An odd clicking sound with Parallels. Has anyone else noticed?

J

Jonas Schwartz

Bit poster
Hello all. I have a Macbook Pro. I'm up to date with Parallels 9 and Mavericks. I've noticed this issue pre: Maverick and pre-Parallels 9 and the upgrades did not chance the situation.

I have my sound on parallels as off and the volume on mute. Even my Macbook pro is set for mute.

I keep hearing a clicking sound. It's two clicks with 2 secs between them. It happens whenever I get an email in Outlook on the parallels or when I do something like empty the trash on the parallels side. I've yet to hear it with parallels off so I'm assuming the click is coming from Parallels. To give an idea of exactly what the sound is, when you zap the PRAM on the Mac, when the computer switches over, that exact click is the same thing I hear. Has anyone else noticed this? I'm still under warranty for Apple in case this is a hardware issue and not just parallels but I wanted to make sure first that this isn't just a setting i'm missing.
 
I had a knocking sound start several months ago. I am not sure if it is the same as you are describing or not. If you take your knuckle and lightly tap the top of the macbook just to the right of the touch pad, that is what it sounded like. You could feel the vibration when you put your hand on it. All of my searching about knocking or clicking gave me results that said something was up with the hard drive. Most seemed to think that the hard drive kept parking the heads for some reason. I was so concerned about losing my drive that I went ahead and replaced the drive with a 1TB SSD type drive. After replacement, the noise continued and the hard drive has no moving parts! I now believe that it is coming from the speakers somehow. It only happens with Parallels running. When it happens, I can usually recreate it by opening explorer and clicking on the c drive. You can then click on another drive and back and it will click again. Eventually, it stops. It's all so weird... As another detail, I have recently had to reinstall my windows 7 virtual machine. Shortly after upgrading to Parallels 9, my VM got corrupted and would not boot. With no snapshot (why I don't know...) I gave up and reinstalled Windows 7... the noise still happens. Only in Parallels and almost always occurs while actively accessing the c drive of the windows VM. I will monitor your thread to see if anyone else has this issue!
 
I figured I would expand to see if your noise is the same as mine. I have attached a link to a short video that has the sound in it.

[video=youtube_share;iiV20VC36iE]http://youtu.be/iiV20VC36iE[/video]
 
Just another 'Me Too' post.

This has been going on for me for some time and I have tried to resolve it before with Parallels but I never thought to film the process which, for me, is rather random but ALWAYS Parallels related.

MacBook Pro, Intel Core 2 Duo, Parallels 8.0.18608, OSX 10.9
 
I have the same problem, although I just get two clicks. Running a SSD, so it's not the hard drive. It doesn't sound like the speakers....it sounds like it's coming from under the "U" key. I have a late 2011 model Macbook Pro. Hopefully someone can post up a solution.
 
I have the same problem. Seeing the above posts leads me to believe that the culprit is probably Parallels. There seems to no way of silencing it, even if you put the computer's speakers on mute. Has anyone contacted Parallels technical support?
 
Same problem here. I have put in a new harddrive, but the problem still exists, so I now have a spare external disc ;-)... It's definitely Parallels related, it is only occurring in the Parallels environment. It can't be the speakers, they are muted at the moment and the noise vibrates through the body, you can feel the clicking when touching the underside. It is always the same pattern, first one tick, then the next tick within a few seconds. I hope the Parallels guys can find a solution, it's rather annoying!
 
I'm also experiencing the same thing, almost identical to the video above, but with just two clicks about seconds apart. It also only happens in Parallels, and my speakers were muted at the time. The vibration seems to be coming from somewhere else though, I don't think it is the speakers.
 
Same problem here. It started with Parallels 8. I thought that it would be sorted out with 9 but not. The sound comes from the speakers on my MacBookPro even though everything is muted. Every time I open a window in windows 7 (which haven't change since Parallels 6) the 'knocking' sound comes twice as stated above. It looks like it sounds when the open window process starts and sounds again when the window is stabilized.

Would it be a new driver for the sound hardware that is causing it?

PS.: I'm adding this after posting.
I'm not sure if it is Parallels related issue or an OS issue. By the time I started having the 'knocking' I have updated from OSX 10.7 to 10.8. However I do not have that 'knocking' with any other app besides Parallels and only when the guest is windows 7. I have Ubuntu guest and all is fine there.

Second post editing:
I have disabled the Parallels Audio Controller in Control Panel -> Sounds and the 'knocking' is gone. I have rebooted my MBP and started Parallels as this is a confirmed way of reproducing the 'knocking' and nothing up to now! :-)

Third post editing:
I have several Windows 7 VM. some 32bit other 64 bit. Interestingly, after disable the Audio Controller in one VM, I cannot anymore reproduce the 'knocking' in the other VMs, even though they have the Audio Controller activated and are able to reproduce sounds and music. It seems that the deactivation of the Audio Controller in the VM have, some how, impact in Parallels Desktop.

Forth post editing: (this is getting long.. :-)
I have just received and installed a Parallels update. It is build 9.0.24172 Rev.951362. The Audio controller is activated and I'm not able to reproduce any 'knocking' so far. It seems sorted out. Can anybody confirm this?
 
