Entertainment For Lively Minds
Removing Parallels
By the end of the weekI will have put everything away, swept the warehouse floor and it will be time to attend to those little jobs that don't ever seem to get done. After the box of duff cables are sorted and either mended or binned I need to have a look at the two Macs I use almost exclusively for video playback. In a rash moment, I installed Parallels and Windows 7. I don't really use Windows and if I accidentally click on a Windows application then Parallels starts Windows, but really slowly. It doesn't always shut down properly either. If I want to remove Parallels and Windows, what's the best way to do it? I understand there is an uninstall function but does it remove everything or will I have to remove the Windows files. Finally, I may, at a later date install Windows with Bootcamp if that makes a difference. Would it be worth reinstalling OSX? There's nothing I particularly need to save so I could do a clean install if that would work better.
As always, thanks for any advice.
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prog awesomeness
I wouldn't; it's one of Yes's better short tracks
Should be straightforward
As far as I know, Parallels keeps al the Windows files together in a virtual disk image - look in your Documents folder and there should be a Parallels folder. Inside that is a file with the extension pvm - that is the complete Windows install. You can just delete that.
In fact you can copy this file off to an external drive and you can then "reinstall" by just opening this file in Parallels - i.e. no need to reinstall Windows. I have done this before when I have did a clean install of Lion on my MacBook.
The actual Parallels application can just be uninstalled like any other mac app - drag it to the trash.
What Chris said...
If you don't want to uninstall, you can set varying degrees of 'interconnectedness' between Parallels and OSX (so that, for instance, folders are shared, Windows apps have icons in the Dock and so on - or not).
I'm running Windows 7 64-bit under Parallels 7 with no issues, it's a good system. Though you really ought to have around 8Gb in your machine to make it run smoothly (Parallels with XP ran okay in 4Gb).
Thanks Chris
I'll give it a go next week.