The upgrade to 4.0 is a DISASTER

So it looks like I am one of the MANY people unable to upgrade to 4.0. I am now $40 poorer and totally unable to use PC applications on my Mac. To top things off, the Parallels support team has gone quiet instead of OPENLY addressing on their website the fact that there is a MAJOR problem. They should also pull the upgrade from the website until the issues are resolved.

DID THE PARALLELS QA TEAM TEST THIS PRODUCT BEFORE IT WAS RELEASED?? From the number of posts about the 4.0 upgrade disaster, it looks like the answer is NO.

Like many other people, I have the issue that during the upgrade from 3.0 to 4.0 on my Mac (v. 10.5.5.) the process quits in Step 1 of 4 while upgrading the image (XP). Before it quits to show a logo, I get a Windows black screen for a fraction of a second. That screen states in part "Windows did not start successfully. A recent hardware or software change might have caused this". I only know it states that because I took a screen capture during that split second.

Although I see many users have had this exact issue, it looks from the posts that other users have had the process fail elsewhere. In any case the number of posts in the forum regarding issues with upgrading to 4.0 is numbing.

Parallels has totally mishandled not only the upgrade, but its response to the disaster. I publicly request an acknowledgement on the Parallels site, so that other users thinking of upgrading are aware that their capability to run Parallels on a Mac has a significant chance of being put on hold indefinitely. Parallels team; please either acknowledge the issues or pull the plug on 4.0 until those issues are resolved, the current situation is not right. Don't expect your users to do the testing of new products for you.

 

no doubt about it - this upgrade is horrible

I share the views of many - this upgrade is a real disaster. Just wasted two whole days trying to complete the upgrade, not to mention the money spent. Wish I had stayed with 3 - it wasn't perfect but at least it served its purpose. You guys at Parallels really us everyone down!

 

Give me please ticket id

 

And yet, I have upgrade all my VM's and I have been using it for the last 3 days without any issue.

I have been part of the Beta's and RC's and have add only small issues, which were corrected promptly.

Maybe you think I'm lucky, but I'm sure I'm not the only one.

 

.... I am waiting since more than 3 days for the activation upgrade key from 3.0 to 4.0 - 2 ID´s sent - still waiting - old version is deleted - new not working - how long does it take to get it???
I sent everything incl. the receipt in pdf file - waiting waiting waiting

what is going on with the support team?

 

Do the same thing I did, I requested a trial key while waiting for my new one.

I installed the trial, a couple of hours later, I received my real key and I simply changed the values in the menu option to Activate.

 

This is not new. I had gone through two upgrades in the past and each time was a disaster at the beginning and took a couple of updates to set things straight. So unless you really need the new features, I would suggest everyone to wait a little until the first update is out before jumping in.

 

Hi Frederic,

thx for the info - I will try.

 

xrayo and others,

Why don't you cut John some slack. He's probably be going 24-7 dealing with this mess. If you've ever done a significant software release like this, I'm sure you'd understand.

 

I agree this release is STILL dealing with issues that were part of the 3.0 release and continued for some time during it's life time. I would think that if they had sent this release out to 50 - 100 Alpha/Beta testers a great deal of the install and cosmetic issues would not exist. So you wonder who tested this before release?

As it is, I have posted at least 4 problems all of which have received no reply from Parallels (and yes they are mostly functionality and cosmetic issues) but the install was painful and had to be repeated several times before it happened and frankly could still be tied to why I am having these problems.

And yes I guess if you release this kind of bug infested software then the people at Parallels are pretty busy, kind of a self inflected wound though.....

 

Hi,

Well I was one of the beta/RC tester, all of my comments or issues were resolved thru the Beta and RC releases.

I upgrade to the full v4.0 release and have not had issues. Maybe all of us beta/RC testers did not have the same kind of windows installation you have?

 

Thanks for the reply - I realize that we are dealing with WINDOWS (and that is mouthful right there) but all of the problems I am having with PD4 I did not have with PD3 and havne't changed the Windows enviornment at all. So it makes you wonder.......what happened? Things like having the Windows Task Bar show or not I wouldn't think is a Windows problem though, nor is being able to double click on the PD4 icon to bring the Windows startup menu up when in Coherence but who knows.....

 

Maybe you didn't have the same as others. I ask this of you though, how many times did you do an upgrade of a v3 install to v4.

 

I can't recollect them all but off the top of my head I'd say the original, then 3.0 and at least 4 versions in Ver 3.

