Host machine hangs when Big Sur or Monterey VM boots

T

toonetown

Member
During the boot process of my Big Sur or Monterey VMs, my host machine actually hangs. This happens every time one of the VMs boots up. About 1/3 through the boot progress bar everything just hangs for about 20-30 seconds...cannot move the mouse, no UI gets updated, nothing (though, if audio is playing in the background, it continues to play).

It appears to be some kind of graphics issue. I have tried uninstalling parallels tools in the VM and the same issue persists. I do not see this issue with my Catalina VM - only my Big Sur and my Monterey VMs.

After it unfreezes, the apple boot logo in the VM gets really small (looks like some kind of retina issue). Then the boot completes, and everything is back to normal.

I have only recently seen this (since upgrading to PD17).

The problem is that in combination with the keyboard issue described at https://forum.parallels.com/threads/cannot-use-keyboard-after-restoring-to-snapshot-pd17.354501/ and the occasional application crash (PD17 crashes on me about 2-3 times per week), it gets really painful because I'm needing to reboot VMs quite frequently to work around Parallels bugs.

I have reported this as Technical Report 380138936
 
This is still happening with PD 17.1.1...except now the hang lasts even longer, and will occasionally trip over the watchdog for the WindowServer process (and then WindowServer gets killed). This makes it very hard to test anything on Big Sur or Monterey.
 
Another +1 on this still happening. I was hoping this would be fixed by now but Parallels doesn't seem to care much about Mac OS guest support.
 
My case with support has been updated but I do not think they understand the issue. This is the message I received. And it is highly likely that all of my stuff is updated.

"We've released the 17.1.1 update that is supposed to fix the issue. Please update Parallels Desktop by clicking the Parallels icon on the top Mac menu bar (||) > Check for updates. Once the update is installed, wait once the automatic reinstallation of Parallels Tools (our drivers for enabling all integration features) is complete and restart the system. If the issue remains (highly unlikely), please collect a fresh technical report ID at the moment of reproduction (on the top Mac menu click Parallels Desktop icon (||) > Help > Send technical data > enable 'Attach screenshots' > Send report). More detailed instructions can be found at https://kb.parallels.com/9058"
 
I have the same issue. I am running Parallels Desktop 17.1.1. I upgraded my Big Sur VM to Monterey. Still getting the same problem with my host 'freezing' when my macOS VM boots. It would be nice to get this fixed soon.
 
I have the same issue. clean install of Monterey host machine (2013 Mac Pro 12 core xeon 64gb ram vega64 egpu graphics), clean install of parallels 17.1.1, and a clean install of Monterey guest machine. The guest hangs in the middle of booting up, then the screen gets tiny. I'm using a 3840x2160 display on my host but Monterey guest reports 7680x4320. Looks like a bug in the apple virtual video card emulator. I've tried every video setting in the hardware config of the vm but no change on the resolution of the guest. I also have windows xp, windows 7 pro, and windows 10 pro virtual machines that work perfectly so the issue is only with the Monterey guest vm.
 
Parallels support has not been helpful. I will continue updating my support case and hope they take the issue seriously.
 
Support update:
Thank you for the provided data.
The issue requires an investigation on a code level, thus we escalated it to the Development team.
The Development Team doesn't provide us with any ETA required for the investigation, thus we have nothing to share with you on this matter - we hope it won't take a while.
But as soon as we get an update, fix, or any news regarding the case - we will update you no matter what this ticket state is.
Thank you once again for letting us know about this issue.
 
+1 for host freeze.
  • Parallels Desktop 17.1.1 (51537)
  • Host: macOS Monterey 12.2 (21D49)
  • Guest: macOS Big Sur 11.6.3 (20G415) / 10.16.0 (build 20G415) with clean install on either hypervisor
Anyone with multiple displays and / or multiple GPUs?
 
MikeyH said:
+1 for host freeze.
  • Parallels Desktop 17.1.1 (51537)
  • Host: macOS Monterey 12.2 (21D49)
  • Guest: macOS Big Sur 11.6.3 (20G415) / 10.16.0 (build 20G415) with clean install on either hypervisor
Anyone with multiple displays and / or multiple GPUs?
Click to expand...
This was an issue with a MacBook and three displays. Still an issue with a single external or using only the built-in.
 
Anyone else now seeing a kernel panic on macOS 12.2.1 (21D62) host when restoring a Monterey guest OR Parallels VM crash when starting with Parallels hypervisor?
Apple hypervisor seems to start OK sometimes and others time stalls on gray parallels logo.
 
@IcedSpud
A support ticket for this case does exist. The issue has been submitted to the Development Team. There have been no updates from them so far. Once there are any updates, we'll let you know.

@Tender
This is a different case, a support ticket does exist, and we've just received an update from our Development Team. We'll be contacting you shortly.

@MikeyH
If your Mac freezes when running a virtual machine with Apple hypervisor, this indicates that the issue is not caused by Parallels Desktop's components (but there is rather some pre-existing issue that running a virtual machine is triggering just by being a resource-intense task). We've created a support ticket to take a closer look at the data.

@toonetown, @JohnSmithers
We've created a support ticket to take investigate your case. We'll be contacting you shortly.

@shanee1
As I understand, in this case, it is only the virtual machine that freezes. Correct? If so, this behavior is likely caused by issues with the Paravirtualization Framework (https://developer.apple.com/documentation/paravirtualizedgraphics) that enables graphics acceleration in macOS virtual machines starting with macOS Big Sur (most prevalent when using eGPUs). To see if that is the case, please perform the following steps:

1. Shut down your virtual machine (Actions > Shut down). If it is in a suspended state, resume it and then shut down.
2. Open Terminal (Applications > Utilities > Terminal) and execute the following command:

prlctl set <vm_name> --video-adapter-type parallels

(e.g. prlctl set "macOS 12" --video-adapter-type parallels ).

If the issue persists, collect a technical report (click Parallels icon || > Help > Send technical data > check "Attach screenshots..." > press Send Report) and provide us with the report's 9-digit ID here.

 
Running this command has greatly improved the startup of a guest VM: prlctl set <vm_name> --video-adapter-type parallels
Now my question is, what are the parallels and virtio options for this command? Anyone else try this and did it prevent the host machine from freezing when starting a guest VM?
thanks!
 
@Tender
Thanks for the update!
The command has 2 settings:

prlctl set <vm_name> --video-adapter-type parallels
and
prlctl set <vm_name> --video-adapter-type apple

The latter enables Apple's virtual GPU that's powered by the your Mac's physical graphics card through the Apple's Paravirtualization Framework (https://developer.apple.com/documentation/paravirtualizedgraphics), and the former disables it by switching to CPU-based graphics computations.

We will be contacting you shortly with the steps required to collect additional technical data, so that our developers could submit the data to Apple.
 
Updating to Version 17.1.2 (51548) appears to have reverted to the previous behavior. I needed to reset the video adapter type to `parallels`.
 
Try reducing the graphics memory allocation to 16MB with --video-adapter-type apple to see if that reduces the hang / freeze time during boot.
 
I still see a brief "freeze" - but it is much better (and tolerable). Is this a preferred configuration over using the parallels video adapter?
 
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