Industry guru Dave Taylor answers free tech support questions about a wide variety of business and technical topics, including blogging, Google AdSense, MySpace, Sony PSP, Apple iPod, Mp3 players, management, Linux, SEO, Mac OS X, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Microsoft Windows.

Still befuddled? Get immediate live tech support with SupportSpace!

Parallels on Mac: Connect USB Devices and Right Click?

I have a macbook pro. Recently I installed parallels desktop on it. But the problem i have is when I connect a usb device to my macbook it is not being detected in the windows parallel desktop. Also I have no idea how to get right click options in the parallel windows desktop. Can you please help me. Thank you for your help in advance.

Dave's Answer:

I have to admit that I was stymied for a long time about how to right-click within Parallels, a great virtualization application available for Mac OS X that lets you run Microsoft Windows XP, Windows Vista, Linux and a variety of other operating systems within Mac OS X. Plug in an external two-button mouse, of course, and the right click just works, but within Parallels?

The secret is to hold down the Control-Shift buttons when you click on the mouse within Parallels. I found that out by actually reading their documentation (imagine!) after puzzling through the problem for far too many hours. Your Control key might well be labeled "Ctrl" on your MacBook Pro, as it is with mine, of course.

The USB device question is straightforward too. In the Preferences for Parallels you can specify whether you want USB devices to be auto-connected upon detection or not. Sounds like you have this option turned off. To change it, you need to shut down your virtual machine, if it's running, and then choose Edit --> Virtual Machine..., within which you'll find one of the options is:

Parallels for Mac OS X: Edit Virtual Machine: Configuration Editor: USB Controller

On mine you can see that I have my Connection Options set to "Connect to Guest OS": yours is set to "Connect to Mac OS" instead. A good third alternative, by the way, is to simply choose the option "Ask me what to do", which means that every time it detects a new USB device, you'll have the option of letting Parallels have it or let Mac OS X have it.

Finally, if you are running Parallels and you find that your USB devices are being captured by Mac OS X but not your virtual guest OS, you can also go to the Devices menu, find the peripheral in question, and choose it to have Parallels wrest control from Mac OS X and hand it to your guest operating system. If the peripheral is checked, Parallels owns it, and if it's not checked, the Mac operating system owns it:

Parallels for Mac OS X: Devices: USB Devices: Apple iPhone

As you can see, Parallels has stolen control of my Apple iPhone from the Mac operating system and the Mac side can't see it. Interestingly, when hooked up this way, the phone doesn't appear to charge from the USB connection, but when I release it from Parallels (by simply selecting it in this Devices menu) it syncs up with iTunes on my Mac and charges from the USB cable too.

That should get you going a bit more efficiently with Parallels. Enjoy!

Help others find this article at Del.icio.us, Digg, Netscape, Reddit, and Simpy.

Categorized: Mac OS X Help (Article 7494)
Tagged: guest os, parallels desktop, virtual machines
Previous: How can I add an Amazon search box to my web page?
Next: Does my PC have a DVD player?

Subscribe!

Never miss another useful Q&A article again! Subscribe to AskDaveTaylor with Google Reader.

Comments

Is your advice more geared towards the (at the time of this post) Parallels 3? Because I'm running Parallels 2 and I don't see the options to choose between these 3:
"Connect to Guest OS"
"Connect to Mac OS"
"Ask me what to do"

I only have a checkbox under connection options that says: Connect USB Devices automatically.

I'm still struggling with getting my Parallels to see the external HD that I'm connecting.

Before, I couldn't get Parallels to notice the external HD when I connected it. By finding this site, I found out I needed to go into this configuration editor and select "Connect USB Devices automatically." However, the problem's still not solved. When I connect an external USB, it says that someone else is trying to access it (I assume the Mac). So I'm still trying to figure out how to get this to work.

One more thing I think you should mention. I coudln't get to the configuration editor because everytime I opened parallels, it would automatically start the windows vista I have installed - and you can't edit while windows vista is running. So what you have to do (which I found out by reading the manual) is hold down the command key and double click on parallels, and keep holding down the command key.. and that'll allow you to start parallels without starting vista.

Posted by: Shahryar at August 29, 2007 8:26 AM

Just an update on my problems with connecting an external USB to parallels, according to this:
http://kb.parallels.com/entry/42/503/

It seems that maybe it has to do with the parallel builds responding to the latest Mac OS X 10.4

When I get home from work, I will try to update parallels and see if the problem gets solved.

- - -

Also, in my earlier post, I mentioned holding down the command button while starting up parallels. This is for starting up the parallels by (in my case at least) double clicking on vista lite.pvs. When I open parallels using the paralles desktop icon though, I don't need to worry about holding down the command button because parallels starts without automatically launching the virtual machine

Posted by: Shahryar at August 29, 2007 2:44 PM

A more elegant solution to the right-click problem.. Go to System Preferences -> Keyboard & Mouse -> Trackpad, and turn on "For secondary clicks, place two fingers on the trackpad then click the button." This works on all Macs that support two-finger scrolling.

Posted by: dvd at December 7, 2007 5:49 PM

I have a lot to say, but ...

I have a lot to say, and questions of my own for that matter, but most of all I'd like to say thank you for all your efforts on this Web site by buying you a chai!

I do have a comment, now that you mention it!