Windows 10 VM Freezes in Parallels 13 - Windows 7 VMs are OK

B

BenB11

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Hi
For years I have run Windows 7 VMs using Parallels on the Mac without any problems I now need to work on some Windows 10 VMs now so I have tried
  • Virtualising a Windows 10 laptop using the Parallels tools, and
  • Installing a new Windows 10 VM from Parrallels Desktop | File | New
In both cases the Windows 10 VMs freezes after a short while - I get the MAC spinning wheel in the VM and the VM is unresponsive. This can happen after a few minutes if I just start the VM but don't do anything, other times it takes longer e.g. 30 minutes to freeze. The Mac continues to work without any problems. My old Windows 7 VMs run without problems.

In the Mac Activity Monitor the Parallels Desktop process is listed as not responding - the virtual machine process is there too but not marked as not responding - i.e. it appears to be running - I have to force quit both processes to restart the VM.

My Mac is running High Sierra version 10.13.5, Parallels is version 13.3.2, Windows is Windows 10 build 1803 - OS build 17143.112 - I am running Visual Studio 2017 and SQL Server Management Studio in the VMs - the only change I have made to VM configuration is to
  • Configure for software development
  • Allow more memory - the MAC has 32GB and I have allocated 8GB to the VM
  • Use all displays in full screen.
I have made sure I have applied all updates to Parallels, also I have followed the instructions in various knowledge base articles (e.g. https://kb.parallels.com/112091) and rebooted my MAC but unfortunately none have fixed the problem.

Any help you can provide will be much appreciated

Thanks
 
Just a post to say I'm seeing the same issue - frequent freezes when using VS 2017 in Windows 10 under Parallels 13.3.2 on High Sierra (10.13.5).

One thing I have noticed is that it does seem to be have much better when I just use my laptop on its own as opposed to connected the the thunderbolt display, but this could just be luck / a false impression.

Steve
 
Hi
I have found it is more reliable when using Coherence rather than full screen (I am using a 27" iMAC with 2 external monitors) so could be a problem with external displays?
Also when the Parallels Desktop process it not responding if I force quit the process and restart Parallels Desktop the VM is still running OK - not great but saves a bit of time.
Hope that helps
 
I just using "Windowed" mode but on a large external monitor. I've set my graphics settings to 1GB memory and turned off acceleration and set to "Best for external display" and initially it seems better. This morning it has been freezing for 5+ minutes at a time every 15/20 minutes making it unusable. Interestingly when it freezes host Mac CPU is minimal but disk reads are huge for the VM.
 
I've been having the same issue for the last week or so. About 5 times today I've had the VM freeze; during this time, the disk access is high - about 35MB / s to the VM. The rest of the system is performing at reduced rates, of course - anything that needs to access disk gets locked up for periods of time. I'm running in Full Screen mode, but have tried the other modes with similar results. It doesn't appear to be the an issue coming from the actual client machine - it's hard to tell but it looks like the VM is just locked up with little to no activity occurring.
 
Sounds like my symptoms exactly. A google for "Parallels Windows 10 Freeze" yields plenty of similar results - we are not alone! Fingers crossed for a fix soon as this is getting really annoying.
 
As an update I'm not sure those graphics changes or running it just on the laptop screen really made any difference. I'm in the midst of a "freeze" right now and I'm just on the laptop with the graphics options above so clearly not a good solution.
 
So, I'm seeing it happen pretty quickly after I wake up the VM when I first start it. This time it only lasted for about 2 minutes for me. I'd just recently closed the VM down though. I wonder if some of what's being read so voraciously was cached? Is this a memory management issue causing a page to / from disk or something?
 
Mine asked me to reclaim disk space and then just HUNG. Not just HUNG....but HUNG.
I can't boot it up now. I stopped, restarted the mac.....tried getting into SAFE Mode...no dice.
The "cp <insert hdd file here> to /dev/null" ....it works (gives some odd errors like:

.pvm/config.pvs.bad: could not copy extended attributes to /dev/null: Operation not permitted
and
pvm/parallels.log -> /dev/null cp: /dev/null: Not a directory

But other than that it read the whole .hdd, so I'd think that the file itself isn't corrupted. What bothers me that it COMPLETELY hoses OSX.
I mean....it takes it down to the 7 languages "we sorry that OSX/macOS had to restart"

And this is with the VM locked to only 4Gb and one CPU, and trying to boot into SAFE Mode. This is just ridiculous.

Anyone been able to get this to work yet?
 
I am basically having all of the above with P 13 and Windows 10 on iMac. It all worked so well for so long and now all of a sudden (I think after upgrading to P 13.3.2 (43368) FREEZE/SPINNING BALL, etc. Every once in a while after Force Quitting Windows I can get Windows to run so I can use a program. So far I've seen no comment from Parallels.
 
