iTunes and Parallels

Funny thing happened on the way to work today.  And by that I mean I fell into a pain-bedazzled frustration pit while trying to do something simple.

Goal: Install iTunes on a parallels virtual machine so that I can use it to mess with interview audio files (convert them to different formats, change quality etc) without sorting through all my music.

Pain-Bedazzled Frustration Pit: Somehow it picked up my library from the Mac side during installation, and then I dealt with it in the unthinking manner that typically pisses IT people off and lead to the name of this blog.

Outcome:  I'm taking my time writing this instead of working because my computer has no speed now that I have TWO instances of iTunes running trying to sort out their libraries.

I think the problem was either/both/and/or that I had "home-sharing" turned on, or that the default location of the preferences file turned out to already have my preferences file in it.  My thoughts:

• I know that iTunes can just pick up where it started if you uninstall it and then reinstall it.  I didn't think that would be a problem here because I expected the virtual machine (Windows 7) to store all that shi-junk in a different place.
• So that's why I think it might be the home-sharing thing.  But then I thought that Parallels treated the Mac side as a networked drive, not as another computer connected to the network.  Maybe that's the same thing, but in my innocence I thought it wouldn't go searching for preference files and such on what is basically just an external harddrive.

One interesting thing was that iTunes in Windows 7 even had the shuffle toggled on, which is how I had left the Mac-side iTunes last time I used it.

Why don't I use software specifically designed for converting audio files' format and quality?  I dunno.  I don't like those and the websites I have to sift through to find good shareware and kind of shifty.  And it's dark.  And I was at my smarm limit.


Ah-Ha!

There's a setting in the configuration of the Parallels Virtual Machine that maps Mac folders onto the Windows folder (and/or vice versa).  I forgot about that.  So the default location of the itunes library really was the same.  I changed that, and we'll see if I'm able to fix up both libraries.