Networking only works with a reboot

I have read all of the posts regarding networking solutions and have upgraded to many of the new builds - but my problems with the networking remain the SAME.

I have a macbook pro that I take back and forth from work to home. At home it uses airport and at work it uses ethernet. When I go back and forth (by simply closing the lid and leaving), the problems begin. When I arrive at home or work and open the mac from its sleep mode, the network on the guest (win xp) sometimes sees the network and sometimes it does not. And when it does not, the only solution is to power down the mac and then re-load the vm from a clean boot.

Interestingly enough in this scenario, the guest always has a valid ip address that can ping the mac successfully. But it can no longer ping any other machine on the network.

Please someone help. I have submitted a support request to the parallels team a couple of times, but I get no answer from them - even though I am a paid and registered user.

Thanks to anyone who can help.

 

Can someone from the parallels team please respond to this? I have tried several mechanisms of getting some help with this but no response - and I am a paid customer.

If my situation shows a bug in the system then just say so and let me know that it is being worked on. But don't just ignore my problem.

 

I have a similar problem here at home. During the day I'm connected to an Ethernet connection but at night I sometimes want to use an Airport link. To say that this is problematic is putting it mildly. I usually have to fiddle with various settings for about 30 minutes to be able to get the network link working again. Not a good situation... I'll be interested in seeing if the Parallels team responds.

 

I'm glad to hear that someone else is having the same problem. The only way I have found to fix the problem is to reboot the Mac. Have you found another way?

And I am so puzzled that the parallels support team chooses to ignore this issue. Especially, since it is such a serious bug. Given that vmware will be coming out with a competing product by the end of the year I hope that these guys can get their act together.

 

It just works for me. Use Airport, put the machine to sleep, go somewhere else, wake the machine, plug in the Ethernet cable, start Parallels, start or resume the VM (works both ways), and access the Internet. Reverse works fine too. Network adapter set to "default" in VM.

Maybe you aren't getting anything from Parallels because it really isn't a Parallels problem since it does work for some people. You might want to check to see in any other third party software installs kernel extensions, and post whatever you find. If several folks with networking problems do that, a pattern might emerge.

 

First of all, I appreciate your willingness to at least respond. And I think your suggestions to consider for troubleshooting are valid thoughts that I will pursue. However a couple of a things you mention do not make sense.

You mention that it is not a parallels problem. With all due respect that is a ridiculous statement. The problem of accessing the network only happens inside of the parallels vm. Therefore, by definition it is a parallels problem. And if you are correct in assuming this is why they are not responding - that is an even greater indictment on their customer service. Their product is one that must work well in all supported mac envirnoments or else they have a bug that needs to be fixed. I am a prefessional developer by trade and I know how things should work and be troubleshot. And the proverbial "it works on my machine" is the worst customer service response that can be given. It does nothing to help determine the problem or help the customer.

There is only one thing that helps resolve problems - COMMUNICATION! And although I appreciate your response, it misses the point and does not help myself, BruceK and others who do have the problem.

I am willing to give any and all information about this problem to the parallels support staff if they will only communicate and assist. Because it is their propblem.

My next step will be to write a formal letter of complaint to their marketing staff.

 

I forgot one more thing. As far as I can tell, my configuration (including network) is the same as yours except I have given XP 1GB of RAM. And I have probably have a very vanilla setup of my mac.

And by the way, I have been using parallels on my macbook pro since I purchased it in June - and the problem has been there from the beginning - no matter which build of parallels I use.

 

Actually, my maybe was intended to apply to the whole sentence.

If networking works for some people, it MAY not be a Parallels problem. It MAY be some third party product interfering with Parallels' communication with the network. I may be wrong, but I don't appreciate the "ridiculous". If I modify my car by, say, driving it into a wall, it probably isn't the manufacturer's fault that it no longer runs. If I install a third party kext, it probably isn't Parallels' fault that something no longer works.

So far, evidence to explain the problem is lacking, and "it works on my machine" may be psychologically poor customer relations, but it does indicate that the reason for the problem is probably a configuration difference, which is useful information. If your software follows standards, and mine doesn't, then the fact that yours doesn't work when mine is installed is NOT your problem, it's mine.

A list of installed kexts from everyone who is having a problem might be a useful first step in gathering evidence to shed light on the problem.

