Windows 7 Crashes Then Starts Fine

I have been encountering a strange problem.

I have a 15" MacBook Pro Mid-2009 2.8 GHz with 4 GB of RAM and OS X Lion.

I'm running Parallels 7 installed over a Bootcamp installation of Windows 7.

I'm seeing a strange thing. When I start Win7 with Parallels, it boots Windows but a couple of minutes into the session, Windows freezes. The "wait" circle goes round and round... clock stops... everything freezes. A CTRL-ALT-DEL does nothing.

I then use Virtual Machine / Reset to restart the VM and the second time everything runs fine.

This is not a one-time fluke. It happens every time I start up Win 7 in Parallels. I was hoping that the upgrade to Parallels 7 would fix it but it's still happening.

Anyone else have this problem?

Any ideas what might be causing it?

- Ethan

 

Does Windows boot OK when using it for Boot Camp? If so, try uninstalling and reinstalling Parallels tools. If not, there could be something wrong with your Windows installation.

Steve

 

Thanks for the quick reply. I just started up Win 7 in Bootcamp. Worked perfectly the first time.

I guess I'll try reinstalling Parallels, though it's just strange that it always crashes on the first try and works fine on the second.

- Ethan

 

Open Activity Monitor.app (Applications>Utilities) and check the memory usage, most probably you're running out of RAM (not inside the VM, but globally) when Windows 7 is booting so the system starts paging and that makes some apps hang.

You have a total of 4 GB RAM, Windows 7 is configured by default with 1 GB RAM in PDM, if you are running Safari at the same time, it will very easily consume 1 or 1,5 GB (or more if there is Flash running), Parallels itself consumes about 400 MB, OSX consumes around 800 MB/1 GB also. So it's very easy to exhaust 4 GB, unfortunately. I blame mostly Safari for the memory leakage, but Parallels itself consumes a lot of RAM.

My suggestion, shutdown Safari before starting your Windows 7 VM. you can also try running Windows 7 with less RAM (I wouldn't recommend unless what you do in Windows 7 is very light on resources).

EDIT: The probable reason why Windows 7 starts fine the second time is that the paging has already taken place and there is more free memory to use.