Generally Parallels is easy to use and set up.  The hardest thing about it is spelling the word “Parallels.” I find this to be difficult: there are three separate places where you have to decide on double- or single-consonants.

So I’m eager to try the new Windows 7 public beta on Parallels.  After some adventures (mostly stupid), I got Windows 7 to install OK under Parallels, and I find it to be quite zippy (totally unlike Vista).

But I can’t get networking to go.  I can’t get Windows 7 to recognize my imaginary network card.  It recognizes all the other imaginary hardware… so what’s the deal?

Running ipconfig provides this:

Tunnel adapter Local Area Connection* 9:
Media State: . . . . . . . . . . Media disconnected

…which pretty much looks like there’s no network adapter.

When you’re setting up the virtual machine, Parallels offers two kinds of networking: Shared and Bridged.  According to Leto from Parallels,

The difference is that Shared takes your existing Mac OS X network connection, and Bridged Ethernet sets Windows as a separate machine on the network.

I’ve tried them both, with the same results when Windows starts: the little networky-symbol in the lower right corner of the screen makes a blue spinny thing for a little while, which then turns into a big red X. [I would take a picture, instead of describing it, but I haven’t figure out shared folders yet.

I will continue to work on this.  Any assistance would be welcome.

Resolution: I managed to install Parallels Tools, and networking started right up after a restart.

Installing Parallels Tools was a little tricky:  Repeated attempts were rebuffed by a rather nyah-nyah message saying something like

You can install Parallels tools on Windows 98, XP, 2000,
heck, we could even probably do Server 2003, but we are
NOT installing Parallels Tools on whatever nightmare
machine you've got there, pal.  You'll have to install
the Tools manually.

Well, OK.

I found that my Windows machine had a CD in the drive, called Parallels tools.  I found an application called PTStart (was it ptstart.exe?  I dunno: I haven’t fugured out how t make Windows 7 show file extensions).  I right-clicked on it, and after a lot of interrogation from Windows, was able to start the program in XP compatibility mode.  It ran (with a lot of warnings from Windows about maybe you shouldn’t install this driver).

After a restart, Windows was able to see the network (via shared networking; it might work with bridged as well).

I got the sound to work by starting the device manager and clicking on the apparently driver-less sound card.  Windows suggested that I allow it to go out searching for a driver.

Sure!  This is all just for laughs.  So I let Windows go out and find a driver.  I don’t know where.  Maybe from some back-alley in a former Soviet Republic.  I don’t know.  I hope to $CREATOR$ that there’s some sort of heavy-duty driver signing going in the background.

But the sound started up, too.  And then the Windows drive C: appeared on my Mac desktop.  So file sharing (between the OS X host and the Windows guest) is apparently working, too.

I dunno about all this.  I’ve mostly hated Windows (though been forced to use it professionally) since Windows 1.0.  But I kind of like this Windows 7 so far.

I will attempt to do some real work with it (VPN; SQL Server administration; file sharing) and document the results.

I had some adventures, mostly stupid, getting it installed.  But now it’s working, and mostly correctly…  with some issues.

In general, Windows 7 is sprightly and responsive running in a child window on my 2.16 GHz dual-core Intel Mac.  It hogs up most of my 2 Gb of RAM, and works the CPUs hard, but that’s good, I think.  It takes just eight seconds, total, to start VirtualBox and restore the Windows session.  Sweet!

Video playback is smooth, even when Windows is doing other things in the background like initializing a “Homegroup.”

But so far I haven’t been able to get a peep out of the sound card.   Not so much as a bzzt.  Windows says that “no audio devices are installed.”

When you’re setting up your pretend computer, VirtualBox offers two choices each for Host Audio Driver and Audio Controller.  I’m clever enough to know that “Null Driver” isn’t an audio driver from a really hip company called “Null.”  In fact, it means: I don’t want any audio.  Send the audio to the bit-bucket.

So I cleverly picked CoreAudio.  Whatever that is.

The “Audio Controller” question is less obvious.   This is what the VirtualBox control looks like:

Virtualbox choices for Host Driver and Controller

In my experience, “Sound Blaster 16″ means:  emulate the stupidest 16-bit 1980s sound card imaginable.  So I tried that.  I also tried the ICH AC97 controller (whatever that is).

Neither choice has yielded any noises (more specifically: neither has convinced Windows that there’s a sound card).

But I will persist, and figure this out.

Update #1: These two guys may have figured it out, by dint of having a clue about Windows 7, which I clearly don’t.

I will test.

Update #2: Ha!  Victory!  Two words:  Windows Update (which is now conveniently located 17 menu-layers down, in the Control Panel, under System and Security). Windows Update found an audio driver for the AC97 hardware, installed it, and then made a little victory click.  Sound works now.  No need even to reboot.  Smooth!

I am, by the way, a complete Mac fanboi.  Writing positive things about any version of Windows is hard for me.  But I’m trying to report it like I see it.