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Disabled Parallels Audio Controller ...clicking gone.
LuisV said:
Same problem here. It started with Parallels 8. I thought that it would be sorted out with 9 but not. The sound comes from the speakers on my MacBookPro even though everything is muted. Every time I open a window in windows 7 (which haven't change since Parallels 6) the 'knocking' sound comes twice as stated above. It looks like it sounds when the open window process starts and sounds again when the window is stabilized.

Would it be a new driver for the sound hardware that is causing it?

PS.: I'm adding this after posting.
I'm not sure if it is Parallels related issue or an OS issue. By the time I started having the 'knocking' I have updated from OSX 10.7 to 10.8. However I do not have that 'knocking' with any other app besides Parallels and only when the guest is windows 7. I have Ubuntu guest and all is fine there.

Second post editing:
I have disabled the Parallels Audio Controller in Control Panel -> Sounds and the 'knocking' is gone. I have rebooted my MBP and started Parallels as this is a confirmed way of reproducing the 'knocking' and nothing up to now! :-)

Third post editing:
I have several Windows 7 VM. some 32bit other 64 bit. Interestingly, after disable the Audio Controller in one VM, I cannot anymore reproduce the 'knocking' in the other VMs, even though they have the Audio Controller activated and are able to reproduce sounds and music. It seems that the deactivation of the Audio Controller in the VM have, some how, impact in Parallels Desktop.

Forth post editing: (this is getting long.. :-)
I have just received and installed a Parallels update. It is build 9.0.24172 Rev.951362. The Audio controller is activated and I'm not able to reproduce any 'knocking' so far. It seems sorted out. Can anybody confirm this?
Click to expand...
 
Not with my Mac and I have the same update... By disable, you mean in the 'configure' menu of Parallels, set to null device?

LuisV said:
Same problem here. It started with Parallels 8. I thought that it would be sorted out with 9 but not. The sound comes from the speakers on my MacBookPro even though everything is muted. Every time I open a window in windows 7 (which haven't change since Parallels 6) the 'knocking' sound comes twice as stated above. It looks like it sounds when the open window process starts and sounds again when the window is stabilized.

Would it be a new driver for the sound hardware that is causing it?

PS.: I'm adding this after posting.
I'm not sure if it is Parallels related issue or an OS issue. By the time I started having the 'knocking' I have updated from OSX 10.7 to 10.8. However I do not have that 'knocking' with any other app besides Parallels and only when the guest is windows 7. I have Ubuntu guest and all is fine there.

Second post editing:
I have disabled the Parallels Audio Controller in Control Panel -> Sounds and the 'knocking' is gone. I have rebooted my MBP and started Parallels as this is a confirmed way of reproducing the 'knocking' and nothing up to now! :-)

Third post editing:
I have several Windows 7 VM. some 32bit other 64 bit. Interestingly, after disable the Audio Controller in one VM, I cannot anymore reproduce the 'knocking' in the other VMs, even though they have the Audio Controller activated and are able to reproduce sounds and music. It seems that the deactivation of the Audio Controller in the VM have, some how, impact in Parallels Desktop.

Forth post editing: (this is getting long.. :-)
I have just received and installed a Parallels update. It is build 9.0.24172 Rev.951362. The Audio controller is activated and I'm not able to reproduce any 'knocking' so far. It seems sorted out. Can anybody confirm this?
Click to expand...
 
Is there a solution?

Is the problem solved yet? I haven't bought it so I can't do any upgrades. Is there a fix in later builds?
Please answer so I know if I should by this one or maybe try VMware.
 
Unfortunately, I also have this issue. However, for me it only started after I switched my hard drive to a 1TB SSHD and updated to Parallels 8. I noticed several others mentioned they had SSHDs as well. Could it be related? Does everyone who's having the clicking sound have a SSHD?

The "click" occurs only when I'm in Windows and at first only occurred when I was browsing through files in Windows Explorer on external USB drives only. I then noticed it would happen once or twice whenever I booted Windows, while reliably clicking when accessing USB drives. Now it occurs pretty regularly and I've found that it happens anytime, USB or not. I notice it usually happens when I'm accessing directories with large files in them (e.g. movie files).

I've already tried reporting this to Parallels Support, but with no luck. They first came at me with an "update Parallels tools" fix, which did help…for like a day. The sound came back shortly after that. The next person actually was allowed to remotely control my computer. I kept explaining to her that it is a physical sound so I'm not sure what she hoped to accomplish by that. Obviously, that failed too.
 
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Hi Everyone,

Please follow the steps outlined below:

1) Start Parallels Desktop, do not start your VM.
2) Select the Configure option from the Virtual Machine menu
3) From the Sound menu, check your Output option.
4) Select the "Built-in Output" option as the default output.
5) Lock the Configure area so the VM can't make further changes
6) Restart the VM

If the issue does not resolve, then please post your Problem report ID's here by following the link: http://kb.parallels.com/9058

Thanks,
Looran
 
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