Win XP SP3 continuous BSOD when sound enabled

[George Pantela]

Hi guys, ever since upgrading to Parallels 5 I have had continuous BSOD problems with my Win XP SP3 virtual machine. Sometimes a BSOD will happen once in a 24 hour period, other times several times.

I have uploaded the two screen shots of the BSODs - the one that reports the driver "ac97intc.sys" is the one I am seeing repeatedly.

I have had this issue now for approx 4 weeks, with several suggestions applied from Parallels via email having no positive effect. The only thing that works (i.e. no BSOD issues at all) is to disable the Intel 82801BA/BAM AC'97 Audio Controller in the hardware list of devices. This shows that it is definitely something to do with the audio drivers - something changing since Parallels 4 anyway.

I have tried adjusting CPU numbers, reinstalling Parallel Tools, updating the audio drivers, everything that's been suggested in past posts and directly from the Parallels team. Nothing works; only disabling the audio device works, which unfortunately means no sound.

I am running Parallels 5 (build 5.0.9308) on a MacBook 2.4GHz with 4 GB RAM

Anyone else seeing this issue? Any suggestions?

Thanks
George

[John Finch]

Hi George,

I am having the same BSOD problem ever since Parallels did an automatic update about a month ago. My immediate problem after the update was that MS Outlook could not open its PST files stored on the disk volume shared between Win and MAC. I had to move the PST files to the virtual C: drive to get it working again. Now I am seeing an increasing rate of BSOD's with "ac97intc.sys" being called out as the culprit. I have to have sound on my Windows applications. If I can't solve this problem I will have to dump the MAC and go back to a PC.

My Parallels install ran perfectly until the update and now it is a nightmare.

Have you found out how to resolve this problem and still have audio??

[George Pantela]

...If I can't solve this problem I will have to dump the MAC and go back to a PC...

Well, this part of your post got be motivated to respond back as soon as was possible :) Don't want to see you have to do that, now do we ?! LOL

Ok, firstly, which build are you using? At the moment I am on build 9344 - I recommend you move to that build after you fix the problem, haven't had any issues with it so it should be safe.

The only thing that finally worked for me (and the Parallels team tried a number of things first) was a repair of the Windows XP install. The audio drivers were corrupted and this was the only way to fix the problem. See the following instructions here:

http://kb.parallels.com/en/5138

Hope that helps - P.S. you might also like to take a look a this article http://kb.parallels.com/en/8296 when you have got the audio working, installing the Parallels Tools with hotfix provided after you update to build 9344.

regards
George

[John Finch]

Hi George,

Thanks for all of your help. Repairing Win Xp with a slipstreamed XP Home + SP3 appears to have done the trick. I have been running for a week with only one BSOD. That one worried me since it threw the same audio driver error, but none have occurred since. Prior to the fix I was getting several BSODs a day.

Thank you for taking time to help.

John