Switching from Parallels to VMWare Fusion

[xntrick]

I, like a lot of you here, am having stability issues with Parallels and would like to switch to VMWare. If I migrate my Parallels VM to VMWare, will the stability issues follow?

[xntrick]

Any opinions? Suggestions?

[admin]

Patience, grasshopper. It's only been 11 hours, and doubtless some people are annoyed at the current forum problems.

Instability could be caused by several things. If it's flaky RAM or a bad guest setup, moving from Parallels to Fusion won't help. On the other hand, if you're tickling a Parallels bug, then moving will help. The only sure way to tell is to try.

Hopefully others can add their experiences.

[xntrick]

Ok, sorry kinda new here. I thought 11 hours was quite a long time.

[rcardona2k]

I agree with Eric, if at all possible build yourself a fresh, native Fusion VM to try. Install your applications you need to work in it. Test the performance, useability, stability, etc. If you're happy, migrate your Parallels VMs over. With luck, your migrated VM will perform as consistently as the test machine. If not, then you'll have to solve your Windows issues first whether that's in Parallels or Fusion. Sigh.

[xntrick]

Why can't everything run like a Mac?

[admin]

Ok, sorry kinda new here. I thought 11 hours was quite a long time.

Everyone has different schedules - some people might only be able to post at work, other might never be able to post at work. People are in different time zones. Etc. Also, you may have asked an unusual question which people aren't sure about or don't have experience with.

11 hours is a bit long to have no response on these forums, but I'd personally wait a couple days before bumping.

I think the bigger issue is that the forums are currently pretty flaky - the current situation is a huge improvement over 24 hours ago, but there's still a long way to go. People might not want to put up with the current state of the forums.

[xntrick]

I think the bigger issue is that the forums are currently pretty flaky - the current situation is a +huge

improvement over 24 hours ago, but there's still a long way to go.

People might not want to put up with the current state of the forums.+

I did notice they were loading pretty slow yesterday. I hoe they get the bugs worked out of this new forum before too long. On the other hand, if Fusion is more stable than Parallels maybe I won't need to ask any more questions.

[xntrick]

Most things are working well so far but I am having issues when dragging & dropping or even copying and pasting from one explorer window to another within the VM. For example: Explorer window #1 is open to my home folder on my Mac and explorer window #2 is open to a native folder within the VM and I want to transfer an unzipped item to the folder in the VM. When I attempt this, I get an "Explorer has encountered an error and needs to close". The Error signature reads: AppName: explorer.exe AppVer: 6.0.2600.0 ModName: ntdll.dll ModVer: 5.1.2600.0 Offset: 0002f5ce. Hope that info helps.

Any ideas what the problem could be?

[rcardona2k]

I fight conflicts with Explorer extensions often. You might want to look at what you have installed that extends the right-click menu in Explorer with utilities such as WinZip, RAR, TortoiseCVS and rule those out. That's also one difference you'll see with a new VM, i.e. all those extensions are gone. Make sure you have the latest versions of these Explorer extensions.

To isolate them, the only way I know do to this is to uninstall them one at a time.

[bgertzfield]

Hi xntrick,

Do you have Alwil avast! or other anti-virus software installed in the virtual machine? If so, this bit from the Release Notes might help:

http://www.vmware.com/support/fusion/doc/releasenotes_fusion.html

===

If the antivirus software Alwil avast! 4.7 is installed in a virtual machine, when you access VMware Fusion shared folders through a Uniform Naming Convention (UNC) path (rather than through a mapped drive letter) causes Windows Explorer to become unresponsive or quit unexpectedly.

To work around this problem, access VMware Fusion Shared Folders through a mapped drive letter and not through a UNC path. You could also use a different antivirus program: this problem has not been observed with other antivirus programs.

===

[xntrick]

rcardona2k:

+I fight conflicts with Explorer extensions often. You might want to

look at what you have installed that extends the right-click menu in

Explorer with utilities such as WinZip, RAR, TortoiseCVS and rule those

out. T_hat's also one difference you'll see with a new VM, i.e. all

those extensions are gone. _Make sure you have the latest versions of

these Explorer extensions.+

To isolate them, the only way I know do to this is to uninstall them one at a time.

Sorry, I failed to mention in my last post that I decided to run a test VM instead of converting the old Parallel's file so this is a brand new machine without any extentions manually installed. I am, however, running WinXP Pro w/o the SP2 updates installed. This VM will not connect to the internet, I use my Mac for that. Whatever zip program I am using within Windows is native to windows. Would this still be the case?

[rcardona2k]

Sorry, I failed to mention in my last post that I decided to run a test VM instead of converting the old Parallel's file so this is a brand new machine without any extensions manually installed. I am, however, running WinXP Pro w/o the SP2 updates installed. This VM will not connect to the internet, I use my Mac for that. Whatever zip program I am using within Windows is native to windows. Would this still be the case?

If you're running a clean base of SP2 without having gotten any online updates from Microsoft, that should be fine.

I would try a few things:

1. Try the suggestion above to use a mapped drive just to mix in some variety.

2. Rather than copying the ZIP over, try using XP's ZIP wizard to extract from the Shared Folder location to your VM's local disk.

3. Try cleaning your temp directories (windows\temp and local settings\temp)

Explorer is pretty stable without extensions and in my experience so is VMware's Shared Folders feature so it has to something environmental causing this.

[xntrick]

If you're running a clean base of SP2 without having gotten any online updates from Microsoft, that should be fine.

I would try a few things:

1. Try the suggestion above to use a mapped drive just to mix in some variety.

2. Rather than copying the ZIP over, try using XP's ZIP wizard to extract from the Shared Folder location to your VM's local disk.

3. Try cleaning your temp directories (windows\temp and local settings\temp)

Explorer is pretty stable without extensions and in my experience so is VMware's Shared Folders feature so it has to something environmental causing this.I created a mapped drive for my shared folders, that did not correct the issue.

I tried XP's Zip extract program, that also did not correct the issue.

I always clean my temp folder via Run %temp%, is there another way to do it? This did not correct the issue either.

This is from the last time I received that error and explorer closed on me. "The following files will be included in this error report: C:DOCUME_1\ADMINI1\Temp\WERA.tmp.dir00\appcompat.txt" This is the contents of that text file referenced...

< ?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-16"? >

< DATABASE >

< EXE NAME="SYSTEM INFO" FILTER="GRABMI_FILTER_SYSTEM" >

[rcardona2k]

> This is from the last time I received that error and explorer closed on me. "The following files will be included in this error report: C:DOCUME_1\ADMINI1\Temp\WERA.tmp.dir00\appcompat.txt" This is the contents of that text file referenced...

> EXE NAME="SYSTEM INFO" FILTER="GRABMI_FILTER_SYSTEM"

I got some hits on GRABMI_FILTER_SYSTEM at Annoyances.org but fairly wide ranging stuff from possible malware infections to an incompatbility resolved by using System Restore to go back in time to "fix" the problem. If anything, I would want to patch up the latest rather than go back to some earlier version. The Event Viewer should have the same details you've been getting as far as what's being logged in appcompat.txt. See if there's anything interesting in there.

Is your problem with all ZIPs or a particular one? Have you tried unzipping it and re-archiving it on OS X? Does it unzip fine on OS X?

[xntrick]

Cripes, why didn't I think of unzipping them in OSX? That worked! I was able to get what I needed to the VM but it still begs the question of why. Wish I had an answer to that.

Thanks for the help rcardona2k!