Check it out, the latest round of Questions and Answers from the long time Parallel's employee, Ben Rudolph, has made its return.

Anyway, I'm curious why, on Mac Pro, the VM needs to be setup on the OS X volume. I was all setup to create an XP VM on it's own partition when I ran into this restriction. Now I'll need to repartition a larger OS X volume so I have room for an XP VM as well (I'm using Parallels build 1970).

Thanks for your informative blog!
Clinton W.

While the Parallels application needs to be installed on the main OS X volume, you can you your actual VM file anywhere - on your main hard drive, on a separate partition (although no partitioning is necessary), on an external drive, or even on a network drive if you have enough bandwidth. Just make sure that you set the VM path in your configuration screen to the custom location.


All of the sudden, my Windows XP VM window got HUGE, and I can't shrink it down to get to the toolbar on the side of the Parallels window. So, I'm stuck. How do I shrink it down so I can use it in windowed mode?

- Anonymous

You've actually bumped into a Windows issue, not a Parallels issue. Fortunately, fixing this is easy. Just right click in your Windows VM and select "properties", then click "settings". From there, you can change the Windows resoution with the slider bar. Click OK and you'll be ready to go.


Can I safely create more than one shared folder?

Thanks!
Diana B.

Absolutely. Just click the Shared Folder icon in your configuration screen to bring up the Shared Folder pane. Click the "+" on the right side to set up a second shared folder just like you did the first time. When you reboot Windows, you'll see both in the Parallels Shared Folder.