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Creating a Virtual Machine

In the Parallels Workstation window click the New VM Buttonbutton. Now the New Virtual Machine Wizard appears — a series of screens that will help you build and configure a virtual machine — appears.

New VM Wizard Welcome

Click the Next button.

New VM Wizard Operating System

You'll notice the first option, Create a typical VM, is selected. We highly recommend that you leave this selection untouched, especially if you are new to virtualization; it's the easiest way to create a new virtual machine. Click Next.

New VM Wizard Guest OS

On the next screen, you specify what guest operating system you'll be running on your virtual machine. Choose the operating system from the first pop-up menu (for example, Windows), and then choose the version from the second one (Windows 3.1, Windows 95, Windows XP, or whatever).

After specifying the guest OS, click Next.

New VM Wizard Configuration Name

In this final step, you're asked to name your virtual machine. The name doesn't really matter unless you plan to create several VMs running the same operating system; in that case, you'll want to give them distinct names ("Windows XP for Games" and "Windows XP for Work", for example).

This dialog box also lets you specify where you want to store the files that make up your virtual machine. Unless you indicate otherwise, the wizard will name the VM after the guest OS you've specified and store it in the Parallels folder. (You can change this default folder in Parallel Workstation's Edit -> Preferences -> Common dialog box. For more information, consult the full Parallels Workstation 2.2 User Guide by choosing Help -> Contents.)

Click Finish to begin creating the virtual machine. When the new configuration is generated and opened in the Parallels Workstation window, the auto-update feature asks if you want Parallels Workstation to perform regular automatic checks for updates.

Auto-Update

We recommend that you turn this feature so you will be automatically informed when Parallels Workstation updates are released. For more information about the auto-update feature see Auto-Updating Parallels Workstation in Windows or Auto-Updating Parallels Workstation in Linux in the Parallels Workstation 2.2 User Guide. You can access the guide by selecting the Help -> Contents drop-down menu in the Parallels Workstation menu bar.

Next, you will need to activate your copy of Parallels Workstation.