Question: Mapping Windows drives via Parallels on Mac

[Neville Bailey]

I have a Pastel client that has a Macbook Pro laptop, and has Windows 10 installed via Parallels on the laptop.

The client's laptop is connected to a local area network and the main Pastel computer is a Windows laptop.

Normally, in a fully-Windows network environment, I would share the Pastel folder on the main computer and then, from each workstation connected to the network, I would map a drive to that shared Pastel folder. The path of the mapped drive would be something like //Server-PC/Pastel14, where "Server-PC" is the computer name of the main computer. It is critical that the main computer's name reflects in the mapped drive path, in order for Pastel to be registered correctly on the workstations.

Then I would register Pastel on each workstation via the mapped drive.

In this environment, I opened Windows via Parallels, and tried to map a drive in the usual way, by typing in //Server-PC/Pastel14. The usual dialog box opened, asking for the username and password for "Server-PC", which I entered, but I got the message stating that the password was incorrect, even though it was correct.

After some Googling, I found out that I first need to share a custom folder in Mac OS, pointing to the Pastel14 folder on "Server-PC". I managed to do that and I could browse within the Pastel14 folder using Mac's Finder. So far so good.

I then opened Windows 10 via Parallels and opened "My PC" and I saw that a mapped drive W: was automatically created, with the mapped path as //Mac/Pastel14.

This is where I have a problem. When I tried to register Pastel, I used that W: drive and browsed to the Custom/Registration folder within Pastel14, but the registration failed. It failed because the mapped drive path was //Mac/Pastel14 instead of //Server-PC/Pastel14.

Anybody have a solution to this?

[irneb]

Not sure about parallels. I haven't used it at all. Though at a gues it should have at least the same network capabilities as VM Ware Player and Virtual box - both of which I've used for several years now. So this may just work similarly:

From the docs it seems that there is definitely some similar settings available. http://download.parallels.com/deskto...uide/22249.htm

The default "Sharing" setting "should" work, but if set to Host Only mode - that means the VM cannot see any network except for shares on the host computer. If the default "Shared Network" mode doesn't work (i.e. same as WMW/VB's default NAT setting which simply uses the host's connection as if shared onto the VM) doesn't work, then select the Bridged Ethernet Network - it should "attach" the VM directly to the router (as if it's another computer with its own cable / WiFi connection).