[MAC]: The Beginner’s Guide to Parallels Desktop 10 for OS X

The Beginner’s Guide to Parallels Desktop 10 for OS X

Even if you are a Mac user, there’s a strong chance that you will need to use Windows applications at some point. Luckily there are great virtual machine solutions out there to help you do that easily.

And you can run more than Windows in a virtual machine — Linux runs perfectly in a VM, and is usually the best way to learn. Today we’ll be showing you how to install Windows in Parallels Desktop, but the same principles work for Linux.

What is the Advantage of Parallels Desktop?

Parallels has been around for eight years, as a virtual machine for Mac, further bridging the gap between Mac and PC (among others). With the latest variant, you can natively download freeware operating systems like Ubuntu, Chrome, Android and, of course, Microsoft Windows. Unlike Bootcamp, there aren’t any version limitations either, you could install any version of Windows, past present, or future (read ‘Technical Preview’) and it will work exactly as well as it is supposed to.

Parallels Desktop shares the system’s resources instead of dedicating them, that way you are using the same storage and resources for all platforms, making it easier to manage and manipulate. Other virtualization tools like VMWare fusion, or Hyper-V, normally create and restrict the workspace to the image size. This is where Parallels Desktop earns its price.

Also, Parallels Desktop has the ability to support retina resolutions and scales accordingly, which makes content visible natively, without any fragments or aliasing. Additionally for any virtualization tool it is quite a chore to match the performance of the real thing, but Parallels does a good job of running things quickly.

How to Install an OS using Parallels Desktop

We’re going to start with the assumption that you have acquired and installed Parallels Desktop 10. Launch the tool and let’s get started.

As soon as the app launches you will be greeted with a welcome screen. Or, if you have a previous operating system(s) installed, you will be able to view them in a list. If there is a “?” next to your operating system, that means the intended media is missing (we’ll get into that later).

If you are shown an operating system, look at the upper right of the window and click on the “+” button. That will take you to the default launch window.

Here, select your operating system. It comes with the option to download prepackaged open source operating systems like Chrome OS, Ubuntu, or Android. You can even use your Mac’s rescue to create a virtual OS X – This can come in handy if you are planning on experimenting with tools and terminal commands (you could potentially reset your system in a single stroke with those things).

Let’s see how it works with an installation of Microsoft Windows 8.1. Click on “Install Windows or another OS from a DVD or image file.” This will make PD scan for all images on your storage. If it does not find it, you can “Locate Manually.” From the list of options, DVD, Image File, or USB, select the one that applies to you. If all you have is a legally acquired key, Microsoft will let you download an image from their site.

Click on image file and drag the image to the designated area. Enter the your serial key and check “express installation.” Now, you will be lead to a screen where you can select your ideal usage from the Windows Installation.

It gets a touch interesting here, as you have an option that you would have to enable yourself, Parallels Desktop 10 lets you turn Windows 8.1 into a Windows 7 like menu, Or, leave it as-is. Make a choice.

Now, pick the name and location of the installation, and press continue. You can choose to install it on an external drive if you want. Press continue, and it will start creating the virtual machine.

Now, the installation process is exactly the same as installing Windows on a PC. During the virtualization, press ⌃ + ⌥ (control + alt) to free the mouse, otherwise it will be confined to the virtual space. By default, your windows will launch in fullscreen mode.

At this point, your Virtual copy of Microsoft Windows is ready to deploy (ignore the floppy disk, I was feeling nostalgic during installation). If you want to switch between OS X and Windows, just free the mouse (as mentioned earlier) and switch screens as you normally would on a Mac. Shutting down Windows will terminate the simulation and take you back to your OS X desktop.

Terminating virtualization will take you to a launch screen. If there are aspects of your configuration that you want to change, you can do so by checking the configuration icon in this window. You can also do this, by clicking the same icon in the launch window that welcomes you.

Here you can change any setting you want. Be warned, there are limits to what your system can sustain and the recommended settings are generally the best ones to go by, however, if you feel like taking the risk, here is where you can adjust the sliders to suit your computing needs.

Errors

There are possibilities of errors that you might come across when you use Parallels Desktop 10.

If you get this error, it is normally caused by a module trying to read/write an NTFS partition (not natively supported on OS X), so even though it says to “uninstall” the tool, you can make do by just disabling it.

The following errors appears only when you have installed windows with various customizations, if this warning does appear, it is simply telling you to avoid interacting with the bootcamp drive while the virtualization is suspended (not terminated).

That ought to do it, you can now run Windows on OS X without having to switch away to anything.