Dual Screens flickering - Mountain Lion - Windows 7 - Parallels 7
- Thread starter insaddingaround
- Start date
turning off 3d has had worse impactions than the cursor flicker for me ....... seems one of the Windows apps i utilize does not do a complete screen refresh when moving from screen to screen which causes all kinds of problems with navigation options as any particular screen is a mix between new and old until you cursor over a portion and it updates. All works fine with 3d Accelerate turned on ...... Anyone have similar experience or have a suggestion?
Workarounds don't help me
Hope this gets addressed. My setup is a Mac Pro using only an external monitor (not the builtin, lid closed), what I do is not practical on a 13" screen and the windows app I use requires DirectX so disabling hardware acceleration keeps it from running.
Wishing I didn't upgrade to ML, living with the flicker.
Hope this gets addressed. My setup is a Mac Pro using only an external monitor (not the builtin, lid closed), what I do is not practical on a 13" screen and the windows app I use requires DirectX so disabling hardware acceleration keeps it from running.
Wishing I didn't upgrade to ML, living with the flicker.
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@FMastr: I have the exact same problems. Sometimes when I move the cursor from the monitor 1 to monitor 2 the cursor starts to have some weird patterns - sometimes it is a vertical bar with strips (about 1.5-2cm long) - or it looks ok but it also has some extra-dots. Unfortunately I don't know how to get rid of this effect while keeping the two monitors. For now I can live with it.
It might not be a parallels problem, it might be mountain lion .
@Omniver: I have the same regret, I am usually very cautious, but this time I thought: what the heck, Apple releases are rock solid, when I upgraded to Lion I had no issue, how bad can it be if I upgrade. Wrong! It might be that this was the worst OSX release ever. I will never do it again. The best thing to do is to wait at least 2 months until they sort out all their s**t. With MS software you should probably wait longer. And never, ever, ever install beta software from any of these companies.
It might not be a parallels problem, it might be mountain lion .
@Omniver: I have the same regret, I am usually very cautious, but this time I thought: what the heck, Apple releases are rock solid, when I upgraded to Lion I had no issue, how bad can it be if I upgrade. Wrong! It might be that this was the worst OSX release ever. I will never do it again. The best thing to do is to wait at least 2 months until they sort out all their s**t. With MS software you should probably wait longer. And never, ever, ever install beta software from any of these companies.
Apparently the VMware users have the same problems: http://communities.vmware.com/message/2089376#2089376
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Out Of The Box Technology
Bit poster
Fixed my issue with flickering
Hi All,
I was having the same issue after upgrading to Mountain Lion.
I ended up purchasing a new MacBook Pro with Retina Display this weekend (was going to anyway). I installed Mountain Lion, then used the migration assistant to migrate all my data including Parallels VMs. Once the Migration was done I had to re-install Parallels to get the VMs to work. Today when I plugged in my external Retina Display monitors, no flickering at all.
Not sure if this is due to reinstalling Parallels, or that it is a Retina display MacBook Pro.
I would suggest that those of you who have flickering issues, just download and reinstall over the existing Parallels after the Mountain Lion upgrade, then see if that fixes the issue.
Its working great for me.
Andrew
Hi All,
I was having the same issue after upgrading to Mountain Lion.
I ended up purchasing a new MacBook Pro with Retina Display this weekend (was going to anyway). I installed Mountain Lion, then used the migration assistant to migrate all my data including Parallels VMs. Once the Migration was done I had to re-install Parallels to get the VMs to work. Today when I plugged in my external Retina Display monitors, no flickering at all.
Not sure if this is due to reinstalling Parallels, or that it is a Retina display MacBook Pro.
I would suggest that those of you who have flickering issues, just download and reinstall over the existing Parallels after the Mountain Lion upgrade, then see if that fixes the issue.
Its working great for me.
Andrew
Hello guys,
Sorry for a long investigation, but it is still in a progress. Please subscribe to the KB listed above (http://kb.parallels.com/en/114452) in order to get updates about the progress. Just click Yes or No in the small survey field at the side of the screen.
Sorry for a long investigation, but it is still in a progress. Please subscribe to the KB listed above (http://kb.parallels.com/en/114452) in order to get updates about the progress. Just click Yes or No in the small survey field at the side of the screen.
Dual Screens flickering - NOT ONLY WITH Mountain Lion - Windows 7 - Parallels 7
I have a very close issue since I've installed ParallelsDesktop-7.0.15104.778994 and imported Windows 7 VM on a new MacBook Pro 13" mid 2012 that is still running OS X Lion 10.7.4.
Same problem with a brand new created Window 7 VM.
The external display does not fully flicker. Only the VM window flickers when placed on the external screen.
For information my MBP is connected to: Apple LED Cinema Display 24" (firmware up-to-date, this patch is supposed to solve problems between Thunderbolt MBP and LED Cinema Display 24" late 2008).
When VM window (single window mode) starts to flicker and display video failure symptoms, moving VM window from external display to MBP internal screen SEEMS to stop this crazy random behavior.
Workaround (seems to work at the moment): disable 3D acceleration or use method described in this article: kb.parallels.com/111767 (on my system VM stopped flickering at this level "video.dx_profile=4" that disables Aero).
At first glance:
- insaddingaround doesn't have a brand new mid 2012 MBP (retina or not have integrated Intel HD 4000) but installed Moutain Lion,
- I have a brand new mid 2012 MBP 13" running Lion 10.7.4.
There is probably a combination of several problems but I see at least one common point:
- to be able to install Mountain Lion: user must update to PD 7.0.15104,
- to take advantage of USB 3 (MBP mid 2012) support in Windows VM: user also has to install PD 7.0.15104.
---
@ Parallels team:
Fix this big bug ASAP please.
