• This will bring up a gray screen that will show erros when readon the SCSI Harddrive and CDROM then continue on to the Network boot. Wait for this screen to disappear showing a black screen that end with “Shell”. Once at this screen select the “Virtual Machine” menu and attach the USB device containing the bootable Mountain Lion OS.
• Parallels White Screen Software Right On. You can even combine the two desktops, if you want, and run Windows software right on your Mac desktop from your Macs dock. There are other virtual machine options available to Mac users, including the open source VirtualBox, but Parallels is different in that its designed exclusively with Mac users in.
• I have had parallels on my mac for a few years now and not had any problems with it, however for the past few days every time I try to run parallels on my mac, it tries to load up and then gets stuck on a grey screen. The blue loading circle also seems stuck as its not turning.

How to Run Windows on Mac: Try Parallels Desktop: Microsoft Office for Windows or IE on your Mac? Yeah, i can bring up single user mode but it wont let me enter in anything. It scrolls a bunch of jiberish then freezes, scrolls more jiberish and freezes again.then it just restarts itself and goes back to the grey screen. Since i made my first post 30 minutes ago, it left the grey screen now its at a blue screen thats blinking with the wheel at the bottom that disappears every 5 seconds.

Guest blog by Dishant Tripathi, Parallels Support Team

In this post, I’ll guide you through configuring the ideal settings needed for you to enjoy the best display experience with Parallels Desktop running on your Mac.

First, and most important, the default settings should be just fine. But in certain cases…well, you know how mysterious things can happen with software. Everything could’ve been working fine yesterday, but today you wake up and decide to check your email in your virtual machine and all the fonts and icons in Windows are either too BIGto digest or just toosmall to read.The question is, how does this happen?

So, what do we do next? Simple! We pull out our guns to shoot the rat causing this problem. But again, who’s the rat here? Let’s guess…

Is it the Mac? No, your Mac has always worked great! It’s still too shiny to blame. Then it must be Windows or your Windows applications, right? Wait… What if it’s Parallels Desktop?

Actually, it’s none of these. Or all of these. First of all, Windows applications are not designed for Retina displays, as Microsoft does not support it at all (at least for now). This issue occurred because some Windows applications are not adapted for HiDPi resolution. So the problem is not with the application or Parallels Desktop, this is just the way your virtualized Windows shows applications on a Retina display.

Let me separate display resolution related issues into two types, depending on if it’s a Retina conflict or not.

Type 1

Follow the advice below if…

• Fonts in your Windows VM look blurry
• Everything looks very small or very big in your Windows VM

Here’s a short list of the optimal settings to get this fixed:

In the Mac menu, go to Actions (Virtual Machine Menuin older versions of Parallels Desktop) → Configure → Hardware → Video and…

For Windows 8.1 and 10:

Check the Enable Retina Resolution option for your VM. Windows will immediately change its resolution, though a VM reboot is recommended.

For Windows 8, 7 and earlier:

Set the Best for Retina option and restart Windows.

Note: If you’ve changed Windows scaling options manually before, there’s a chance that after enabling Retina support Windows will not scale properly.

To check scaling options, right-click on Windows Desktop → Screen Resolution →Make text or other items larger or smaller and set it to 200% scaling.

Setting 200% scaling in the VM will also fix the small fonts problem, but if you still experience this issue with small fonts in a particular Windows program, then you might need to check it again by setting the scaling back to 100%.

Once these settings are applied, please restart your VM.

Type 2

Follow the advice below if…

• Some of your programs in the Windows VM don’t look right:
  • Either the buttons aren’t displayed properly,
  • Some are missing,
  • Or your program’s interface (GUI) looks broken in general.

These programs can be any Windows-based applications like CAD, photo editors, QuickBooks or any other Windows-based program that doesn’t support high DPI resolution.

Annoying? Let’s fix it:

For Windows 8:

Adjust your Windows VM’s configuration settings: go to Hardware → Video and change the Retina setting from Best for Retina (or More Space) to Scaled (HiDPi disabled).

For Windows 8.1 and Windows 10:

Parallels For Mac Gray Screen Protector

Just uncheck the Enable Retina Resolution option. To check the Windows VM’s scaling settings: right-click on Windows Desktop → Screen Resolution → Make text or other items larger or smaller → set 100% scaling and hit Apply and Sign Off.

