Parallels version 12.1.1 seriously damaged my Win 10 VM

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PaulKorm

Member
My Windows 10 VM on OS X 10.11.6 was operating very well, booting speedily, all features error free. I foolishly installed the latest upgrade to Parallels 12.1.1 (41525) and my VM is now seriously damaged: (a) boot time has gone from 60 seconds to 10 minutes; (b) keyboard is not recognized in Settings, Cortana, or any Modern app; (c) Windows no longer recognizes keyboard actions from Devices > Keyboard; (c) every time I boot all pinned items in the taskbar disappear. Short of reinstalling Windows (which I will not do because I am not interested in having to reinstall and reconfigure all apps from scratch), I have booted into Safe Mode repeatedly; used DISM to RestoreHealth; created new user accounts to test if the bad behavior occurs there as well (it does).

Nothing else changed in this VM except the Parallels "upgrade".
 
I'm fighting the same problem.
Backed my newest work up separately, disabled all the auto update options, and gone back to a snapshot taken a while ago, then restored the work onto this.
This is once again working fine. Also ran both a disk test and a memory test on the Mac, in case this was the cause of the problem.
Thought it was only me.
It's the task scheduler dying. If you check the event logs, this gives repeated messages about failing and restarting.
Thought I'd try removing things from the schedule, but you can't actually get into the schedule, without the scheduler running, so you are in a 'catch 22'.
Problem is that all the older backups lose some things, but at least they work.
Suspect it must be specific to machines with some particular release of Windows or applications (otherwise everybody would be screaming!...)
 
I won't say I'm 'glad' to see another, but I suspect we may find a few more coming out of the woodwork now...
I've gone back to Parallels 11 (since I couldn't find a download link for an earlier V12 versions), and this is now running fine again. Annoyingly I have a load of subscriptions that all renew at the start of the year, so having to re-install these.
Raising a problem report with Parallels now, and going to point them at this thread.
 
The EXACT same issue here. Keyboard works in MS CMD prompt, notpad, etc. Does not work in Cortana or many of Windows 10 screens with inputs. It takes forever for the task bar to be populated and to start any application. I'm a developer and Windows is virtually unusable to me now.

Additionally, I've noticed that Windows does not recognize the numeric keypad on my full USB Mac keyboard. Don't know if that's related or not.

FYI, I've been using this Windows VM on Parallels for years with no problems.
 
Sorry to see I'm not alone here. I attempted another fix: deleted Parallels 12 from Applications, let Hazel find all the related files and deleted them also. Emptied trash and rebooted. Downloaded the Parallels 12 installation package and reinstalled. Well, that was an interesting waste of 30 minutes. Fixed nothing. So, don't bother with that fix if Support suggests it.
 
Al I can say is go back to V11, till this is fixed....
It was a 'joy' this morning. Straight into Windows, screen and keyboard working properly. Nothing hanging, no unwanted messages in the logs.
Machine feels 'right' again. :)
In my 'war' on this, I actually tried fully re-formatting the partition, re-installing Windows, new user (see another also tried this).
I was 'misled' into thinking this might be a problem at my end, since I recently bought a brand new Mac, and migrated onto this. The problems seemed to time to about this point, so I assumed I had done something wrong.
Mine was insisting on launching things I had not asked for (as if I had typed things in), but then ignoring stuff I was typing in some areas. The task bar would only respond 'intermittently', and it could be as much as perhaps ten minutes before the stuff that should be there actually started to appear. The graphics were also corrupted (the task bar would sometimes 'pop out', and leave black areas underneath, and anything I did manage to run also had odd blocks missing. The Windows error log, is showing some tasks launched by svchost were dying, so I also wondered if I had got a virus in this (there are a couple), this despite being inside a 'per packet' virus scanning firewall, and having anti-virus software in the Windows environment, which reported nothing. So I wasted two days trying all the re-installs, repairs etc..
The difference once I 'bit the bullet' and went back to V11, had me screaming at the time I had wasted....
 
