can't get the menu bar

I just got a new Mac (running Snow Leopard, 10.6.8) and migrated my stuff from my old Mac. The old parallels won't run on it, so I installed the trial version (6) to see if it works OK before buying the new version.

My old legacy Windows program runs, but I can not figure out how to do many things, included exiting parallels, attaching/releasing devices, and changing from coherance view. The problem seems to be that the parallels menu bar does not appear at the top of my screen. I refer to the bar with the apple in the upper left corner, various hyroglyphics in the upper right, and menu items for whatever piece of software is on top. But there seems to be no way to get the parallels menu on top. Ctrl-Tab does not show parallels as a window I can switch to. So at the moment, the trial version is getting a very low grade.

Any ideas?

 

You're running in fullscreen mode. Use control-option-shift to go to Coherence or just control-option to view the menubar. You can also use option-return to go to windowed mode. You can go to your VM's preferences to enable hot corners for fullscreen mode that appear when you hover your cursor in the corner.

Even in fullscreen mode, you can command-tab to another application and right-click PD in the Dock to access all options for your VM.

Steve

 

If I was in full screen mode, wouldn't I see the Windows desktop rather than just the bar with the start button at the bottom of the screen?

Control-option-shift does nothing. Neither does control-option.

How do I go to VM preferences? Don't I need the parallels menu for that?

I have no idea what "hot corners" are, but hovering my cursor in the corner does nothing.

How do I right click? I am using a Mac. It used to be shift-cntrl-click, but that does not seem to work.

 

I don't understand what you mean by "wouldn't I see the Windows desktop rather than just the bar with the start button at the bottom of the screen?" You'd see both if you were in fullscreen. What exactly are you seeing? Do you see your Mac desktop as well as the Windows taskbar with the start menu or do you not see your Mac desktop at all? Maybe you can attach a screenshot (command-shift-3).

You go to your VM preferences from the Virtual Machine menu in Parallels. But if you don't see the menus, obviously you can't go to them.

You control-click to do a right-click if you don't have a two button mouse.

Steve

 

Can't get menu bar

I have the same problem. Parallels runs fine and I believe I am i coherence mode. However, there is no parallels menu bar at the top. How do I get this? I want to download the software upgrade and do several other things I cannot do (e.g. change the mode) without the menu

 

I was in something called "crystal mode". The menu bar at the top never showed the parallels menu, but there was an icon (two vertical red bars) among the icons on the upper right. Clicking on that icon (or maybe it was alt-click) let me get to "virtual machine", then "configure", then "coherence", and I could uncheck the "crystal mode" box. Problem solved.