Not Impressed with Parallels Desktop for Mac 9

I have this morning installed Parallels Desktop for Mac 9 (PD9) on my MacBook Pro, with a previous installation of Windows 7 (Win7) as the Virtual Machine within it. My version of PD9 is Build 9.0.23140 (Revision 935944)

Before I installed PD9 all my Win7 programs seemed to work fine under Parallels Desktop for Mac 7 (PD7). I have only upgraded to PD9 because Parallels has decided not to make PD7 compatible with OS X Mavericks, which I naturally will want to install on my Mac in the not too distant future.

As soon as I'd installed PD9, and all the Parallels Tools had completed installation, Win7 restarted and I immediately got a Windows error message with regard to one of my Windows Startup programs, and it told me that it had a 'serious bug' and had 'stopped working'.

I shut down Win7, quit PD9 and then relaunched PD9 and restarted Win7. The problematic startup program now started okay… BUT, various other of my Win7 programs threw up error messages when I tried to start them. These included Outlook XP, some virtual radar programs I use and even Windows Explorer and something called -I think- Windows Common Dll. In other words, absolutely nothing was running in Win7 with any degree of stability at all...

Four hours later I am finding that each time I restart Win7 it seems that it is different Win7 programs that are affected. And sometimes when the error message boxes appear, I cannot get rid of them at all without quitting PD9 altogether and then relaunching it, which is not acceptable.

If it weren't for the fact that PD7 won't play with Mavericks, I would revert to it instantly.

But, as that isn't really an option, (thanks a bunch Parallels!), can anyone suggest what might be going wrong here, and a means of correcting it.

Oh, and how do I get my Parallels dock icon to go back to looking like an iMac? Under PD9 it insists on looking like a Windows logo.

 

i feel your pain as far as former PD7 user. i was fine with it, didn't see a compelling need to move to PD8 or PD9, except for the lack of support for mavericks.

as to the applications not working, i can't help with that. mine seem to be okay. so far nothing has stopped working.

for the dock icon, go to parallels desktop -> preferences and change the Dock Icon: from "Live Screenshot" to "Parallels Desktop" - it'll go back to the image of an iMac with a windows logo and the parallel bars.

 

Thanks for that info Tony, but unfortunately your dock icon solution doesn't work. I have since discovered that what I really need to make the dock icon behave as I was used to it behaving is something called Crystal Coherence Mode. And the soft buggers at Parallels have kindly removed that from PD9 altogether!

I'm getting less and less impressed with Parallels by the minute. And I've wasted loads of minutes today with this crappy app already.

 

I suggest uninstalling Parallels Tools from the VM, restart the VM, and install the Tools.

 

Specimen.

Thanks for that tip.

Under the Parallels Virtual Machine Menu I can see 'Reinstall Parallels Tools', but I can't see Uninstall Parallels Tools. Am I looking in the wrong place?

 

Okay, I now realise that Tools is a Windows program, and needs to be uninstalled via Windows Control Panel > Uninstall Programs. So I have done that.

In fact, I've done even more than that.

I have completely uninstalled PD9, (including removal of Tools from my Windows installation first), and then I reinstalled PD9 and then reinstalled Tools.

I can only say that my installation experience today was 'different' to that of yesterday, and possibly slightly better. But I'm still unimpressed.

I'm still getting random 'program has stopped working' error messages from Windows, and they do still include Windows Explorer itself, which is a real pain because I have to restart Windows when that stops. And, in addition, sounds are 'disabled' in Windows as well now, and I cannot figure out a way of getting them back.

PD9 is nowhere near stable enough, in my opinion, to commit myself to it by upgrading to Mavericks.

I have submitted a support request, but they've not yet rung me.

 

Sorry, but from the description it continues to sound like a bad installation of Parallels Tools, maybe you have some Anti Virus or similiar that is blocking the correct installation?

 

Right-ho, well I will try doing it all again, but make sure I uninstall AVG anti-virus from Windows as well as Tools, before re-installing everything back.

I have a feeling it is something to do with memory though. (Some of the error message boxes referred to accessing 'protected memory', whatever that is.)

I'll come back with news of how I get on. But it may be a while...

 

Okay…. So.