And BTW, I've been a software developer for decades, and I've learned not to jump to conclusions. I don't know what the problem is, and I'm not prepared to jump all over Parallels until I do know.

 

You still miss the main point. I and others have a problem with the parallels software and they have not been willing to help troubleshoot. This is the only conclusion I have made and its based upon the only thing I have to go on - a lack of response.

Forgive the "rediculous" comment as it was not intended to be personal. My frustrations are fueled by the lack of customer support for a product that I paid for. If our situations were reversed I suspect you might feel the same.

Please do not respond anymore unless you have more information that might help the rest of us determine what the problem is.

 

For what it's worth, I have the same exact problem. I've been running Parallels since the first beta releases and initially I didn't have any problems like this. However, once I went to the GA release I started sportatically having these issues. Nothing, aside from upgrading to the GA release, had changed on my Mac at that time and thus, I am fairly convinced it's an issue within the Parallels bridging setup. I opened a ticket with support back in mid July and haven't heard anything since the first reply (I've sent several emails in since then but they've gone unanswered). The problem still exists at this time... The only reliable way around this that I've found is to suspend the VM whenever a change in network devices is made - it sounds silly but otherwise I may have to reboot my entire machine. There are others at my job that have the same problem so it's definitely not an isolated issue. I also tried rebuilding my entire mac (as it was quite new when I first saw the issue) - a fresh install with nothing but Parallels still showed the same issue.

A tcpdump showed that the frames seem to be generated from the VM however, dumping data on the wire shows that nothing is actually leaving the Mac itself. I've given this output to Parallels as well to no avail.

I'm happy to provide any additional information if it means fixing this problem as it aggravates me to no end if I forget to suspend the VM and end up having to reboot.

Also, here's another post relating to the same issue - http://forum.parallels.com/thread3985.html.

 

I should also mention (just in case someone from Parallels reads through this) that ideally I'd rather run my VM in NAT mode versus bridged. Yes, it handles host-only right now but that relies on the Mac connection sharing which is far from elegant when you move between wired and wireless. I used to run VMWare on Windows and when used with NAT it was able to seamlessly provide a connection to the VM regardless of which network device was used - be it VPN, wired, wifi, EVDO, etc. The really nice thing about that was it followed the host routing table so VPNS worked perfectly (as did EVDO).

 

This is the same problem I have. I windows can ping OS X but cannot ping the other IP on the network. OS X can successfully ping this other address.

 

russv & neutrino,
I'm glad to hear that I am not going insane. Although I would much rather hear from the support team. Its hard to imagine a small company like this would ignore its customers (especially when vmware is just around the corner from probably releasing a far superior product that is actually supported).

In the mean time, russv, when you say that you suspend the vm before closing the lid, what do you mean? Are you actually closing down the windows vm and then restarting it again? If that works, I may have to stick with that method. Its better than rebooting the mac.

Cheers.

 

russv, never mind. I just found the suspend feature - never used it before.

 

By "suspend" do you mean disabling the Network? Or is there truly a suspend feature that eludes me?

 

There is a suspend feature. Its the pause button.

 

Are we talking on the Mac side or Win XP side?

 

Waitaminit. <dope slap> The Pause button on the right side of the VM window. NOW I've got it figured out... <sigh>

 

XP Pro or XP Home?

I am experiencing the same thing on my MacBook Pro and like some of the responders the problem seems to have started recently.

At first I thought it was directly tied to upgrading Parallels during the recent round of betas but then as I was reading through the response it occurred to me that at about the same time as I upgraded parallels I also switched from XP Pro to XP Home on my guest (a home license was cheaper).

For those of you experienceing this problem are you using XP Pro or XP Home? What about those of you who have never seen the problem?

Has a real solution been documented anywhere or is suspending the VM the best available option?

Thanks!

Scott

 

I have the same problem on the MacBook Pro. I have XP Pro in the guest and have given it 512MB. If I suspend the VM before moving the MacBookPro it does work when I restart it, but it can be a real pain having to suspend and restart the VM every time I have to leave my desk to go to a meeting or return from one.

This worked in previous releases (even in the beta period), but the last two GAs that I've run have had this problem and it's really getting irritating and is really reducing my productivity.