is really buggy.
Again... weird... I don't have any of the problems you are reporting on the now 4 different systems we run parallels on (2 x MacBook Pro 1 and 2 GiB, 2 x Mac Pro 2 and 6 GiB). On all system not a single crash, system lockup or stall and Windows XP Pro fells like it runs faster then on my dedicated Dell system.
One thing you have to realize is that when Parallels fires up a VM it wires down all of the memory for that VM. So basically it is making the VM memory fully unavailable for use by Mac OS X. If your VMs are large and your working set for the applications you are running on Mac OS X is also large then you will get swapping.