How to Run Windows on Mac Using Parallels

Hey everybody what's up? In this video I'll be showing you how to install Windows and how to run Windows on your mac. It's very easy to do. It's using an awesome application called Parallels. This is a virtualization program for your mac. It allows you to run Windows seamlessly on your mac so you can pretty much run both operating systems at the same time. You don't have to boot into a separate hard drive or boot into Boot Camp or anything like that. Parallels is the best and easiest way to run Windows on your mac virtually. So the first thing you want to do is click the link in the description below or the video annotation on your screen, and that will take you to Parallels website that you're seeing right now. And you can get Parallels Desktop 8 at a special discount currently while I'm making this video. It's a limited time offer so if you're still seeing the discount make sure you go ahead and grab this right now. Or you can download it and you can try it out for free for 14 days, but if you want to use your Windows machine longer than 14 days you're going to make sure you want to buy it. So go ahead and get Parallels, download it and install it on your Mac. And you'll also need a Windows install disc along with a valid serial number for Windows. If you don't already have that you can actually click the link in the description below. I'll have one as well for Amazon where you can order a Windows 7 install disc, and it comes with a valid serial number so you can install Windows on the Parallels application and you can run it virtually within your Mac. So those are the two things you need. Both links are in the description below. You'll need to download and install Parallels on your Mac, and you'll also need a Windows install disc along with a valid serial number. So once you have Parallels installed you're going to open it up, and you'll see this screen for the first time. And depending on what you're going to do, you can actually migrate Windows from a PC or you can install Windows from a DVD or image file. So that's what we're going to do right now. I'll choose that and select Continue. And here if you have a Windows install disc you can insert it into your Mac DVD drive and it will show up here and you just click Continue. But for me I actually have a Windows image file so I'm going to choose that. And then we'll click Continue. Okay if you want to go ahead and enter the product key for Windows you can do that on this screen right here, but I am going to uncheck these and do that later. So I'm uncheck these and then hit Continue. Here you can choose how you want the virtual Windows machine to behave. You can have it where you can run Windows applications without opening up the Windows desktop. Or you can actually have it all in one single virtual program. I like to have it all in one so I'll choose Like a PC and then click Continue. And here you can choose the virtual machine's name. Normally all the defaults will be fine so you can just click Continue. Okay and Parallels will load the disc or image file. Okay and here we can start the Windows set up and we can choose our language and then choose Next. Choose Install Now. Select I accept then Next. Choose Custom (Advanced). Choose Disk 0 then click Next. And while that's installing I'm going to show you some of the options that Parallels has so if you click the settings button down here it will bring up the options for this Windows 7 virtual machine that you're setting up right now. Some of these settings cannot be changed until the virtual machine is shut down. So once you shut the virtual machine down after it's installing you will be able to go in here and change some of these. But here's an overview of what all you can change: the name. You can allocate a certain amount of memory to give the virtual machine while it's running. Also you can allocate the number of CPU cores for the virtual machine here. And here is the total size of the virtual machine, so the virtual hard drive. It's actually expandable so it expands as it needs to. Then if you go to the Options tab you can see all kinds of different categories that you can change. I'll briefly go over these so you can actually see an example of what Parallels has to offer as far as features go. And you can actually customize it quite a bit. So Startup and Shutdown has a few options that you can change here. Optimization, you can change this for faster virtual machine or faster Mac. Security, backup, sharing, applications, coherence, full screen, modality, and advanced. So if you want to go in here in the options and tweak it and customize it you can do that as much to your liking as you want. And finally you have the Hardware tab where you can go in here and see what it's sharing as far as what Mac hardware is shared with your virtual machine. So you can see you can use the DVD drive within Windows. You can use the virtual hard drive, the network. You'll be able to access the Internet just as you would with your Mac, the sound and also USB and Bluetooth. You can actually use your iSight web cam in Windows. That's an awesome feature of Parallels that I really like. That's a basic overview of the Parallels virtual machine options that you have. So I'll just close out of here. So now we'll just sit back, relax and let Windows finish installing. Okay and Windows will perform a restart automatically after it gets done installing the first main files. Now Windows is completing the installation. Overall this Windows installation should not take long at all. Mine's taking maybe 15 minutes. Okay it's going to restart one last time. Okay now it's entering the final stages of the installation. Alright here you can start setting up Windows so you can type a username that you want to use. I'll just choose Andy because that is my name then click Next. Type in a password if you want. I don't want a password. And if you didn't already enter the product key earlier you can enter it here. I'm actually going to skip this step and I'll just activate mine later. Here we're going to choose recommended settings. Here you can choose your time zone. Click Next. Choose whatever network you're currently connected to. It will automatically set up your network. And finally it's preparing our desktop. Okay and the Windows installation is finally done. Now we're in Windows here. As you can see it's running virtually on my Mac so it's just like Windows in its own application. The mouse, see how it's seamless. I can move my mouse over and when it goes out of the edge of the virtual screen it's now on my Mac and it's my Mac mouse again. And then when I go over the screen it's the Windows mouse so that's the seamless integration in action. And you can also see that it is already connected to the network. It's bridging the network from the Mac so I can open up Internet Explorer here and show you that it will go out to the Internet. And there's MSN. Parallels really makes this an easy setup, and everything is automatically set up through Parallels. It all does it in the background for you. That's why I think Parallels is the best application that you can use when you want to run Windows on a Mac. Very simple setup, very easy to use, seamless integration, and it works perfectly. I've never had a problem with it. Not to mention you can pretty much use all your Mac hardware in the Windows virtual machine like your webcam and Bluetooth and all that good stuff. And look there it's already downloading and installing Windows updates. Now if you want to make the Windows virtual machine full screen just go up to the top right and click these arrows and it will go into fullscreen. Now if you want to change the resolution so it'll fit the whole screen right-click, go to screen resolution and change it to whatever resolution that your Mac has. So I'll change mine to 1440 by 900. Click OK. Keep changes and there it is. There's my Windows machine full-screen. It looks like I'm booted into Windows on my Mac. So as you can see I'm in Windows. I can do anything I want like I'm running a Windows machine, but I'm on a MacBook Pro. And if I do the gesture where I swipe four fingers up I can actually click back on my Mac desktop and I'm back in my Mac. So I can very easily switch between the two environments very easily. Now I got Windows, got Mac. So that is awesome. If you don't have a trackpad with gestures once you're in Windows full screen you can actually just move the mouse up to the very top. Keep it there for a second and you'll see the Parallels desktop Mac application button so you just click it. And then you can move over to the right under View and then Exit Full-screen. And it will bring Windows back down to a smaller screen and then you can go back into full screen like that. Also when you're in the Windows virtual machine full-screen you can go down to the bottom and you will have your Mac dock. So that is how to install and run Windows on a Mac using Parallels. It's the absolute best way to do it. So if you don't have Parallels already click the link in the description below, download, and install it. I'm sure you'll love it. You can run Windows very easily, very seamlessly and you won't have to deal with any mess like Bootcamp or anything like that. Thank you so much for watching. If you enjoyed this video make sure you give it a Like, give it a thumbs-up. I really appreciate it. It helps me out a lot, and make sure you subscribe to my channel so you're notified when I upload more helpful videos like this in the future. My name is Andy from MyTechMethods.com. Keep having fun out there. I will talk to you guys and girls later. Bye.