[selowitch]

I am thinking of uninstalling Parallels FOREVER. The darned thing sucks. First I configured it to use my Boot Camp partition, which it promptly hosed. I rebuilt my Boot Camp partition and made a separate Parallels virtual machine to forestall a repeat of that problem. Now I am wondering:

• Why does Parallels maintain two network connections on my Mac, Parallels Guest-Host and Parallels NAT, even when Parallels is not running? This really, really bugs me. I'm sure it's convenient for Parallels, but I have a real hunch that it bogs down Mac OS X.
• Could Parallels be somehow responsible for making my Mac run slow ever since I installed it, even when it's not running?

All in all, Parallels is too complicated, too fraught with problems, for the simple tasks I need it for (i.e., testing my web pages against Internet Explorer). I'm seriously considering VMWare or Crossover instead. So much for my eighty bucks I spent on Parallels. Grrr.

Maybe I can still sell the disks and transfer my upgrade license to its buyer. But why would I want to do that to the poor schlub who buys it?

[ghporter]

As far as I know, it's NOT supposed to maintain anything running when it's not running itself. I have not used Parallels a lot, but I haven't had any real trouble with it. Aside from a kinda slow Windows boot up, it's done just fine for me. Yes, I'm using it configured to use my Boot Camp partition, and it hasn't done anything to it but use it. In fact, I've managed to use Parallels to transfer the Boot Camp 1.3 drivers to my Windows partition almost seamlessly (a transfer that I could use later versus burning a CD). Maybe something glitched when you installed Parallels? Have you contacted them and told them your problems?

[selowitch]

Well, yes, I've been to the forums. Contacting Nova Development itself is a waste of time -- no reply, ever. I think I'm just tired of troubleshooting problem after problem and am hoping for a more of a just-works solution. Extreme geekery is not something I have time for on this.

Believe it or not, it was only until I started using Parallels with my Boot Camp partition that some mysterious .dll file that Windows depends on or it will die was mysteriously missing. I can't afford to keep losing my WinXP install like that.

Here's my Network panel. You can see that Parallels is still drawing IP addresses even though the app itself is not running. I don't like that!

[mduell]

Extra network connections really shouldn't hurt anything... VMware for Windows also leaves 2 connections open all the time.

[Cold Warrior]

Parallels also hosed my boot camp installation a couple months ago. Since then I've stopped mixing the two, and use Parallels only with its own stand-alone virtual machine.