So, all is said and done! The hunt is over. After applying the settings above, all Windows-based programs will be displayed properly in a 1:1 scale ratio.

We hope this blog helped you optimize your VM screen resolution. For more tips and tricks, follow Parallels Support on Twitter! Try Parallels Desktop for Mac, you can download our free 14-day trial.

If you want to use Windows 10 on a Mac with either Parallels Desktop or VMware Fusion, you’ll have to strongly consider buying a new version of your virtualization software of choice.

Parallels on Wednesday this week is releasing its latest upgrade, Parallels Desktop 11 for Mac, with perpetual licenses costing $79.99 per device (or $49.99 if you're upgrading from version 9 or 10). VMware should be following up soon with its next version, Fusion 8.

You may have spent money on either Parallels 10 or Fusion 7 just a year ago, but that year-old software will only provide bare-bones support for Windows 10, which Microsoft released last month.

A big selling point of Parallels is its “Coherence' mode, which lets you run Windows applications on a Mac as if they were native Mac applications. With Coherence Mode or VMware Fusion’s analogous Unity, each Windows application gets its own window, making it feel like you’re using just one operating system even though you’re actually using applications from both Windows and Mac.

But without Coherence or Unity mode enabled, all Windows applications are isolated in a single window that contains the whole Windows operating system. That’s the situation with Windows 10 on the year-old editions of Parallels and Fusion. You can run Windows 10 in a single window, but Coherence and Unity modes are crippled.

“With Parallels Desktop 10, we offer full support for Windows 10 in full-screen and window mode, but we do not in Coherence mode and that will not be changing,” Parallels spokesperson John Uppendahl told Ars in a phone interview.

Upgrading to Windows 10 from previous versions of Windows is free, and therefore quite tempting. But trying to use Windows 10 in Coherence Mode on Parallels 10 leads to things like this:

Things were slightly different if I changed a setting to make Parallels think I was running Windows 8.1, allowing me to turn on the 'Windows 7 Look.' This involves running Stardock's Start8 and ModernMix applications, which are bundled with Parallels. With this setup, opening the Start menu wouldn't take me out of my primary desktop, but it was partially hidden by the Mac's dock, and trying to search for applications in the menu simply closed it. It was possible to open Metro/Modern applications on the Mac's primary desktop, but after minimizing an application I wasn't able to re-open it by clicking its dock icon.

Naturally, Parallels has new features in version 11 that it wants users to pay for, such as integration with Microsoft's Cortana virtual assistant and a new power-saving travel mode. Version 11 also strips some developer-focused features out of the basic edition and puts them in a 'Pro' edition that can be pricier depending on how often you like to upgrade; more on that later.

Parallels says offering any Coherence support for Windows 10 on last year’s version is too difficult. Even a working Start menu and the ability to use Windows applications as if they were Mac ones isn't supported.

Parallels For Mac Gray Screen Free

“Truly speaking, that requires a lot of work for us,” said Parallels VP of Desktop Virtualization Nick Dobrovolskiy.

Although the Windows 10 Start Menu looks similar to the one in Windows 7, Microsoft has “significantly changed” how it works on the back end, he said.

The situation is similar on VMware Fusion 7. I wasn't always able to put Windows 10 into Unity mode, but when I successfully did so the software placed this giant gray mass over my Mac screen:

VMware is “aware of some limitations with regards to Windows 10 and the Unity view mode,” a company spokesperson told us, adding that single-monitor configurations work better than multiple-monitor ones. “There are some fundamental changes that Microsoft made to how the Windows 10 desktop is drawn that we are actively working to adapt to. Fusion 8 improves upon this situation dramatically, and we look forward to sharing more of the great new features we have in store with you soon.”

VirtualBox, the free, open source virtualization software from Oracle, hasn’t been updated to run Windows 10 on Mac in its version of Coherence (VirtualBox calls it “Seamless' mode). We’ve asked Oracle when it plans to add that support and will provide an update if we get one.

UPDATE: Oracle told us that it made some changes for Windows 10 in VirtualBox 5.0.2 but it still considers Windows 10 support to be a 'tech preview,' both as a host and guest operating system. 'We expect to provide formal support within the next few Oracle VM VirtualBox 5.0 maintenance releases,' Oracle said. 'Regarding Seamless mode—that is also planned to work with Windows 10 once its support is announced.'

Decisions...

