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Connect PCI Devices Directly to Virtual Machines

If you're using Parallels Workstation Extreme and the host computer has an Intel VT-d chipset, you can assign the PCI Express (PCIe) devices of the host computer directly to your virtual machines.

To connect a PCIe device to a virtual machine

  1. Assign the device to virtual machines in the Intel VT-d pane of Parallels Workstation Preferences.

    Note: You must have at least two adapters of the same type (video or network). When you assign one adapter to a virtual machine, it becomes invisible to the host operating system. The other adapter must be left to the host computer.

  2. Add the device to the virtual machine configuration.
  3. Start the virtual machine and install the manufacturer's driver for this PCIe device in the guest operating system. The driver must support the Intel VT-d technology.

    Note: Parallels Workstation Extreme officially supports the NVIDIA Quadro® FX 1800, 3800, 4800, 5800, Q4000, Q5000, Q2000 and Q6000 video cards for virtual machines. For these video cards, use the latest drivers available on the manufacturer's website.

Troubleshooting

In Windows virtual machines, if the pass-through driver cannot be installed automatically after a PCIe device is assigned to virtual machines, install it manually:

  1. Go to Start > Control Panel > System > Hardware and open the Device Manager.
  2. In the Device Manager, locate the appropriate PCIe device, right-click it and choose Update Driver from the context menu.
  3. In the Hardware Update wizard, choose to install the driver from the specific location.
  4. Choose to specify the driver yourself.
  5. In the next window, select the Have Disk option and specify the following path to the driver’s location: C:\Program Files\Parallels\Parallels Workstation\Drivers\prl_vtdvideo.inf or C:\Program Files\Parallels\Parallels Workstation\Drivers\prl_vtdnet.inf and click Open.
  6. Follow the wizard’s instructions to complete the installation of the driver.
  7. Restart the host computer.

In rare cases you cannot boot the primary Linux operating system after a PCIe device is added to the configuration of a virtual machine. To work around the issue, do the following:

  1. In the grub loader splash screen, with your primary operating system selected in the list, press e on the keyboard to display the boot parameters.
  2. Select the line starting with "kernel" by pressing the down arrow on the keyboard.
  3. Press e to launch an editor for the selected line.
  4. At the end of the line, add

    init=/bin/sh

  5. Press Enter to return to the boot parameters screen.
  6. Press b to boot the kernel.
  7. In the command line window, mount the root partition in read-write mode by entering

    mount /dev/root / -oremount,rw

    Note: If you want your root partition to be mounted to a different location, replace root with this location in the command above.

  8. Type the following command and press Enter:

    echo -n "" > /etc/parallels/vtd.hook

  9. Type the following command and press Enter:

    mount /dev/root / -oremount,ro

  10. Type the following command and press Enter:

    reboot

This procedure makes your primary Linux operating system boot normally.