i am having an issue connecting to an mx850 using paralles(windows 8.1) on mac(osx 10.9.2). in the device manager under ports(coms and lpt) it shows a yellow caution symbol with a !.
I have read that it possibly could be the usb to serial cable that i am using and unfortunately i have no idea what brand it is.
can anyone help?

If you don't know the brand of the usb to serial adapter, I assume the name isn't printed on it and thus probably some generic adapter. It's difficult to get the correct drivers for generic adapters.

The Keyspan High-Speed USB to Serial Adapter Model Number: USA-19HS is recommended by many users here. I've used mine with XP and Windows 7 running parallels on a Mac.

thanks, but i also have an HP pc running windows 8.1 and it had no problem installing the driver and i can connect using the same usb serial cable. any thoughts?
i did some research and it looks to be a C2G 1.5ft USB to DB9 Serial Adapter Cable Serial adapter - [Link: encrypted-tbn2.gstatic.com]

Sorry I wasn't notified of a reply. Did you tell Paralles that it was connected? Its under the menu item "Devices".