VirtualBox is a free, open-source application that lets you run one operating system inside another.  I use it at work, to run a relatively bulletproof Ubuntu install on my Windows laptop, and I use it at home, to run Windows XP on my Mac.  I love it, and it generally works very well.

The idea is that you create a virtual machine, and a virtual hard drive, and then you download an .ISO file, and tell that virtual machine that it’s a CD-ROM.

Generally it works great.

So I downoaded the .ISO from Microsoft, and started the install.

The installer loads and starts up fine.  But it quickly stops with a (very attractive!) dialog box that says:

Windows could not collect information for [OSImage] since the specified image file [install.wim] does not exist.

Windows 7 error message

Duhhh….   What?  I will try to figure this out.

Update #1: I reproduced the issue with Parallels, which makes me suspect that the issue may be related to user idiocy.  Like maybe there’s another dickdisk, or something, that I didn’t download, because I’m an idiot.

I will see.

Update #2: Looks like lots of people are having this problem, on a wide range of virtual and real platforms.  Like this thread in Vista Forums.

The suggested fixes that I can find all imply that I have an old, or bad, CD-ROM drive.  Or the CD is corrupt.  This doesn’t make sense for me, since my CD-ROM drive is pretend.

The ISO I’m using is named 7000.0.081212-1400_client_en-us_Ultimate-GB1CULFRE_EN_DVD.iso.  I got it from Microsoft’s technet site.  The funny thing about it is that, evey though I can boot from it, I can’t mount it with the Mac, as I can with other ISO files.  So I can’t burn it to a CD.

I think that there’s something wrong with this ISO.  I am going to try for a new one.

Update #3: I’m trying for another ISO from the Microsoft site.  Problem:  the download link works doesn’t work with Firefox or Safari.

Aaaargh!

Update #4: I finally got a new .ISO.  The problem appears to have been that the old one was corrupt.  I have gotten past the error message about “Windows could not collect bla bla bla…” I am hopeful.  The new .ISO, which has the same name as te previous (bad) one, takes up 2.77 Gb.  The bad one was 677 Mb.  Being a genius and all, I have figured out that maybe there’s a problem with that.

Results: I was able to get Windows 7 working, without drama, on both VirtualBox and Paralells.  Neither one did networking correctly at first.  The default VirtualBox setup chose the wrong network adapter.  I told it to use the Intel 100/1000 adapter, and it worked:  I am able to connect to the Inernet with Windows 7 on the Mac.  Note that with VirtualBox, you have to shut down the virtual machine before you can change the network cards.

Without using a lot of silly quotation marks (e.g. I had to “change” the “network card” in the “computer”) it makes sense:  you can’t rearrange the hardware while the computer is running.  Massive hardware changes require an OS restart.

Networking of the the Parallels installation wasn’t so simple.  I noticed that, in the “About This Mac” application, there are some extra software-based network adapters, with names like  Parallels NAT” and “Parallels Host – Guest.”  I assume that these were installed when I installed the Parallels software, and that they allow the non-existent virtual computer to connect to the real Internet, along with a pretend MAC address and a real IP address.

My problem tonight is that I can’t get the networking to go (in the Parallels install).  The funny thing about Parallels is that you can change the hardware (some of it) while the machine is running.  This is very cool.  But I can’t find a combination of settings that works with Windows 7.

Once can choose Default Adapter or Ethernet Adapter. One can also choose Host-Only Networking or Shared Networking.

Do I understand these?  No, clearly I do not.   I can guess at what they mean…

But I’ve tried them all, and I can’t get Windows 7 to connect to the Internet under Paralells.

So for now, I’m using VirtualBox to make Windows 7 go on my iMac.  It’s significantly limited in many respects.  For example, because there’s no hardware video acceleration (the concept of “hardware” loses meaning when your hardware is all pretend), I dont get the fancy graphics when I switch from one application to another.  But that’s OK:  alt-tab still works, and has the pleasant new benefit of including the desktop.

Update #5: Networking is running fine on Parallels.  See this post, in which I also learn how to SPELL the word “parallel.”

[View with PicLens]

Links to full-sized image files: 1 2 3 4

The first time I met Uncle Billy was at Thanksgiving (or maybe Christmas) dinner at my mother-in-law’s house, in Minnesota.  He showed up with a hard plastic case, light blue, a little bigger than a large laptop computer.

He opened this case, which turned out to hold cutlery, and took out some extremely sharp knives, which he sharpened some more.  He was then given a whole (enormous) turkey, which he carved into perfect symmetric portions, leaving a nearly meat-free carcass behind.

He was kind enough to throw me little bits as he carved, as one would to a dim but focused dog.

We became friends after that, and he let me help carve later turkeys.

Billy passed away recently.  He will be missed.

French bugs on French flowers.

Big doings at Chestnut Grove Baptist Church.

Check it out:

This idea was stolen from Ken Rockwell.