Parallels not starting properly --- hogging CPU

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dhjdhj

Hunter
Recently (that is, before I installed 10.5.6), I noted that if Parallels (3.x) had been running and was then suspended and closed, starting it again (just to bring up the Parallels window, not even actually starting up a VM) would SOMETIMES not work properly. My Mac would become extremely sluggish and I would have to Force Quit Parallels. Rebooting my machine always fixes this problem and Parallels then works properly.

I'm not aware of having installed any other software recently.

Having updated to 10.5.6, the problem still exists.

Has anyone seen this behavior and/or knows how to fix it?


Thanks,
David
 
I do not see any mem or sav files anywhere --- perhaps I'm not understanding what you mean by "VM folder". I looked in the location where Parallels is installed and I also looked in the location where the Windows virtual machine lives.
 
I was not at build 5626 (though I thought I was). However, after upgrading to 5626, from time to time I am now seeing horizontal white lines just flash across the screen. Moving the mouse around randomly and clicking makes them come and go.

Anyone know what that's about?
 
It look either like Parallels Tools were not installed correctly, video card memory corruption under high load, or very high resolution
Try to troubleshoot, starting with Parallels Tools reisntallation
Try to lower resolution on Mac OS side
 
1) When I updated, (as has happened on all previous updates) I was immediately prompted to install Parallels Tools, after which I rebooted the machine. I just did that again, it made no difference.

2) Regarding video card memory corruption --- why would Parallels have worked flawlessly for the last year and suddenly have a problem? Not sure what you mean by high load --- I'm doing exactly the same kinds of things I've been doing since I first started using Parallels. If there was video card memory corruption, wouldn't I see such a problem using the Mac without Parallels? I haven't....ever.

3) Regarding high resolution, I'm using a 30" Apple monitor at its native resolution, I can't change that. Again, Parallels has worked flawlessly on this configuration for the last year. This problem only started happening a day after I updated to 5626...in fact for the first 24 hours there were no problems at all so that when it did start happening, my assumption was that my Delphi environment had a bug.



John@Parallels said:
It look either like Parallels Tools were not installed correctly, video card memory corruption under high load, or very high resolution
Try to troubleshoot, starting with Parallels Tools reisntallation
Try to lower resolution on Mac OS side
Click to expand...
 
More info --- my Mac (a highend DeskPro, with 6GB RAM in it) has been running 24 hours/day for the last 2 weeks. I shut it down and restarted it and then restarted Parallels and the white line problem appears to have gone away. I did NOT reinstall Parallels.

Now the Mac itself has been behaving itself perfectly the whole time but is it possible that the Parallels install now requires a Mac reboot (kernel changes?) ? I don't recall that ever being necessary before though.
 
I want to apologize to John --- he was absolutely dead right about video corruption. It turns out there is actually a well-known problem with one of the ATI Radeon cards, the very one in my home machine where, if the heatsink gets clogged up, the card starts to overheat and the symptoms are horizontal lines appearing randomly on the screen. At first, it was only happening inside Parallels windows, but a few days later it started happening on Mac applications as well. A google search for this problem indicated that removing the video card and cleaning it (requiring you to disassemble it a bit) fixes the problem, as it did on mine.

dhjdhj said:
More info --- my Mac (a highend DeskPro, with 6GB RAM in it) has been running 24 hours/day for the last 2 weeks. I shut it down and restarted it and then restarted Parallels and the white line problem appears to have gone away. I did NOT reinstall Parallels.

Now the Mac itself has been behaving itself perfectly the whole time but is it possible that the Parallels install now requires a Mac reboot (kernel changes?) ? I don't recall that ever being necessary before though.
Click to expand...
 
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