Sudden instability in Parallels & OS X

J

j.norris

Bit poster
Our use of Parallels on Macs is limited to a single task that requires four applications to be open in Windows: IE6, Thunderbird, Word 2003, and ImageNow (a document imaging app).

Two days ago, as part of regular maintenance, we upgraded one user from OS X 10.4.9 to 10.4.11, applied other Apple system and security updates, and updated to the current version of Parallels from build 4560.

Subsequently, this user has seen Parallels quit unexpectedly and repeatedly, and is seeing extremely slow performance in the Mac OS. She reports that both the crashing and the slow Mac performance seem connected to the use of IE in the virtual environment: Until IE is launched, performance is normal. After IE is launched, she can restore normal performance only by logging out of Windows.

It appears IE6 may be triggering something in Parallels and/or Windows that causes Parallels to crash, and bogs down the Mac OS. Significantly, Mac performance doesn't improve after a Parallels crash - only when the user is successful at logging out of Windows.

We've never seen similar behavior before, and we're baffled about how to fix it. Suggestions would be appreciated.

- John Norris, Academic Advising, Duke University
 
Hello John Norris,

Could you please attach a crash log to your next post?
You will find it on the User's Mac: ~/Library/Logs/CrashReporter/Parallels.crash.log

Best regards,
Xenos
 
Sudden instability in Parallels & OS X (solved)

It appears we've resolved the problem, after identifying and repairing low-level file-system problems on the hard drive of the affected Mac. Even after the desk repair, however, Activity Monitor was showing CPU usage by Parallels at very high levels. (Honestly, I've never seen 135% reported before.)

We adjusted memory and network settings in Parallels, which showed values that were far outside our standard settings, and its CPU usage dropped to a more reasonable 10 percent when idle, spiking to near 50 percent when launching apps. Performance on both the Mac OS and Windows now seem reasonably good.

We lean to the theory that the file-system issues affected Parallels' access to its virtual machine, and that the Parallels update we applied in some way exacerbated the problem. Normally we use DiskWarrior to diagnose and repair directory problems, but in this instance an fsck was required to identify the issues.

- John Norris, Academic Advising, Duke University
 
John Norris, I'm glad to know you have resolved the problem. Thank you for the feedback.

Best regards,
Xenos
 
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