Frustrated...

Dear Parallels team
After much research into VM ware, Boot camp and parallels - i decided the Parallels product looked the best. i originally installed it around 6 months ago, and since installing it i have had many problems, usually resulting in me having to re-install parallels and winXP at the same time.

This obviously means i lose all my data, but more frustratingly means i have spend hours reinsatlled windows, all my windows apps, windows updates etc. i went through this cycle a couple of months ago, and couldnt get WinXP to boot sucessfully throughout the various installation processes. after much perseverance, its worked fine for the last couple of months, but now i have the same problems again. i get the disc read error that i have seen posted by other users. i am unable to create a new VM using the old disc image, and i have been through all the various forums and cannot see a way around it.

This this a common experience of all users?... this constant need to keep reinstalling windows? surely not? i dont believe i am doing anything non standard. i have a macbook pro (1st release), 2gb ram, plenty of disc space etc. . . the only thing i can put it down to is that when i am running my virtual machine, there are occaisons that it does NOT shut down properly... (IE when doing start, shutdown)... or even if it shuts down.. parallels seems to hang, and leaving it, and force quitting it does not seem to close it... the only option is to hard power down the mac (hold power button). then usually upon rebooting my VM machine is no longer working. but, there is usually no other option to shutting my mac down ... other than holding down the power button. shutdown etc doent work....

now i had been taking snapshots of my machine a couple of install cycles ago... and that did save me a couple of times in that i could revert to an older machine. but i have had instances where the snapshots wont work either

so, i believe i have to re-install one last time... and sorry to say, if this VM does the same thing i will have to rethink the VM software i use. it bains me to say that, i really want this to work!...

please try to shine a light on this. is there something i could be doing to make my VM more reliable and stable?

I can post more detail back on this thread as i go through my re-install...

 

Please let me know Parallels Build number
From Parallels Desktop about Parallels Desktop

 

more detail

I havent re-installed winXP yet. i want to close parallels so i can remove it from the machine. Windows is currently still stuck trying to boot. it has not got as far as saying disc read error this time, its just the black boot screen, its got as far as telling me the base memory and also the extended memory. i cant force quit it... so although i havent re-installed yet, this is one of hte instances where i am forced to hard-shutdown the machine. . . should this be happening?

 

parallels desktop 3.0 build 5608. before starting this thread, i did an upgrade to the latest build. but maybe that was too late as my VM was already corrupt?

 

Did you upgraded from 4128 build?

 

I dont believe so... i think it was also a build beginning with 5xxx... just rebooted after having to hard-power down. going to remove parallels and winXP now and begin re-install... will upgrade my version of parallels as soon in the process as possible

 

Put following information here

* Parallels Desktop version and build: Parallels Desktop- -> About Parallels Desktop
* Guest OS full version with SP included (if they are);
* a copy of /home/<username>/Documents/Parallels/<VM name>/<GuestVM>.pvs
* Archive of /Library/Parallels/bugreports/ (right click on folder --> Create Archive)
or ~/Library/Parallels/bugreports/

* /Library/Logs/panic.log
or ~/Library/Logs/CrashReporter/Parallels.crash.log from the Mac side;

 

Put following information here

* Parallels Desktop version and build: Parallels Desktop- -> About Parallels Desktop
---- parallels desktop 3.0 build 5608

* Guest OS full version with SP included (if they are);
---- windows XP SP 2, just doing a windows update, and SP 3 is just installing now...

* a copy of /home/<username>/Documents/Parallels/<VM name>/<GuestVM>.pvs
---- old parallels was deleted, so i dont have this pvs now. once i get a clean install, i will take a snapshot immediately. . . would you like the clean pvs, when i have finished installing?

* Archive of /Library/Parallels/bugreports/ (right click on folder --> Create Archive)
or ~/Library/Parallels/bugreports/
--- attached
* /Library/Logs/panic.log
or ~/Library/Logs/CrashReporter/Parallels.crash.log from the Mac side;
---- attached

 

Re-installing XP is actually never needed, there are always ways to fix problems that don't require you to reinstall and loose all your data, and you can always have a recent backup of your VM. So reinstalling is totally unnecessary.

If you encounter a problem again that you think it's only solved thru reinstalling, use these forums.

