OSX - Parallels - Windows 7 - Pangolin

Bob@Pangolin

Staff member
Hi Guys, I hear mixed experiences regarding running LD2000, Livepro, Quickshow, Showtime and Beyond on OSX in virtual machines.
My experiences with Mac and Pangolin Software is Great!

I hate to use bootcamp. Those restarts cost me to much time. I prefer to do everything in a virtual machine.

In this case I can't speak on behalf of Pangolin as these are my personal experiences,
But I definitively wanted to share this information with you cause I think a lot of people can benefit from this information.

Dus far, I have tested this on 5 Apple Mac Machines.
All 5 are/where running without any issues!

Machines;
- Mac mini i5 duo core late 2012
- Macbook pro early 2011 15"
- Macbook pro Late 2012 15"
- Macbook pro early 2011 17"
- Macbook pro Late 2011 17"​

So, how do I do it?

Replace the Hard drive for an fast SSD (Solid State Disk)
In these tests I have used the following SSD's;
- OCZ vertex 4
- Samsung Pro 830
- Samsung Pro 840​
And reinstalled OSX (Mountain) Lion.

Optimize OSX for SSD usage! you can read here how to do this.
(OSX does not enable trim if there is no apple logo on the hard-drive)

Replaced the memory for 16Gb.
With an SSD you have higher internal file transfer rates.
If you limit this by having not enough memory, problems can occur.
If you only run 1 Virtual machine, 8 should be enough, but better 16Gb (mac compatible memory)

Okay so now our hardware is setup correctly and OSX is running.

Configure the power settings of your mac as follow;
- when the power cable is connected, never shutdown the hard drive
- when the power cable is connected, never shutdown the monitor​

Install parallels 8
Create a new virtual machine.
Configure the virtual machine as follow;

- Tab general
- Assign 3072 Mb internal memory
- Assign 2 CPU's
- Disk space of 30Gb should be more than enough.​
- Tab options
- optimization
- Faster virtual machine
- Disable Adaptive Hypervisor
- Tune windows for speed​
- Power
- Better performance
- Free space: Yes​
- Coherence
- Use crystal mode : No
- Show windows notification area in menu bar: No
- Allow applications to switch to full screen : Yes
- Disable Windows Aero: No​
- Tab hardware
- Video memory 512Mb
- 3D acceleration , enabled on DirectX10​
- Tab network
- Connected: yes
- Default Adapter

(In case of .net devices; Add another network card here with the same settings shown above.)

After this,
Install Windows 7 X64 Home premium or better in this virtual machine.
After the installation of Windows, make sure that the "Parallels Windows client tools" are installed into Windows as well.
(This will probably done automatically, but make sure they are)

Go to full screen mode in the freshly installed Windows virtual machine,

Optimize windows by doing the following;
- Disable all windows sounds
- Remove the background
- Disable user account control
- Disable power management, turn everything to: always on.
- Disable IPv6 on all interfaces.
- Don't install an active virus scanner but use the free passive one of MS (link)
- Configure 1 of the network cards to a fixed ip , for example 192.168.1.1.
(Make sure its in the same range of your fixed .net devices)​

Saves you setting up networks everywhere.
The DHCP server will act with the network, and your fixed IP network card will connect over that same network with the .net devices.
You almost always have connection without issues


- Install the Windows 7 network fix (even only for Beyond)
- Install the latest version of Beyond, Quickshow , LD2000 , Livepro and all your other utilities.

My choice would be NOT to surf the internet on this virtual machine.
As this image is for production purposes, I hate to have viruses on this.
I would advice you to create an Parallels template of the virtual machine at this time.(Manual found here)
So you can create a new one in seconds, might something go wrong (never needed to do that btw).

The following I had running without any problems on various virtual machines;

- Quickshow with output on multiple controllers.
- Beyond with output on multiple controllers
- Livepro with output on multiple controllers
- Showtime with output on multiple controllers
- Beyond 3D
- The APC40 with Livepro and Beyond
- USB devices through an Cat5 extender

A yes, and at the same time I was running Photoshop, Resolume VJ and Serato Itch with there midi controllers attached in OSX. All at the same time!!

Hope this helps someone else as well.

Greets,

Bob

PS. I do advice everyone to use legal software.
Applications downloaded from pirate sources could be contaminated.
They could contain backdoors which could effectively disrupt network communication.
Or even worse, damage your Virtual Machine or OSX it self!
 
Last edited by a moderator:
I use parallels when using beyond at home, but in a live situation i do take the time to reboot into win7 :)

Both works like a charm tho. :D

You can add early 2010 to the list of working models. i7 with 8 gb ram
 
I'm just in the process of leaving Windows behind in favour of Mac and have just purchased a 3.4Ghz i7 iMac with 3TB Fusion drive and 16Gb RAM.

Obviously I need to get Windows working on the Mac ASAP so I can run all my Pangolin Laser Software. I've just bought a full (not OEM) licensed version of Windows 7 64bit Professional and was thinking of using VMWare Fusion rather than parallels as it's a fair bit cheaper and seems to get good reports.

Has anyone any experiences with Fusion, or should I go the Parallels route? If Parallels, what makes it better than Fusion?

Cheers

Jem
 
Just to conclude what I was saying in the last post...

VM Fusion and Windows 7 Pro' are now successfully installed on my iMac, as are QS and Beyond. All working fine with the FB3 in a virtual environment, haven't had chance to try the QM2000.net as yet, but I don't forsee any major problems.

Cheers

Jem
 
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