PD10 problems: Win8.1 crashing, network freezes, disk errors

D

DoniK

Hunter
Have quite a bit of problems with PD10 (27712) and my Win8.1 VM which I upgraded from PD9. I've tried reinstalling Parallels Tools, hasn't helped.

1. Filesystem errors

Three times now I've been prompted by Windows to reboot because of disk errors that need to be repaired. This disk is a VHD (the hardware checks fine by Mac OS) and I didn't have this problem under PD9.

Event viewer shows:

Event ID 98: "Volume E: (\Device\HarddiskVolume3) requires an Online Scan. An Online Scan will automatically run as part of the next scheduled maintenance task. Alternatively you may run "CHKDSK /SCAN" locally via the command line, or run "REPAIR-VOLUME <drive:> -SCAN" locally or remotely via PowerShell."

Event ID 55: "A corruption was discovered in the file system structure on volume E:. etc"

After reboot and automatic checkdisk, all is fine. Until the next time a couple of days later.

2. Network freezes

Bridged networking, I do a lot of networking between host and guest OS (pretty much always have a CIFS share of the VM mounted on the Mac). Periodically networking on the VM just stalls, hangs for like 30 seconds or so. Win apps don't can't connect to the network, and CIFS share hangs. Then suddenly it all starts working again. Seems to happen every couple of hours. Not sure if related to network traffic or not, since I often have traffic, but has definitely happened several times when playing a video over CIFS. Never happened with PD9. Tried switching from Virtio adapter to Intel Pro 1000 MT, didn't help.

3. Full Windows crashes

Never happened with PD9, but now I've had a few hard kernel crashes, where the whole system reboots, generates mini dump. Often proceeded by an app hanging, such as MS Outlook or MS Lync.

Thanks
 
I have the same problems with 10.0.2 (Black screen and no response, system disk error by CHKDSK.exe). I also the similar trouble when upgaded to 10.0.1 (no detection of 10.0.1 release, black screen, CHKDSK.exe error).
For both cases, after 2 or 3 times re-install of parallel desktop new version, it became normal.
I can not understand why such troubles occurs in Paralle desktop 10.x.x (For previous version, I never seen such troubles)
 
Glad to know it's not just me. Yes, I also had the problem with 10.0.1 before upgrading to 10.0.2. I just noticed somehow "Real time virtual disk optimization" got reenabled. Those sorts of features cause nothing but problems, so I disabled that again. Perhaps that's part of the problem. I also found in logs some periodic odd access problems showing up re. the ~\Applications (Parallels)\ folder, so I killed that. And I disabled EasySIMBL/Afloat in OS X, added some more RAM to the VM, and changed video settings (which should modify the driver). Let's see how things go.
 
DoniK said:
Glad to know it's not just me. Yes, I also had the problem with 10.0.1 before upgrading to 10.0.2. I just noticed somehow "Real time virtual disk optimization" got reenabled. Those sorts of features cause nothing but problems, so I disabled that again. Perhaps that's part of the problem. I also found in logs some periodic odd access problems showing up re. the ~\Applications (Parallels)\ folder, so I killed that. And I disabled EasySIMBL/Afloat in OS X, added some more RAM to the VM, and changed video settings (which should modify the driver). Let's see how things go.
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Thanks for information.
At present, Windows 8.1 guest OS works normally.
As you pointed , I also disabled "Real time virtual disk optimization" and after that Windows become normall (not sure!).
Before 10.0.0, the guest Windows 8.1 worked normally without any disk errors, but after upgrading to 10.0.0, I met the disk errors and repaired by CHKDSK.exe frequently. I also asked the technical support for this problem and so I will let you know here.

P.S.
I checked Windows 7 on PD10.0.2 now.
At the time of first release of PD10.0.0, the disk errors (so many !!!) were reported and so I gave up the usage of Windows 7.
But today, after disablinng "Real time virtual disk optimization" (set ON as default?), no disk errors were found, and upgrading completed normally!
I think "Real time virtual disk optimization" affects the system disk.
 
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Yes, since re-disabling "Real time virtual disk optimization", I haven't had any more disk corruption, freezes, or crashes. Great, I think that was it! Thanks @macchan for joining me on this thread and helping to confirm.

I honestly don't understand why Parallels even offers this feature (or how it got enabled after I'd previously disabled it). It's nothing but trouble.
 
I fully agree with you!

This morning I received the answer from them as follow;


We suggest you to follow the steps to fix the issue

step 1: Please follow the instructions provided in the Microsoft support article:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2854570/en-us

Step 2: Restart Virtual Machine

Step 3: Use run prompt: msconfig

Step 4: Select Start-up tab->Disable all Start up Items, except Parallels Tools.

Step 5: Restart Virtual Machine.

I do not think this answer is for my question, it just a answer for Windows beginners!
I asked them to read this forum and post answers for these posted troubles.
 
I started another thread on the disk corruption problem: http://forum.parallels.com/threads/virtual-disk-corruption-with-parallels-10.326788/. At the time I did not see another reports of this but now I am really glad to see others reporting the same thing. I have been using P9 since Parallels cannot seem to confirm or fix the issue, but would like to go back to P10 because I really felt it to be a much faster product.

So this "real-time virtual disk optimization" is a new, P10 thing? I don't seem to see anything like it on P9.
 
I would also like to ask, for those have the disk issues: are they, by chance, on compressed NTFS volumes?

I have several mounted "disks", and the one that has been corrupted several times now is compressed. Perhaps the optimization is incompatible with that? Now, it could be that my other volumes are being messed up as well and I am just not noticing it, since this compressed volume is used a LOT because it has all my source code on it, and corruptions result in soon-to-be-obvious issues as files that were not even touched suddenly refuse to compile because of garbage characters either in the beginning or end of the file.
 
As I updated on my other thread, by turning off "real-time virtual disk optimization", I have been running successfully with P10 for several weeks.
 
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