 

It is Mac OS side, if you take a look at Crash report logs , you will see that there is no Parallels Crash,
Mac OS crash are causing Parallels Crash
try to perform permissions repair and reinstall 10.5.4 update

 

ok - on future problems, i will come back to you. i am re-installing now anyway, so i'll start with a clean sheet and see how i go

as far as the mac os crash. once parallels and windows install is complete i will reload the mac os x update you advise

question is - even though there was a mac os x crash - if my windows doesnt load, isnt that a problem with parallels booting win xp rather than a problem in mac os x?

when you advise making a backup of the vm... is that the same as doing a snapshot, or is there an alternative backup method?

thanks guys for the quick replys and help - much appreciated

 

Boot Camp may crash if you installed Windows Updates through Parallels,
Do not install Windows Updates in Parallels, reboot in Boot Camp

For Boot Camp winclone will help http://www.twocanoes.com/winclone/
For simple VM, you can just copy VM folder

 

If Windows doesn't load it's not necessarily a problem with Parallels, it's probably a problem with Windows that didn't shutdown properly (and you're probably using the FAT file system, instead of NTFS for Windows).

If this is not Boot Camp:
The easiest way to backup a vm is to copy the folder for the corresponding VM in ~/Documents/Parallels/ to another location, inside that folder there's a file with the extension .hdd, that's your virtual hardisk, all your data is there and that's the most important file.

If it's Boot Camp:
Use Winclone: http://twocanoes.com/winclone/

 

i beleive the standard setup for windows through parallels is FAT. this allows me to view documents in mac os which are stored on the windows partitian, right? however if i change to NTFS, then i wont be able to view documents on the windows partitian from mac os? is that correct?


... will setting it up as ntfs make it run smoother, and more stable?

 

I don't think there's any standard or recommendation for using FAT in Parallels.

FAT is unreliable, but you can read and write from both OSes. NTFS is much more reliable, but you can only read it in OS X, so the documents are still accessible from OSX, but you can't save changes to them back to the NTFS partition, but you can still copy them. But since you're running Parallels you can always take advantage of Shared Folders.

Why is NTFS more reliable than FAT? Among many reasons, NTFS, like HFS+ and unlike FAT, is a journaling file system which "(...) is a file system that logs changes to a journal (usually a circular log in a dedicated area) before committing them to the main file system. Such file systems are less likely to become corrupted in the event of power failure or system crash."(Wikipedia).

Also, I don't think it's such a great idea to let OS X write to the Windows partition (and vice-versa) at will, OS X fills any partition it can write to with useless trash and spotlight files, and this is what happens if you use FAT. Besides, it's a good principle to have some sort of isolation between machines.

My recommendation: NTFS

 

interesting.

so if i went ntfs. i could use a shared folder and then use that as 'my documents'... and essentially be able to read and write to it from both mac OS and windows?... almost a FAT partician for documents/work files

i am now guessing that i need to setup NTFS when i install windows?... as i have just re-installed the standard version will that have been created in a FAT partitian and cannot be converted to NTFS?

 

A 'Shared Folder' is like a network share, in fact that's what it is, Parallels uses the network between the Host and the Guest to create a network share (see the Help file in file:///Library/Parallels/Help/13219.htm).
Note that if your documents are located on the OS X side when you run Boot Camp you won't be able to access them, so the most universal option would be to share the Windows folders to Mac.

The only difference between this and using a FAT partition for Windows, is that in order to have write access to the files you've to run Parallels.

A third option would be to have a third partition on your disk, a FAT partition, only for your files (keeping Windows on an NTFS partition), just be sure to back it up regularly. I won't go into the details of how to do this please use google first before asking, I like to help, I'm doing this without being paid to, but it's time consuming and I can't do everything for you. Or I just let John answer it for you.

To convert FAT into NTFS: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307881

 

ok - so for the last few hours, parallels has installed sucuessfully, as has windows NT, service pack 3, and various other windows updates that were needed. the last update that happened was IE7. it said it needed a reboot for settings to take effect. it has now shutdown and i have black screen in parallels. its seems to have hung whilst rebooting. what should i do? i have sent the keys, ctrl alt del and it hasnt reset. should i stop the VM? and try rebooting windows?

 

OMG... YOU installed SP3 in Boot Camp partition under Parallels??

Updates (and Windows itself), specially service packs should always be installed natively (under Boot Camp) not under Parallels, unless this is not a Boot Camp partition and it's a totally virtual machine.

John? it's up to you now.

 

i am not running boot camp

when win Xp had finally installed, and windows installed all of the 'windows xp updates', it downloaded and installed SP3. is that a problem?.. or only if i was running boot camp, which i am not