Changing the View Mode

Parallels Management Console provides a number of view modes to make your work with virtual machines more comfortable and efficient:

• Window mode . This is the default view mode in which the virtual machine screen is displayed in the Parallels Management Console window. The window contains the following panes:
  • Summary . This pane provides basic information on the virtual machine and access to the Virtual Machine Configuration dialog. The Summary pane also contains buttons for the most frequent commands used to start, stop, and otherwise manage the virtual machine.
  • Console . In this pane, you can interact with the running virtual machine via its guest OS window.
  • Performance . In this pane, you can view the virtual machine CPU, memory, hard disk, and network usage when the virtual machine is running.
  • The Backup tab lists all virtual machine backups. It also contains the controls allowing you to create a new backup.
• Full Screen mode . In this mode the virtual machine screen is expanded to occupy the whole of your physical computer screen.

Switching to the Full Screen Mode

You can run a guest operating system in the Full Screen mode when the guest operating system window occupies the whole screen and all controls are hidden.

To switch to the Full Screen mode, do one of the following:

• Click the Full Screen button in the Parallels Management Console toolbar.
• Choose Full Screen from the View menu.

  Note: The default hot key combinations can be configured in the Keyboard pane of the Preferences dialog .

To return to the Window mode, press the appropriate hot key combination (Ctrl+Alt+Enter by default).

Detaching the Console Pane

In this version of Parallels Management Console, you can detach the Console pane of your running virtual machine from the Parallels Management Console window and work with it in a separate window.

To detach the Console pane, do one of the following:

• Choose Detach Console from the View menu.
• Click the Detach Console button in the Parallels Management Console toolbar.

  Note: If this button is missing from the toolbar, you can add it by customizing the toolbar .

If you want the Console pane to join the virtual machine window again, do one of the following:

• choose Attach Console from the View menu
• click the Attach Console button in the Parallels Management Console toolbar
• close the separate Console window

Locking the guest OS screen resolution

The virtual machine screen resolution can be changed in the following situations:

• When you adjust the guest OS display settings.
• When you resize the virtual machine window (this feature works only when Parallels Tools are installed in your virtual machine).
• When you run an application that automatically changes the screen resolution of your guest OS.

This behavior of the virtual machine window can be irritating. To freeze the virtual machine screen resolution, use the Lock Window option available from the View menu. When the Lock Window option is enabled, the virtual machine screen resolution can be changed by adjusting the guest OS display settings only.