My ticket number: 1430405
I have a very close issue since I've installed ParallelsDesktop-7.0.15104.778994 and imported Windows 7 VM on a new MacBook Pro 13" mid 2012 that is still running OS X Lion 10.7.4.
Same problem with a brand new created Window 7 VM.
The external display does not fully flicker. Only the VM window flickers when placed on the external screen.
For information my MBP is connected to: Apple LED Cinema Display 24" (firmware up-to-date, this patch is supposed to solve problems between Thunderbolt MBP and LED Cinema Display 24" late 2008).
When VM window (single window mode) starts to flicker and display video failure symptoms, moving VM window from external display to MBP internal screen SEEMS to stop this crazy random behavior.
Workaround (seems to work at the moment): disable 3D acceleration or use method described in this article: kb.parallels.com/111767 (on my system VM stopped flickering at this level "video.dx_profile=4" that disables Aero).
At first glance:
- insaddingaround doesn't have a brand new mid 2012 MBP (retina or not have integrated Intel HD 4000) but installed Moutain Lion,
- I have a brand new mid 2012 MBP 13" running Lion 10.7.4.
There is probably a combination of several problems but I see at least one common point:
- to be able to install Mountain Lion: user must update to PD 7.0.15104,
- to take advantage of USB 3 (MBP mid 2012) support in Windows VM: user also has to install PD 7.0.15104.
---
@ Parallels team:
Fix this big bug ASAP please.
My ticket number: 1430405
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Not just ATI 6xxx
That's what the KB says, but it is absolutely false.
If someone from the Parallels team needs more details, feel free to contact me.
I have a MBP mid-2010 (MacPro5,1) with the ATI Radeon HD 5770 card. It drives three monitors: a pre-Thunderbolt 27" LED Cinema Display (2560x1440), a Dell U2412M display (1920x1200) and a Samsung Syncmaster 2343bwx (2048x1152 - odd size, I know).
Under Lion, I could run a Windows 7 VM in OS-native full screen mode (with Aero) across all three monitors with absolutely no problems at all.
Since upgrading to Mountain Lion, I've had the exact problem that the aforementioned KB describes.
If I switch to single-monitor full screen mode, it mostly works fine. There are occasional minor artifacts on the non-used monitors, but nothing serious.
Coherence is a crap shoot. It mostly works OK, but then you get some weird flickering and artifacts within the VM windows.
The best solution so far is to disable 3D acceleration. It then runs full screen across all three monitors just fine... mostly. I have a client that uses HipChat, and the Windows client is an Adobe Air app. It struggles with proper refreshing of the screen when another window has been covering it. I'm working on a WPF app inside of Visual Studio 2010 and it all seems to display correctly. (Edit: Chrome on Win7 has the same non-refresh problem sometimes.)
I'm going to try a reinstall of PD7 to see if that helps any.
-Rob
P.S. I sort of expect this sort of thing when a new version of OS X hits the street - there's a lot of very deep integration magic going on for both OSes to get everything working so well. If you think about it, it's pretty amazing that it works as well as it does. I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't related to some last-minute ATI driver tweaking by Apple for 10.8.
That's what the KB says, but it is absolutely false.
If someone from the Parallels team needs more details, feel free to contact me.
I have a MBP mid-2010 (MacPro5,1) with the ATI Radeon HD 5770 card. It drives three monitors: a pre-Thunderbolt 27" LED Cinema Display (2560x1440), a Dell U2412M display (1920x1200) and a Samsung Syncmaster 2343bwx (2048x1152 - odd size, I know).
Under Lion, I could run a Windows 7 VM in OS-native full screen mode (with Aero) across all three monitors with absolutely no problems at all.
Since upgrading to Mountain Lion, I've had the exact problem that the aforementioned KB describes.
If I switch to single-monitor full screen mode, it mostly works fine. There are occasional minor artifacts on the non-used monitors, but nothing serious.
Coherence is a crap shoot. It mostly works OK, but then you get some weird flickering and artifacts within the VM windows.
The best solution so far is to disable 3D acceleration. It then runs full screen across all three monitors just fine... mostly. I have a client that uses HipChat, and the Windows client is an Adobe Air app. It struggles with proper refreshing of the screen when another window has been covering it. I'm working on a WPF app inside of Visual Studio 2010 and it all seems to display correctly. (Edit: Chrome on Win7 has the same non-refresh problem sometimes.)
I'm going to try a reinstall of PD7 to see if that helps any.
-Rob
P.S. I sort of expect this sort of thing when a new version of OS X hits the street - there's a lot of very deep integration magic going on for both OSes to get everything working so well. If you think about it, it's pretty amazing that it works as well as it does. I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't related to some last-minute ATI driver tweaking by Apple for 10.8.
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And someone is going to ask why I went and upgraded when I have work to do. Well, I upgraded my MacBook Pro (retina) first and it worked so well that I thought I would do my Mac Pro. However, I don't have an external monitor hooked up to my MacBook Pro, and it uses a different GPU, so I likely would never have encountered this issue.
-Rob
After the latest upgrade, when I turned the Enable 3D Acceleration on, Parallels disabled the second display (couldn't drag windows there anymore). Turned it back off the second monitor is there and I can use it.
Did you experience the same thing? That's an interesting way to get rid of an issue, get rid of the effect and not the cause. I really hope the proper fix it's going to come in the next upgrade.
Did you experience the same thing? That's an interesting way to get rid of an issue, get rid of the effect and not the cause. I really hope the proper fix it's going to come in the next upgrade.
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I was able to turn the 3D on, and have it show both screens, but it still flickered. My guess is that Parallels is working on a fix, and that it might be a bigger problem than just a 'quick fix'. They had similar issues when Lion came out with the full screen. They'll get it 
I just hope soon.
I just hope soon.