If you like keeping Windows separate from Mac, there's no problem. You can upgrade to Windows 10 without a second thought as it should work just fine on VirtualBox or previous versions of Parallels and VMware.

But if you like having Windows and Mac integrated, you have a decision to make. If you’re happily using Windows 8.1 on last year’s version of Parallels or VMware, there’s nothing wrong with not upgrading. You’ll still be able to use Microsoft Office and just about any other Windows applications you desire on your Mac.

If you want Windows 10 and that “new” Start Menu and integration with Microsoft’s Cortana, maybe it’s worth paying Parallels or VMware for their latest software. But if that’s your plan, it’s worth doing a free trial of the new software instead of paying to upgrade immediately, just in case you run into bugs. (Parallels offers a two-week free trial, which should be available at this link.)

It's not uncommon for the first release of a major new version to have bugs for the first few weeks or so. That's been the case with Windows 10 itself.

When I upgraded to Parallels 10 a year ago, the virtualization software kept giving me critical error messages for no apparent reason. I also had constant trouble with Microsoft Outlook e-mail messages disappearing behind the main Outlook window. In both cases I contacted Parallels support; while they weren’t able to fix my problems immediately, they did identify a problem at “the code level” that was causing the weird Outlook behavior.

Parallels For Mac Gray Screen

The bugs finally went away after a few months and a few updates, and now Windows 8.1 is working quite well on Parallels Desktop 10. I've learned that waiting is often the best course.

Parallels For Mac Gray Screen Download

Parallels didn’t offer us early access to version 11, but gave us a rundown of new features:

• Performance improvements for Windows launch and shutdown, file operations, and suspension of virtual machines.
• 'Always on Cortana' lets users control either Windows or Mac applications with Microsoft's new virtual assistant.
• Travel mode extends battery life 'up to 25 percent by temporarily shutting off select resources that drain power.'
• The Mac's Quick Look feature (double tap the space bar to preview a document) is extended to Windows files.
• Force Touch gesture support that enables Quick Look or looking up the definition of a word, on Macs with the appropriate trackpad.
• When right-clicking a Windows application icon in the Mac dock, the user can see recent documents in the menu or create new ones.
• Mac location services are made available to Windows applications.
• Synchronization of volume between OS X and the virtual machine.
• Easier method to make a Windows application the default application for opening a specific file type.

Developer features now restricted to “Pro” edition

Parallels also has a new 'Parallels Desktop 11 for Mac Pro' edition aimed at developers and business users. This is available only with a subscription, costing $99.99 per year for new customers. Anyone upgrading from Parallels 9 or 10 can get the Pro version for $49.99 per year. With the subscription, you can upgrade to future versions while paying the same amount each year.

Oddly, upgrading from Parallels 9 or 10 gets you the $49.99 yearly pricing indefinitely, but new customers or those upgrading from version 8 or earlier have to pay $99.99 every year going forward. 'Parallels Desktop 9 and 10 customers can upgrade to a special offer of Parallels Desktop for Mac Pro Edition for $49.99/year for life, instead of the regular $99.99/year price,' Uppendahl told Ars. 'The Pro Edition is $99.99/year for new customers, including subsequent years.'

This Pro edition includes some features that used to be available in the basic version of Parallels. Last year's version of Parallels allowed virtual machines with up to 16 virtual CPUs and 64GB of RAM. Now only the Pro edition can make virtual machines that big; the non-Pro edition goes up to 4 CPUs and 8GB of RAM.

'For regular users, we found that what we are putting in Parallels Desktop 11 is more than sufficient,' Uppendahl said.

Linked clones and nested virtualization for Linux guests, both available in the basic Parallels last year, are now restricted to 'Pro.'

New features for the Pro edition include integration with developer tools Docker, Visual Studio, Chef, Jenkins, and Vagrant. Macs can share business cloud storage with Windows with the Pro edition's support for Box and the business editions of Dropbox and OneDrive.

Other Pro features include 'Additional user profiles for developers, power users and testers for optimal configuration for their particular scenarios; Advanced networking tools and configuration for virtual networks to test complex networking scenarios, including the ability to simulate some network instabilities; Headless mode for running virtual machines in the background without user interface; and 24/7 phone and email support,' Parallels said.

Finally, Parallels has a new business edition that includes all the Pro features plus centralized management of virtual machines, a Web-based license management portal, business-class support, and the ability to enforce security policies on USB devices. The business edition is available for $99.99 per year.