I installed Parallels 3.0 today and began testing my apps. One of the big features in the new version of Parallels is support for 3D graphics. However, it seems like it may have a little ways to go before it’s stable.
Let me give you a little background. I’m running a virtual machine with Windows Vista under Mac OS X (10.4). On that machine, I’m running SQL Server Express 2005, Microsoft Visual Studio Codename Orcas (Beta 1), Silverlight 1.1 Alpha, and Microsoft Expression Blend. After I installed the new Parallels, I started looking at the new features. One of the first things I did was enable 3D support for my Vista virtual machine under the Video tab of the Virtual Machine configuration. Later, I was testing some applications and realized that Microsoft Expression Blend was no longer opening. When I started the program, it crashed immediately after the splash screen and tried to send an error report to Microsoft. The error was useful as always with a message of:
“Microsoft Expression Has Stopped Working”.
Upon closer inspection, the event details had a type of APPCRASH and a description of “Stopped Working”. Also useful. I uninstalled and reinstalled Microsoft Expression with no luck then uninstalled Expression Blend again. After that, I installed the Microsoft Expression Blend 2 May Preview to see if I got any different results. Still no luck. I started analyzing the error message a little closer and realized that the error appeared to be thrown by a dll called wine3d.dll. Ah, graphics. Always fun.
I’m far from an expert on graphics or WINE but my initial guess is that some of the new 3D implementation in Parallels 3.0 is built on the WINE project. I exited the machine, disabled the 3D capabilities on the virtual machine and rebooted. Bingo, Microsoft Expression works with no problems. I’m sure this will be worked out in a future version since there appear to be a good number of developers running this scenario.
