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I use Windows (7) OS as a development platform, running on a Mac / Parallels Desktop 5.

I would like to access the Windows localhost - from the Mac side for testing purposes.

I've found many solutions of accessing the other way around (access Mac's localhost from Windows) - but found no solution for this access direction (if any).

Any idea ? Is it possible ?

sorin
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Ranch
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    belongs on superuser.com – Rob Keniger Apr 20 '10 at 23:35
  • Sadly this question is closed, leaving many unfulfilled. I wrote a gist here to answer this question for macOS, Parallels 11: https://gist.github.com/ernsheong/23c00e65219b10db7bc072772ea509d4 – Jonathan Lin Oct 06 '17 at 16:20
  • This tutorial worked for me https://dontpaniclabs.com/blog/post/2015/08/25/browser-debugging-between-os-x-and-visual-studio-in-parallels/ – Dan Jun 07 '18 at 14:48

5 Answers5

46

The above didn't help me, but this did:

  • Go to Windows VM, go to Start --> Run... --> type cmd.exe

  • The windows command line opens. Type ipconfig and find out your IP4-adress.

  • Edit your macs hosts file as described in this blogpost. Put in the following line, replacing my windows VMs local IP (here 10.211.55.5) with the one you found out in the step before:

    10.211.55.5   windows

Then, you can access the localhost of windows using win instead of localhost, for example http://windows:8080/someapp

Akku
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  • Great answer, thanks! Do you know if that ip address changes every time you start up the Windows VM? – ilasno Mar 11 '13 at 23:35
  • For me it doesn't, therefore I guessed that Parallels hardwires one IP adress as long as it's possible to use that. But I'm pretty sure you can turn on a setting where the VM tries to get an IP from the DHCP every time it boots, so maybe you've turned that on? – Akku Mar 12 '13 at 06:35
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    FYI: This solution still works 7 month after applied. – Akku Sep 13 '13 at 09:10
  • This solution works with Parallels 12 and windows 10 on El Capitan. – aspnetdeveloper Apr 03 '17 at 19:19
  • I prefer this approach. It maintains a bit of isolation between environments and is easy to use. – Kris Coleman Feb 03 '18 at 20:52
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    Im getting a HTTP 400 Invalid Hostname error? – Robert Benedetto Mar 23 '18 at 09:10
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    I'm also getting the HTTP 400 Invalid Hostname error - did you figure it out? – Tim Woods May 07 '18 at 03:37
  • Same 400 HTTP invalid Hostname error. How to fix? – Reath Oct 30 '18 at 10:21
  • @RobertBenedetto - To fix this, you need to go to IIS and configure 'windows' or whatever domain you're trying to use as a Host Name of a site you're running in IIS via Site > Edit Bindings > Add. This will only work with IIS because you can't configure your site with IIS Express. – th3morg Oct 04 '19 at 18:46
  • Worked beautifully. Thanks. – joshlsullivan Aug 22 '22 at 14:32
33

I had the same problem as you Ranch. I'm running Win7 on Mac OS X (Snow Leopard) / Parallels 5. I solved my localhost problem on mac , by turning off win7 firewall and "enable" anonymous authentication in Authentication setting in IIS Manager.

Also I've configured in parallels:

  1. Configure - hardware - Network adapter 1: Default Adapter

  2. Preferences - network - connection type - shared networking

Edit: For Parallels 8

  1. Configure > Hardware > Network adapter 1: Default Adapter

  2. Preferences > Advanced > Network: Change Settings > Shared

Matt Gibson
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Arefin
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    Just to add one more information: I solved following this guide but instead of chosing Default adapter I chosed Wi-fi and then I used the new ip generated under "bindings" on website setting. +1. – Andrea Turri Sep 29 '12 at 22:44
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    To COMPLETELY turn off windows firewall, goto "Windows Firewall with Advanced Security" and make sure it's turned off for ALL profiles. The default I believe is just to turn it off for one. – Chuck Pinkert Jan 06 '14 at 18:05
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    it worked <=> when joined with answer of Akku – andilabs Apr 12 '14 at 21:40
  • I actually had the settings described above but it didn't work for me. What I did was add my windows 10 IP to the website bindings of my local IIS website over port 80 and added a matching inbound rule in firewall settings. Finally updated the hosts file on mac and it's working! – mecograph Nov 19 '18 at 15:12
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This depends on how your network card is setup in the virtual machine. I don't know how it is in parallels, but in VMWare Fusion you can either set it up as "bridged" (which means sharing the same ip with the host), "NAT" which means it will have it's own private ip address and connect to the internet through the host , or "Private network" which means it will have a private IP address and will not connect to the internet. In the second and third case you can access the web server running on windows using the private ip address of the virtual machine, but in the bridge case I don't think this can be done.

matei
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  • On Parallels , I've found two network options, Shared and Host-only. Tried them both, but I cannot access http://127.0.0.1/ from the Mac. – Ranch Apr 20 '10 at 08:48
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    It's normal , 127.0.0.1 is not the ip of the virtual machine. Try going to windows, opening a cmd prompt and type ipconfig , see what ip you get, and try accessing that. – matei Apr 20 '10 at 09:18
  • http://192.168.1.100 works fine on the Windows machine (loads the IIS homepage) while is not accessible from Mac. I guess there are some settings I need to do on the Parallels app. – Ranch Apr 21 '10 at 10:10
  • also check your firewall settings on the windows machine – matei Apr 21 '10 at 13:34
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    Turned of the firewall. Still cannot access 192.168.1.100 – Ranch Apr 21 '10 at 14:29
0

Sounds to me like your Parallels config is set to Host-Only networking for the Guest. Switching to Shared Networking should give your guest Windows OS a local IP address.

Then, you will have to access the Windows local IP address (not 127.0.0.1) from the Mac browser. You can find out the IP address to use by opening a command prompt in the Windows guest and taking a look at the output of the ipconfig command.

Coxy
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  • Parallels is configured to Shared Networking Maybe there are other Parallels network settings ? DHCP sever is enabled. Port forwarding maybe (?) My local server IP is 192.168.1.100, Subnet Mask 255.255.255.0, Default Gateway 192.168.1.1 – Ranch Apr 23 '10 at 09:14
-1

I have followed the instructions above and Akku's provided the important hint, although for me it did not work. When I run ipconfig in the windows command line, I get 10.211.55.3 as an IPv4-Address and 10.211.55.1 as the standard gateway. Using 10.211.55.3 in the windows hosts file (C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts) did not work - not sure why. So I tried: 10.211.55.2 and it worked.

Summing up: you have to set up your apache virtual host config first as described and then you have to open: C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts and enter: 10.211.55.2 mysite.localhost (or whatever you defined in your virtual host config file). Hope this helps for those with the same problem as me.

I found this here: http://sirprize.me/scribble/accessing-localhost-on-lion-host-with-windows-guest-on-parallels/

criscom
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