I uninstalled my AVG anti-virus, switched off the Windows Firewall, uninstalled Parallels Tools and shut everything down. Then I restarted Windows, installed Parallels Tools with no anti-virus and no firewall running, and then of course I switched Windows Firewall back on and re-installed the anti-virus.

Basically… no change. I am STILL getting random 'such and such program has stopped working' error messages.

The only thing I have now noticed, though, is that I only seem to get them when I have Parallels running in Coherence mode. When I have Windows running in a window it seems as solid as a rock; as soon as I change to Coherence the error messages all start appearing. The trouble is, I like to use Parallels in Coherence mode and I don't want to have to run it out of Coherence.

I made a complete record of one of these error messages, and it read as follows:

It was titled 'Windows Explorer: WerFault.exe -Application Error', and the text within it read: 'The instruction at 0x00610000 referenced memory at 0xe95f00b4. The memory could not be read.'

So, sadly I'm no further than I was before, but thanks for your suggestion anyway. I suppose I will just have to wait until support get round to ringing me up.

 

Seems to be a problem with your Windows installation.

 

Quote: Seems to be a problem with your Windows installation.

Yes, I suppose it could always be that.

But the evidence against it is that it worked absolutely fine under PD7, and it didn't start misbehaving until I installed PD9. (I even reverted back to PD7 at one stage yesterday, because I'd lost my temper with PD9, and it behaved perfectly under PD7 then too.)

I cannot but help suspecting that the one thing that seems to make the difference between Windows being stable and Windows not being stable is PD9. And I'm stating to lose my temper with it again, so I think I'll pack up for the day and have a beer or something.

 

Just for the benefit of others who might be having the same problem, I had a marathon telephone session with Parallels Support about this on Monday.

They seemed to think that there might be a bug in PD9, which causes it to become very unstable when running in Coherence mode AND with MacLook applied.

As long as I turn off MacLook, I can use Parallels in Coherence mode, but as soon as I turn MacLook back on again Windows starts crashing.

The problem has been escalated to 'Level 2', whatever that is, and I'm now awaiting a further telephone call from a Level 2 engineer.

I have now upgraded my Mac OS X to Mavericks, and Parallels is running quite happily under that in Coherence mode, but not in MacLook.

 

I have the exact same problem. I do not have a antivirus program. Have tried uninstall/reinstall , but still strange entire system crashes, windows freezing, mac crashes, reboots ...just very unstable. I am getting a local tech to clean up the mess. Maybe back to VMware again?

 

Another problem surfaced today with PD9. (It may have been there from day 1, but I've only just noticed.)

My Windows windows are not 'focusing' as they should.

That is to say that if I have two Windows windows open, and I click inside the rear-most one to bring it to the front and make it active, the one I click in doesn't come to the front. The one that was at the front remains at the front, so I cannot see all of the active one behind it. And, because the front one is no longer the active one, it no longer behaves correctly when clicked in. This is very inconvenient indeed...

 

You are correct. Maclook seems to be my issue too. As soon as I have unchecked it,....Coherence mode and Parallels is stable.
Maybe it's not Parallels, but Maclook when Mavericks was updated to 10.9.2?

 

You might be correct in that; I admit I'd not thought about MacLook trying to look different than Mavericks. But seeing as Parallels forced us to upgrade to PD9 if we wanted Mavericks, you would have thought they would have thought about it... even just a tiny bit?

Anyway, it's now FOUR MONTHS since Parallels 'elevated' the bug to 'Level 2' and I've still not had that call from a Level 2 engineer.

I'm still not impressed.

 

Me either.

What is this MacLook you are referring to? Which setting tab is it under?

EDIT: Never mind, I found the MacLook option in the menu. I was looking in the settings tabs in the Preferences.

I was hoping I had something turned on that I could turn off and have a more stable environment. I was not (and will not) use MacLook, so I am back to having an unstable system with no fix in sight and no support.

 

I've just accepted the installation to update to a new build of PD9: Build 9.0.24229 (Revision 991745)

I was led to believe back in November last year that the MacLook under Coherence problem would be addressed by an update. They keep updating it, but they still can't get it to work. Support in Parallels is absolutely abysmal.