Accessing Camera crashes Parallels Desktop

A

AshayC

Bit poster
I have been trying for about a week now to get my MacOS Guest VM working with Parallels Desktop and have finally narrowed down the issue but do not know how to resolve it.

Symptoms:
When opening any app that uses the camera like Zoom or Photo Booth, the Parallels Desktop app will crash (on the host side).

I have tested two different USB webcams, same issue on both of them (plugged into different USB controllers).

Finally I realised the source of the issue. I created a fresh VM with Parallels Desktop and reinstalled MacOS from scratch and before installing Parallels Tools, I opened photo booth, and it worked perfectly! Barely a minute after that, I installed Parallels Tools, and after rebooting same issue restarted.

I cannot even avoid installing Parallels Tools because otherwise it is extremely choppy and unusable irrespective of what resources I allocate to the VM. Absolutely any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance!
 
I'm getting the same problem. Newly created OSX (Big Sur) guest. Tools installed. Open up Photobooth and the VM crashes. Can't offer any help, but if I do work something out I'll post :)
 
Hi, if the issue still there could you check the same behavior with the latest Parallels Desktop build 16.1.3 and share any results with us please?
 
UPDATE - RESOLVED !!
I could get an external webcam successfully on Parallels. Here's what I did.
  1. Created a New Windows 11 VM. Followed this blog : https://www.parallels.com/blogs/windows11/
  2. Installed ZOOM and tried accessing the webcam
  3. This time, got a Windows BSOD - with some USB Drivers STOP CODE. Surprisingly Parallels did not crash. This gave me some confidence that maybe Windows 11 will handle it, with some tweaks.
  4. Then I made this change - My webcam (Logitech c925e) was earlier connected through a USB C hub to my MacBook. I unplugged it from the hub and connected it directly to the MacBook to a free USB-C port (used a USB-C to USB-A dongle since my webcam is a USB-A webcam)
  5. And after this - Lo and Behold !! It works all fine. Could use the webcam on the Win11 VM normally like a webcam - on zoom, google meet, etc.
Hope this helps !
 
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