Today I started Windows 10 under Parallels 12 in macOS 10.12.5 and immediately launched a Windows program. A few seconds later, the Parallels Tools update began to run. Unfortunately, some interaction between the tools update and the Windows program has caused both to lock up. The tools update is frozen for many minutes at 32%, and I'm unable to use or close the program I'd started. In addition, the Windows menu doesn't respond, and a ctrl-alt-del has no effect. From the macOS I can force Parallels to quit, but this simply makes the Windows session go to sleep, and it returns to the same state when I start it again. So, I seem to be stuck. Any suggestions for getting this unfrozen?
So I did this: In the dock in macOS, I control-clicked the icon for the Windows session, then chose Actions > Stop. I got a warning prompt asking if I really wanted to do this, and I replied yes. It then closed Windows and Parallels. When I restarted Windows, it is no longer frozen. However, all of my desktop icons and task bar icons in Windows are now missing. In addition, when I start Windows I get a warning box with the heading "Network Error" that reads "Windows cannot access \\Mac\Home\Desktop." Any suggestions for remedying these? Can (and should) I reinitiate the Parallels Tools update to make sure that it executed correctly? If so, how would I do that?
Looks like you are/were sharing your Mac Desktop with Windows, and because of an issue with Parallels mounting your Mac as a Mac/Windows shared volume you can't get Windows to start up properly. Try going into Configure from right clicking your VM from the list shown in Control Center, then select the Options icon at top and then select the Sharing icon at left, then sure that Shared Profile "Share Mac user folders with Windows" has been selected. Next press the Configure... button and make sure that Desktop is checked, then press OK. If all of the above is true, then try turning off sharing all together by turning off "Share Mac user folders with Windows", reboot your VM, install Parallel Tools, then shutdown your VM and turn on Share Mac user folders with Windows" again. Restart VM and see if your issue is resolved.
Thanks for the detailed suggestions, much appreciated. "Share Mac user folders with Windows" was already selected and the Desktop was checked, so I went through the steps in your final paragraph to turn off Mac folder sharing, reboot the VM, reinstall Parallels Tools, shut down the VM and turn on Mac folder sharing again. This not only made the Mac desktop's items visible again on the Windows desktop, but the Windows program icons I'd placed in the Windows taskbar are now back. The only remaining issue at this point is that a few Mac icons that are normally invisible on the Mac desktop are now visible on the Windows desktop -- two instances of desktop.ini, as well as Thumbs.db, .DS_Store, .localized and something called $RECYCLE.BIN (not sure if that last one is Mac or Windows). If there's an easy way to hide these on the Windows desktop without impairing their function in the Mac OS, it would be helpful to know.
