I have been running Parallels desktop 6 for some time with Gentoo Linux and Windows XP virtual machines. My XP virtual machine was one migrated from a VirtualBox image and has worked absolutely fine with no issues for almost a year now. I decided to create a new virtual machine with Windows XP from scratch and then my problems started. I have a genuine Windows XP installation CD. I have tried every mechanism possible. I've allowed it to create the virtual machine itself from the Windows XP disk, inserted the product code at that point and let it go. It periodically reboots during the installation process sporadically and then windows says "Setup is restarting......" as thought something went wrong. I have seen numerous messages of "The instruction at 0x77f52b6a referenced memory at 0x00000000. The memory could not be written" type windows dialogs. I have seen BSOD with low level IRQ errors and the infamous PAGE_FAULT_IN_NON_PAGED_AREA. I cannot produce a stable version of Windows XP by installing on parallels desktop from scratch. Please help.
I've just started again with an install and turned off 3d acceleration. Everything went fine and windows now seems stable. After doing all windows updates to XP, I've been able to turn 3D acceleration back on again. Fingers crossed.
