Parallels Desktop Upgrade to Windows 7 review

In practice this worked mostly, but not completely. When we upgraded XP, all of our programs but one migrated perfectly. The one, Ahead Nero 7, simply disappeared. The only way to use it was by opening the Parallels virtual machine containing the copy of our old OS. Fortunately, the virtual machine was clever enough give Nero direct access to the optical drive, otherwise we wouldn’t have been able to use our trusty old software at all.

Apart from this glitch, everything worked fine. All of the programs we used under XP worked on Windows 7. This included some programs that weren’t listed as Windows 7 compatible, which is possible because Parallels installs its own XP virtualisation mode. If a bit of software won’t run under Windows 7, all you have to is open the Parallels Program Switcher and you can get it to run under the Windows XP mode.

By comparison, the first time we upgraded from Vista we had some real problems. For no obvious reason Parallels stopped working half way through the upgrade. We were left with some functioning programs and some only half-migrated that wouldn’t run at all. Adobe Dreamweaver helpfully told us that it had experienced a “catastrophic” error with its licencing system and we would have to reinstall.

We started the process again, this time with more luck. Second time around the process worked as it was supposed to and our old programs and settings appearing as if by magic under Windows 7. Given, though, that the upgrade process takes several hours (overnight, if you have a slow PC) we weren’t thrilled to have to repeat it.

Even with the hiccoughs we experienced, using Parallels Desktop Upgrade to Windows 7 to move our old programs over to Windows 7 was a lot quicker than reinstalling them all by hand. It’s a good program, if you’ve got loads of old applications, but it didn’t work as seamlessly as we’d expected from the blurb.