Major Problems with Parallels 5.0

Hi

I have a Mac Pro with 2x Quad core Xeon processors and 16Gb RAM and Snow Leopard installed..

I have installed a fresh version of Parallels 5 and several copies of both 32bit and 64bit Windows 7 Home premium.

In all instances, from time to time (quite frequently in fact) Windows Explorer stops running (sometimes with Host Services too, and I encounter the message that Windows has encountered a critical error and will restart in one minute.

I have several clean install copies of Windows and several Clones. All seem to exhibit the same problems so I am assuming the problem is an issue between Mac OSX and Parallels, or between Parallels and Windows 7.

Has anyone else had these type of problems and been able to overcome them?

I have played with most of the configuration settings to no avail.

Any help would be much appreciated.

Many thanks

Duncan

 

Further to the above, I have copied one of the problem Vms to my Macbook Pro 2.66Ghz Intel core Duo and it works perfectly.

It seems to me that Parallels 5 does not run reliably on the new Mac Pro.

 

Hello DuncanG,
we are not aware of any issues with Mac Pro and Parallels Desktop 5.
what are the exact error messages on Windows side? Could you please provide us with screenshot of error message? And, problem report from Parallels Desktop right after error message sent via Help > Report a Problem. You can post ID here.

 

Hi

I get all sorts of errors and error messages. Here are some of the most common attached

I have sent off two error log reports. Their ID's are: 1439613 & 1439799.

I have just been playing by trying to operate Internet explorer on a brand new clean 32 bit installation with only Kaspersky Internet security installed and it still crashes, so it cannot be to do with the istalled Apps.

Also, using Undo Disk causes the whole system to come to a crashing halt; Mac and Windows.

I have 8 cores in 2x quads and 16Gb RAM. Any time I try to use more than 2 coresz, the system grinds to a halt and/ or windows crashes more frequently.

I have been running one of my troublesome VPMs on my Macbook Pro and it is behaving perfectly. What I am about to do is to copy the VPM from my laptop (which I have been using without incident for several months) and try it out on my Mac Pro. It is an XP version but I am running Parallels 5 on both machines.

Is there any more info. I can give you?

Thanks

Duncan

 

OK my perfectly good Windows XP copy from my laptop freezes and apps crash when opened on the Mac Pro. I have also installed a copy of Windows 7 onto my Macbook pro and it runs fine.

The issue, therefore must be either in my installation of Parallels on the Mac Pro, or the way in which it interfaces with the Mac Pro.

I could try to uninstall and re-install Parallels 5 on the Mac Pro to see if that solves the issue, otherwise think there is a problem that needs to be addressed between Apple and Parallels at a development level.

Do you have any specific instructions as to how to manage a clean wipe of Parallels prior to re-installation?

I have a lot of work to do on a windows program and can only access it from my (relatively) slow laptop.

 

Please click one of the Quick Reply icons in the posts above to activate Quick Reply.

 

I am having similar problems with my brand new iMac quad core i7. Win XP will not install properly even after several clean Parallels installs and re-installs of Win XP. Internet Explorer freezes up and so cannot do anything to try to correct the problem. I hope you (and I) can get some help from Parallels support.

 

One possibility might be the RAM settings on the big Mac for the VM. Try changing the RAM setting up or down based on the RAM settings that work on the 2.66 GHtz. machine. Also I have noted that depending on the processor, the VM may identify one processor or two. See if that varies between the stable install and unstable installs. I have PD 5 on two different machines and the RAM settings have to be different depending on the machine for Win XP pro to run stably. I can give it more RAM on the bigger machine;- 4 G. on an iMac 3.33 GHtz. Core 2 Duo 8G., but only 768 Meg. on an older 2.0 Core Duo 2 G. machine. I hope this helps.

DHP

 

It sounds like maybe this is only happening with the quads. How many processors do the various Windows show in the VM config general pane?

 

Only One Processor

I thought of that and have already double checked to make sure only one processor is configured.

 

On that Quad machine it might work to use the 2 processor setting. On my iMac 3.33 Core 2 Duo, XPpro is set for 2 processors. It's stable with that setting. The RAM and processor settings seem to be critical and can not be the same from machine to machine, and the defaults obviously do not cover all of this.

 

Tried Two Processors

I tried assigning two processors, but still no joy. I have now deleted Windows and will re-install with two processors assigned and see if that somehow works. I doubt it, but I am trying everything I can.

Last night I tried halting automatic update via msconfig, since the wuauclt.exe is what is giving me the problem, according to the error message I receive. It took longer than usual for the error message to appear, but appear it did. So I am still without a working virtual system.
I will try again to get some support.

 

DuncanG, can you please try newest build of Parallels Desktop 5:
http://www.parallels.com/download/desktop/

Release notes:
http://kb.parallels.com/7034

Please notify the new build has improved performance and stability.

 

I have been having exactly the same problems with my iMac i5 27" 8GB RAM - random app crashes. I was using Vista, but have installed a completely fresh version of Windows 7 to see if that helped but still experienced the same random crashes. I have tried both one & two processors with 2GB RAM - still crashes.

I will try the update and see if it helps.

 

I have a quad core, imac i7, with 8 gb of RAM running windows xp and everything seems to be running really well.

I did a fresh install on the machine, and didn't bring over a windows machine, nor am I running under boot-camp. all seems to be fine.