I have been finding that if I keep the VM running for a long time and have more disk space available it seems to happen a little less frequently. Of course when it does happen it's at inopportune times, but that's just Murphy's law at work. I had my VM running for about 2 days straight and only encountered about 3 times the VM hung with huge disk usage - during the hangs, the VM was totally unresponsive and the overall host system was pretty laggy, but it only lasted about 2-5 minutes. Prior to clearing off disk (I freed up about 30G) it seemed to be happening more and for longer.
 
I just want to report that I have the hanging/frozen Windows 10 VM under Parallels 13 on MacOS 10.13.6 since several weeks as well and it is more than annoying. I haven't found yet when it happens or which event leads to the hanging. First I thought I had the "bitcoin" virus because the CPU was 100% on Windows although it was frozen but your descriptions describes the same. I also checked for the virus but haven't found anything. So my system should be clean.

I haven't seen any confirmation or help from Parallels support people here. Can anybody from Parallels please help us....?
Gerd
 
This is happening to me also Windows 10 VM under Parallels 13. I'm using Visual Studio 2017 in Parallels and it's very frustrating! I usually have to let it just churn away until it's finished as forcing a restart seems to make the process go longer.... PLEASE HELP PARALLELS SUPPORT TEAM!!
 
RASAC said:
This is happening to me also Windows 10 VM under Parallels 13. I'm using Visual Studio 2017 in Parallels and it's very frustrating! I usually have to let it just churn away until it's finished as forcing a restart seems to make the process go longer.... PLEASE HELP PARALLELS SUPPORT TEAM!!
Click to expand...
Hi @RASAC, we would request you to take a Snapshot. You can check to see how your virtual machine performs without fast startup enabled, you can disable it in just a few steps:

1. Start the Windows 10 virtual machine and right-click the Start button.
2. Click Search.
3. Type Control Panel and hit Enter on your keyboard.
4. Click Power Options.
5. Click Choose what the power buttons do.
6. Click Change settings that are currently unavailable.
7. Click Turn on fast startup (recommended) so that the checkmark disappears.
8. Click Save changes.
If you want to re-enable fast startup at any point, simply repeat the steps so a checkmark appears next to Turn on fast startup.
 
WilliamS22 said:
I am basically having all of the above with P 13 and Windows 10 on iMac. It all worked so well for so long and now all of a sudden (I think after upgrading to P 13.3.2 (43368) FREEZE/SPINNING BALL, etc. Every once in a while after Force Quitting Windows I can get Windows to run so I can use a program. So far I've seen no comment from Parallels.
Click to expand...
Hi @WilliamS22, please perform the following and check if it resolves the issue:

1. Start Terminal (Applications > Utilities > Terminal) and execute the following command (in -dlO there is capital o, not zero):

ls -dlO /Library/StagedExtensions/

2. If the output doesn't contain 'restricted' flag proceed to step 3.

3. Boot the Mac into recovery using Command+R combination and then in Recovery go to Utilities > Terminal.

For more information on Recovery mode please refer to https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201314

4. Execute the command:

chflags -R restricted /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD/Library/StagedExtensions/

5. Boot in normal mode and try launching Parallels Desktop.

Please let us know the results
 
GerdP said:
I just want to report that I have the hanging/frozen Windows 10 VM under Parallels 13 on MacOS 10.13.6 since several weeks as well and it is more than annoying. I haven't found yet when it happens or which event leads to the hanging. First I thought I had the "bitcoin" virus because the CPU was 100% on Windows although it was frozen but your descriptions describes the same. I also checked for the virus but haven't found anything. So my system should be clean.

I haven't seen any confirmation or help from Parallels support people here. Can anybody from Parallels please help us....?
Gerd
Click to expand...
Hi @GerdP, apologize for the delayed response. We would recommend you to check your system.log for errors in the Console (Applications/Utilities/Console). Type "i/o" (without quotes) at Console's search bar and check if you can see "I/O error"
 
Hi Parallels folks,

So, I've been suffering with this issue, also - see above. Here's where I am in this situation :

1) I've disabled fast startup - I did that a while back thinking it was a buffering issue.
2) I've performed the "ls -dlO /Library/StagedExtensions/" command and see that the directory is "restricted". I'm presuming I have nothing else I need to do.
3) I've checked to see if there are any "i/o" issues looking at the "Console" application and looking at the "system.log", searching for "i/o". No instances of that appear.

I just had to re-start windows after a lockup that didn't go away, and I've now been waiting for about 20 minutes or so for the VM to stop reading my disk at 30MB/s. It's got to 35GB read in the last 20 minutes. Of course the VM is completely unresponsive, and the Mac is going pretty slowly - particularly if it has to load something from disk. I'm happy to provide tests and/or data if that's helpful to resolve the situation, so please let me know.

Thanks,

Steve
 
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