Parallels crash causes 20 min boot

This is as taken from the email support I requested. No followup provided.

To add to this, since the latest apple software update for QuickTime 7.4.5 and iTunes 7.6.2, the reboot time has dropped from 20 min to 10 min if Parallels has crashed.

I tried clearing the kernel cache also.

Does anyone have any suggestions?

> [xxxxx - Wed Apr 02 09:54:53 2008 Australia/Melbourne]:
>
> Query category: Unexpected Mac OS X 10.4.x Tiger behavior
> Product: Parallels Desktop for Mac 3.x
> Build number: Other
> Build number: 5592
> Host OS: Mac OS X 10.4.x Tiger
> Guest OS/Remote OS: Windows XP Professional
> Type of computer: Mac Pro
> Computer RAM: 2 - 4GB
> Description: We have 6 Intel Mac Pro running Parallels Desktop 3 with
> XP Pro for Outlook 2003. 1 of the machines will regularly have
> Parallels crash and close after 15 minutes of being open. This can
> be if the user is also using Adobe CS3 or not. This is happening
> even with build 5592. If Parallels crashes, then the next reboots
> of the Mac takes 20 minutes unless a safe mode boot is done. Once
> a safe mode boot is done, future reboots are 1 minute till the next
> Parallels crash. If you just open and close Parallels then no
> problem. Sometimes a mem file is left behind after a crash,
> sometimes not. I have tried a complete uninstall of Parallels with
> no change as well as tried copying a virtual machine from another
> Mac. Repair disk permissions changed nothing. Hardware check
> reports no problems.
>
Last file in /Library/Parallels/bugreports:
-rw-r--r-- 1 userXX wheel 407 Apr 2 14:20
parallels-fault-142030.020308.400.log

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Parallels Desktop 3.0 for Mac OS X version 3.0 Build 5592.0 from 2008-03-14
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Received SIGBUS: Bus error
Access to fault address: 0x4
unknown signal sender: 2
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

BTW - the month part of the date in the name is 0 based. Makes it confusing looking for the 4th month

/Library/Logs/CrashReporter/Exited Process.crash.log
**********

Host Name: mac
Date/Time: 2008-04-02 14:20:46.290 +1100
OS Version: 10.4.11 (Build 8S2167)
Report Version: 4

Command: Exited process
Path: Exited process
Parent: kernel_task [0]

Version: ??? (???)

PID: 400
Thread: Unknown

Exception: EXC_BAD_ACCESS (0x0001)
Codes: KERN_PROTECTION_FAILURE (0x0002) at 0x00000000
(null)
Unknown thread crashed with X86 Thread State (32-bit):
eax: 0x6f52e000 ebx: 0x003602a7 ecx: 0x00000000 edx: 0xbfffe0a0
edi: 0xbfffe0a0 esi: 0x00004000 ebp: 0xbfffe0e8 esp: 0xbfffe020
ss: 0x0000001f efl: 0x00010286 eip: 0x00375378 cs: 0x00000017
ds: 0x0000001f es: 0x0000001f fs: 0x00000000 gs: 0x00000037

Binary Images Description:

 

Hello Ladelle,

Thank you for the report. I will ask an engineer to investigate the issue ASAP and will let you know when I get the feedback.
Your e-mail request is in the queue and will be answered soon.

Best regards,
Xenos

 

I'm just uninstalled 5592 and reinstalled with 5162 as I was asked in the follow up. Everything uninstalled OK as it has in the past, no files left, and the install worked fine. The system is currently being used to see if Parallels will crash. I'll provide follow up details.

 

which OS are you running CS3 on please?

have you run a windows registry checker
I just found over 400 errors in my WinXP sp2 registry

the VM runs starts more quickly and noticably better after the clean up
I also did a defrag using the windows utility
one file was in over 300 fragments and Windows said no defrag needed

If with one user, is he/ she impatient on shut down/ start up and not letting Windows do a self repair

On a train recently I was shocked to observe how some businessmen treat their company supplied laptops roughly


they probably blame their IT people for the failures they cause

my own WinXp sp2 (7 updates this week) on 5584 is very stable on 10.4.11 but I do spend time on housekeeping

Hugh W

 

The 'upgrade' to 5162 ran fine on OSX and then the XP Tools 'upgraded' fine. The only difference is that parallels crashes after 10 minutes now, not 15 to 20. The Mac boot time has now blown out to 30 minutes. I'll go back to 5592 and see the Mac boot time and Parallels crash times change.

Hugh, CS3 runs on the Mac. I do keep a very close eye on all my machines, physical and virtual. XP doesn't try to do any self checks/repairs when restarted after a crash. At the start, 10 months ago, my Mac users would sometimes forget about Parallels and shutdown but that has since changed. This particular machine and user were not as bad as others in this regard.

 

Been busy elewhere. After 5162 crashing I went back to 5592. After I installed the Safari 3.1.1 update, the boot time (after Parallels crash) appears to have dropped to 2 minutes.

I was able to spend some time with this today and also noticed that in Parallels/XP, ParallelsToolsCentre was continually using 98/99% CPU time and OSX was continually allocating 16MB blocks to Parallels from the free 1.2GB till <50MB free and then allocating .5MB blocks. It then crashed after 20 minutes, even with an XP restart in the middle, with 35MB memory free in OSX.

OSX activity monitor was reporting 16,777,216MB real memory and 2.81GB virtual for Parallels Desktop process.

I will try the Parallels Tools reinstall with different part disable to see if a particular part is the cause.

 

Had a bit more time. The restart after a Parallels crash is <2minutes, almost like normal. What I have noticed is, when logged into OSX as the normal user, the crash happens, logged in as the original user/administrator (called Admin!!) it does not crash nor does the continual OSX memory allocation or XP cpu usage occur.

 

I tried an old user account to start the same VM without problems. What i then did was using Property List Editor (install from OSX discs, Xcode Tools), open ~/Libray/Prefrences/com.parallels.Parallels.plist , change 1 setting (Parallels.WorkSpace.AutoMemoryAdjustment from 1 to 0. AutoMemoryAllocation was already 0) that was different to my Admin user (but the same as the old user account), save the changes and restart.
So far, it has not displayed the same charateristics as previously, XP not having virtual CPU at 95%+, OSX not allocating all the memory.
The only thing I noticed was that using the old user, Office 2004 wanted to install an update even though it other users looking for updates found none.
Weird.
After 45 minutes Parallels seems fine. Hopefully problem solved. Could someone from Parallels indicate if the AutoMemoryAdjustment value actually work and what setting it is.