RogerH6 said:
The difference once I 'bit the bullet' and went back to V11, had me screaming at the time I had wasted....
Click to expand...
Questions about going back to v11 (which is an option I haven't yet tried): did you reopen the same pvm you had used in V12 or did you dupe that pvm and use the dupe in v11? What features did you lose by reverting to v11?
 
I used the same pvm, then installed the V11 'tools'.
As far as I can tell I've lost nothing. What is lovely is having a machine working properly again.
V12 is supposedly faster (but obviously with the problems this doesn't apply), and there are supposed to be some new features (like better screeenshots), but I didn't use these. The retina display is meant to have better support (nut I run dual screen, and in fact V12, seems to be far 'worse' for dual screen operation).
 
Doesn't seem like going to V11 resolved the issue for me. I rolled back, installed 11 tools and still nothing :( seriously Parallels? Whats going on here.
 
I wasted so much time (repair install Windows, re-install Windows, Complete re-installation of the Mac OS, then restoring from backups till I found one that worked). About three days of time. I'm not going to endanger the working machine by going forward into V12 again, till I've seen this is fixed. However Parallels are now asking for the logs on the faulty machine, so perhaps the people who are still stuck can send their's to them....

Given that for me a full re-install of Windows did not fix the problem, telling people to apply the Microsoft suggestions seems rather a 'cop out' to me.
 
RogerH6 said:
I wasted so much time (repair install Windows, re-install Windows, Complete re-installation of the Mac OS, then restoring from backups till I found one that worked). About three days of time. I'm not going to endanger the working machine by going forward into V12 again, till I've seen this is fixed. However Parallels are now asking for the logs on the faulty machine, so perhaps the people who are still stuck can send their's to them....

Given that for me a full re-install of Windows did not fix the problem, telling people to apply the Microsoft suggestions seems rather a 'cop out' to me.
Click to expand...
I like how they tell us even Windows Users have this issue and then ask for logs from you. Ridiculous
 
As A comment to the people for whoe 'going back' didn't work, the problem is that I had done so many changes, keeping track of where I was is quite hard.
 
I have ditched parallels and gone to VMWare Fusion. Already seeing a great speed improvement compared to Parallels.
 
As an 'update', Parallels have now said to me:
"Since the issue requires a deeper investigation, I am passing your ticket to our next level of support who will follow up with you on your request directly."

On the Windows users thing, I suspect this is the result perhaps of a crude 'expert system' being used. This is seeing the keywords about Cortana not apparently working, and pointing out that this can be caused by the region settings, but ignoring the other problems. However it may also be slightly diagnostic.
Now I suspect the failure in the stuff like Cortana is actually being caused by the deeper fault possibly interfering with this identification. If so, it could be a clue as to what is happening.
Crossing things.

Have just updated this. Went and had a 'play' with going back to V11, using a backup I had made.
Turns out the key is that you _must_ un-install V12, before going back to V11. Problem is that a virtual machine that has been running with the problem on V12, will display the same problem when you try to boot in V11, and you can't then put the V11 tools in place to get it working. Because I'd been fiddling so much when I did it, I must have already taken the software 'off' when I did the upgrade.
This actually demonstrates rather convincingly, that it is the Parallels 'tools' that are actually the core of the problem, not the external software.
 
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Problem is Paul, I did so many things that I don't actually know 'how' I got it back working.

They are going to 'flag the problem as resolved', since I'm not prepared to get the problem back and send them logs.
Since I wasted so much time (including re-installing Windows three times, and the Mac twice), I'm not prepared to bring stuff back from the time machine 'branch' that contains the problem.
So everyone who has this problem still please file a support request. I've told them to look here, but they pointedly ignore this....

I can relate to the poster who has switched to VMWare, except that I came to Parallels form VMWare, when I had a massive graphics problem with this that they wouldn't fix.
 
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