Parallels freezes

I have been having problems with Parallels randomly freezing in MacOS X 10.5.3. This can happen even if Parallels Desktop is open but the Virtual machine is stopped. Parallels will lock up, and even the Force Quit will not work. Interestingly, I can force quit any Windows apps that are running, but not Parallels itself.

While the Mac side is not affected, I have to perform a hard reboot using the power switch in order to get Parallels to quit. I have not experienced this behavior until recently. I am using Parallels build 5608, but I had the same problem with the previous build (5600, I think).

Does anyone have any suggestions, as this has rendered Parallels almost useless to me.

 

Some additional information I forgot to mention in the original post. I am using a MacBook 2.16 Ghz with 3 GB of RAM installed. The memory assigned to Parallels is 1392 MB. I am running Windows XP

 

Have you tried reinstalling parallels and parallels tools?

 

I installed the latest build 5608 over the previous build and re-installed the Parallels Tools after that. Is there something I should do to uninstall first?

 

Sometimes it help just installing the same build again + tools.

 

Still no solution

I am still having the same problem with Parallels hanging. This has been going on for 3 months. The last correspondance I received from John of Parallels said that he was sending my issue to the development group. I have not heard anything back in over a month, and am getting no replies to my emails asking if there has been any progress.

I have installed Parallels on a separate hard drive with a clean MacOS X installatation and the problem persists. Has anyone had any experience with VMware Fusion, because Parallels is basically useless to me at this point.

 

Well I'm happy to do any testing that may help you. This is a frustrating problem because I typically use Parallels during presentations, and so the random hanging has made it impossible for me to continue to use Parallels.