Unable to allocate memory for Monitor PE!!

Ugh! This is one really annoying problem. Start up Parallels, click resume button to get VM restarted, I get this message. No apparent reason. Happens with 1970 and all the beta and RC candidates afterwards. Makes Parallels pretty much useless, AFAIC. I *think* if I log out and back in it works again...certainly works after reboots. At first I thought is was only with the betas, then I backed up to 1970 and it exhibits the same problem. I would be more than happy to work with someone on this directly!

 

An update...indeed if I log off and log back in, I can start up Parallels and resume my image. Up to that point I tried quitting all apps and restarting Parallels, which does not help. Hope that provides a bit of a clue...

 

Jeez, I hate to be the only one replying to my own posts...so it appears now I'm in a state where simply logging off and back on will not let me start Parallels VM...same message. Isn't anyone else having this issue?

 

I've never seen that message and I suspend and resume frequently. I do find that eventually resume fails (usually hangs) and a restart is required. I also find that putting the Mac to sleep and waking it up usually works but once in a while it hangs and has to be forced to shut down and rebooted. So far, I've just chalked it up to the well known recalcitrance of inanimate objects (translation: not worth the time to look for).

Reboots seem to be a way of life in the wide world of computers, whether several times a day, or once a year for stable servers whether they need it or not.

Anyway, for me, resume isn't much faster than boot so I usually just shut down.

 

I assume by "shutting down" you're referring to the VM...I've been doing that as well but usually by the end of the day I cannot start up the VM, getting the same message. MPB is pretty much stock Apple 10.4.8 with all the latest updates. I think the only kernel extension is Cisco VPN client, AFAIK.

 

How much RAM on your machine, how much in Parallels preferences, and how much for your VM? (And I still don't know what "Monitor PE" might be. Maybe the Parallels team will chime in with a definition).

 

Would be nice if they would. I keep meaning to send them a bug report but I have to *register* first and my box with the product key is never with me when I have to mess with it! Argh!

Anyway, MPB, 2GB physical RAM. WinXP image is allocated 512MB. Have tried several variations of that from 128M to 1.5GB, no difference. Current system has wired: 220MB, active 1.17GB, inactiv 480MB. It'll run at least once after I reboot (a few times it just required logout/login) but starting it back up a second or third time..no way.

 

More data....tried a "clean" VM, same results, so I would guess it's not something with the VM itself.

 

Check Parallels preferences, memory and make sure there's at least 612 (VM + 100 MB) allocated to Parallels. Memory is set in two places: once for the overall app, and once for each VM. reports indicate that maintaining a 100 MB cushion between total RAM for simultaneous VMs and total preferences allocation is necessary.

 

I had done that before, but forgot where to set that...when I went back in it was set to the max..1628. I'm pretty sure I had not left it there but you never know. So I've set it to like 680MB and we'll see if that makes a difference. I've also stopped running some apps to see if that has any impact, so more isolation in progress.

More fun prior to doing that. I quit some apps one-by-one to see if it helped. After quitting all the PowerPC apps, still not working. Then I quit a small handful of them...including iCal, Thunderbird, Adium, and terminal (which I had only recently opened anyway). Lo and behold, Parallels would now let the VM try to come up...*however*, when the VM was starting the CPU would kick up very high, the fans come on, and the VM runs really slowly. Shortly after WinXP came up, the MBP had a kernel panic. *sigh*...

 

On my MBP Windows runs fast. I'm running Win2k, not XP, but XP users report good results. One possible cause of slow execution is having VT-X disabled. you might want to check that in your VM console. Beyond that, I'm out of ideas until you come up with more data.

Good luck. I'm sure it's frustrating, but think how good it will feel when it's finally working <grin>

 

Tried all variations of VT-X and acceleration...makes no difference. I keep wondering if there's something in my installation of Mac OS causing issues...the only third party extensions are Cisco VPN and whatever Parallels installs, if anything. At least AFAIK... Tried starting up Parallels with only one CPU enabled...no dice. Right now I can't think of anything else to try to troubleshoot...

 

More info around this whole deal...

I moved a clean image and pvs file from my account to another account on the same machine, that booted fine (whereas before I could not boot the same image in my account after my normal image failed to boot). Then, I went back to my normal account and guess what...my "usual" VM booted this time! Hmmmmmm.

 

More info: Currently in the state...have run Parallels twice today successfully (oddly, quite a while after the first run I got a lot of fan activity, but no related CPU activity...don't know if it's related...). Third attempt to start from a shut-down VM failed with the same message. In system.log I get the following when clicking the go/green arrow button:

Mar 12 17:01:49 wdixon-mac kernel[0]: [err in mmIoWirePages ] : Failed to lock memory region -> ../host.Darwin/mm/io_memory.cpp:531
Mar 12 17:01:49 wdixon-mac kernel[0]: [err in hostLockPages ] : Failed to wire guest memory pages down -> ../host.Darwin/mm/generic.c:259
Mar 12 17:01:49 wdixon-mac kernel[0]: [err in monitorRequestHand] : Monitor image not loaded but someone try to send control request -> ioctls.c:411

The next time I click it:

Mar 12 17:03:53 wdixon-mac kernel[0]: [err in hostLockPages ] : Failed to allocate memory for descriptor -> ../host.Darwin/mm/generic.c:251
Mar 12 17:03:53 wdixon-mac kernel[0]: [err in monitorRequestHand] : Monitor image not loaded but someone try to send control request -> ioctls.c:411

and the same two messages the third time I try to start the VM.

For grins, I quit Parallels, restarted, and got the same two messages.

Anyone know what this is?

 

I don't have a solution for this, but I see it every time I upgrade Parallels Desktop. Usually, I have to reboot to make it work, but this time (after downloading 3188) I'll try just logging out and logging back in. All in all, this problem really makes me reluctant to upgrade Parallels. Were it not for this, I would only have to reboot my Mac Pro when Apple posts a Quicktime update.

 

For the first time I am aware of now, I hit this problem on the *first* invocation after a reboot. Egad! For the record, I did submit a trouble case to Parallels and about a week later got a reply to upgrade to 3188...which also fails. Then they did contact me again for a pointer to this thread...about a week ago. Other than that I'm not hearing any forward progress or unsure if there is any attention to this issue...seems like they have plenty of others ...grumble grumble....

 

Hmm... Sometimes this unability to allocate memory is able to be fixed by cleaning system caches with a tool like Onyx... Have you tried that?

 

Yes, I tried Onyx. No, it made no difference.

 

Strange that it cannnot lock the memory down...

Have you tried an archive and install of OS X? Then re-install Parallels 3188, then restore your old .hdd file and .pvs that you backed up on an external (back-ups go without saying).

 

I've done archive/install and resinstall of Parallels 3188 directly, I've even done a complete wipe of the drive and resintalled MacOS from scratch, up to the 10.4.9 combined image (or whatever it's called). Still exhibits the same behavior.