can't launch the XP

Hi, I upgraded the recent release Parallels Desktop and few problem occurred afterward.

1) Memory problem - I can no longer launch XP the second time without restarting my OS. I increased the memory to 1148MB, still no use.

2) Internet Explorer error, thus resulting me from logging in to windows - this problem, I am actually not sure if it's directly affected by Parallels. I installed/uninstalled IE 7 Beta 2 and 3 three or four times I think. Finally settle for IE 7 Beta 3 standalone. It was working fine (this is before the upgrade of parallels), then this memory thing kept happening, finally few days ago, I cannot log on to the Windows - everything was loading, I could see the Windows XP icon and it asked me to log in, after that the IE error message pop up, and everything turns blue.


Any idea?

tee

 

Why do you think problem 1 is memory related? Nothing you've described indicates memory. Have you tried booting Windows in safe mode? It sounds like your Windows installed might be hosed.

 

Well, it tells me :

"unable to allocate Virtual Machine memory" whenever I launch the Parallels. It goes away after a retart of my Mac.

tee

 

Virtual Memory is not Ram, it is hard disk space alocated to be used as swap space when ram gets full.

It sounds to me like your running out of HDD space in your Partition or on the Mac itself.

 

Actually, virtual machine memory *is* RAM. Virtual machine memory and virtual memory are different.

I had this and other problems, that went away when I reinstalled OSX. Drastic as that may be, it was the only solution that worked here.

And Tee, you don't give your configuration, but if you have less than 2 gig on your machine, you probably need to reduce the amount you allocate to Parallels. With 2 gig of physical RAM, the sweet spot for running one guest at a time, is about 800 meg for Parallels, and 768 meg for the guest. More than that and you will run very slowly.

 

Thanks Joe and Ben,

My system is MBP, 2.0GHz, 2 GB ram. Reformatted my HD and reinstalled everything this afternoon, this time I forgot to partition my HD though
Just about to install Paralles and thought I come to check the forum first.
Really don't want to go through the whole installation again, so no partition is OK right?

tee

 

Parallels uses a standard OSX file to hold the virtual hard disk. If you set up an expanding hard disk when you create your VM, it will use only as much space on your physical disk as it needs for the data you actually store, so you can make it larger than you anticipate you will ever need. The default is four gig (IIRC), but 15 or 20 would probably be a better choice for most people.

If you want to install bootcamp, you need a bootcamp partition which you can create with the bootcamp tools at any time as long as you have free space.

There is no connection whatsoever between bootcamp and Parallels. Parallels is an application you install on OSX, and your VM is a document as far as OSX is concerned, that you open with Parallels. OSX and your Parallels VM and guest OS run at the same time, and your guest doesn't see OSX and OSX thinks your guest is a Parallels document (more or less).

 

Clearing cache seems to fix virtual machine memory problem

Hi

I got this message intermittently starting my XP (1024Mb RAM) on my MBP (2048Mb RAM), and a reboot always cured it. I figured since a reboot cured it, and I have 30+GB free disk, it has to be memory related. So I tried running cache out x, after the message appeared, and voila - it seemed to fix it.

No idea how, but it looks like OS X was storing too much cache information for parallels to work - anyhow, I have a workaround.

Regards

Shaun