 

Partial solution

From what I went through today, the above conditions occur when Windows XP SP3 (specifically SP3) is executed in the VM with the PD settings for "Windows"/"Windows XP" - something in the Microsoft kernel booting processes goes kaboom.

The way to get into your WinXP environment is to change the VM type to "Windows"/"Other Windows" or "Other"/"Other".

You will have to use the magic Cmd-Ctrl-Opt-R sequence to gain control over the VM and escape the automagic 'Update' process gui - once the first time through fails, WindowsXP is in the mode of requiring the user to select whether to run "Safe Mode" or not. The parallels desktop magic scripted install process is not yet setup to handle that selection choice.

---

I ended up going through the same phone queue and "I'll transfer you"-hold-then-get-hung-up routine several times before finally getting a more or less intelligent Tier I gal who really tried hard to help. She grabbed John (famous Paralells Engineer John) to answer my questions and he is clearly aware of an issue and attempting a fix as soon as we bozos out-here in user land calm down a bit.

Its clear that the Beta evaluation process was defective, and that the HelpDesk team is mostly incompetent - and whoever at Parallels selected their "on-hold" audio should be shot, bludgened with their own ankle bone and then eviscerated with a rusty 3-ring binder holding a printout of the old BOFH usenet group. On the other hand, it appears that a combination of Microsoft "Genuine Advantage" and Service Pack 3 was rolled out on automatic updates between the PD4.0 Beta period and the product launch.

John recommended that I turn off automatic updates, which makes sense from a Parallels developer's stand point (ie: get Microsoft Windows to stop being a moving target) but hurts those of us who have to interact with a Windows IT environment where not having patches installed is considered a reason for no Windows side support....

 

Trapped by spam filter, maybe?

 

Okay, I closed windows, went to Configure in the VM changed the OS to Windows and OS Version to "Other Windows" started it back up again it merely rebooted into the same cicumstances I have now. Did i miss something?

 

god this product and company have gone to shit havent they?

I just bought vmware fusion, i suggest everyone else do the same. Just convert your images over and leave this crappy company and product in the past. I mean seirously outsourcing everything for cheaper growth has its costs, that cost in this instance is your customers dollars. (BECAUSE YOU WILL NO LONGER BE GETTING MY COMPANIES MONEY)

 

Upgrading to 4.0 is definitely a bear and there really is no excuse. In true Parallels fashion, all the effort was spent on creating a powerful, feature-rich product, and then rushing to release the moment some techie was able to get it up and running on his own machine. I downloaded my upgrade the day it came out, but after reading this forum I literally moved the dmg file to the Trash.

But last night I got curious. Took the file out of the trash, and spent all night trying to upgrade my MacBook Pro running Leopard 10.5.5 and Windows XP SP3. I thought I took every precaution. I downloaded an autologin utility from the Microsoft website that enables autologin at the registry level. I permanently disabled my firewall, anti-virus and spyware. I backed up my VM to an external hard drive and everything seemed to be going well so I went to bed. When I woke up a few hours later, there was an error message that it could not complete the upgrade because there had been a major hardware change and it could not activate my copy of Windows. It prompted me to activate, but I chose no figuring that it might fix itself later during the upgrade. Auto setup then continued from Step 1 to Step 2 but stuck before Step 3. I then decided to force manual setup by hitting the Ctl-Opt-Cmd-r key combo. I cancelled out of all the device driver messages that kept popping up. It puttered along and then froze again. This time I followed the Troubleshooter Guide and went to My Computer and double clicked on the CD drive. Nothing. I did it again. Still nothing. I left it alone for an hour. Still nothing. I activated Windows (which turned out to be as easy as clicking the activate now button). Still nothing. Finally, I rebooted Windows (not OS X) within the little window, and that prodded things along a little further, but it stuck again. Then I went back to My Computer and double clicked on the CD drive. This time it launched the Parallels Tools Wizard. When it was done I rebooted Windows and then I rebooted Leopard. To my complete amazement, it worked!

Here's the good news. It may actually be worth going through all this unnecessary aggravation. Now all I can say is WOW! My MBP is lightning fast and rock solid. All my applications work and my network settings preserved. I did have to re-activate Office 2007, but that took all of 3 seconds. Frustrating? No doubt. But for $40 bucks, I have a new MBP. I just saved thousands.

 

glad there are at least two people who have had PD4 work..

you and the person who approved/tested it before release