Nov 20, '06 07:30:00AM • Contributed by: n6ber
If you want to share a copy of Parallels running Windows XP with multiple users on one Mac, you sooner or later run into the problem where one user may have left Parallels running, so another user can't start it. There is an easy way to get around this, and although it may sound strange, it works great.
By far the best way I've found to share a Parallels session is to run it in its own user space, and have the Mac users use the free Remote Desktop Connection (RDC) app to connect to it. That way, even if another user was logged into the Windows XP session, another user can still login using the XP switches.
Here is how you set it up:
- Create a new OS X user just for Parallels.
- Launch Parallels Desktop while logged in as that user. Later, if you want, you can have that user autostart Parallels on login.
- Load Windows XP, and set a fixed IP for its network address.
- Install the latest version of Microsoft RDC from the above link.
- With your Windows XP virtual machine (VM) running, any user can start an RDC session (using the fixed IP address) to the VM. You never have to worry about rights or more than one user trying to start the same VM. You don't have to shut down other users. You just use Windows' user switching tool once you connect using RDC. Just make sure that all the XP users have been added to the system's Remote tab, or they can't login.
