I love VMware, I hate Parallels, and I really hate programs that screw with my context menus.
By default both VMware Fusion and Parallels Desktop associate specific files on the Mac side with Windows applications. Because there's nothing better than accidentally double-clicking a text file with a .log extension and launching an entire VM to view it.
VMware Fusion
- Inside Fusion, open the Virtual Machine Library window – Window menu > Virtual Machine Library, or press CMD+SHIFT+L.
- Select the VM and click the Settings button.
- Click the Applications icon, and then select the Default Applications tab.
- Uncheck Open your Mac files and web links using Windows applications and close the window.
Repeat the process for every VM.
Parallels Desktop
It's not easy, but does that surprise you? The icon may look different if Parallels is still installed. It's probably considered a feature that all the file associations remain, even after Parallels is removed – who doesn't like error messages!?
- Find your VM – by default they are located in ~/Documents/Parallels/
- Right click on the .pvm file and choose Show Package Contents
- Delete the Windows Applications folder, and empty the trash.
I haven't used VMware Fusion in a while, but this evening I noticed that applications from a Windows installation on Fusion 2.x were showing up in Spotlight. At first Firefox (Windows) was the top hit for Firefox, trumping the OS X installation.
