Eternal Poofs Of Deathâ„¢ (EPOD)

First, I do want to say that we all appreciate the hard work the Parallels guys and gals have been putting in to the product. Our company purchased the first release of Parallels and I have personally ran just about every single public release there was. Installed Windows XP SP2 on Parallels and it ran like a champ. Wished for a little more speed and a little less memory usage, but hey, we know they're working hard on this product.

Fast forward to the last beta cycle from 2.1 - 2.2. I'm running 1940 right now and it's completely unusable. I have a copy of the VM hdd file from a fresh install of XP SP2 at the ready. Why? I can't keep the program running for more than 3 minutes before it poofs into non-existance. At various times. I can't even run the recovery console from the boot CD to see if the problem is with XP or Parallels. It poofs as well even before I can type 'r' to run the console.

This has destroyed every single hdd file I've had that had programs installed on it. Meaning, at this point, running Parallels is entirely counter productive because I have can't keep it running long enough to install a usable program on. It's poofed on nearly any program I try to run. All this was from copies of a fresh hdd, no Parallels Tools installed, nothing, just a fresh, clean, XP SP2 hdd that has booted only once.

What gives? I've followed threads on this board to no avail, there's no way to troubleshoot this issue since there is no console log, I can't even boot into XP anymore because I don't know when it'll poof. And every time it does, XP will cease to boot to the desktop. It will, you guessed it, EPOD itself into a black hole. What's worse is that I can't even install the Parallels Tools in XP because it'll poof either half way through or before I have a chance to bring up the VM.

Answers? My company is looking to purchase a site license of Parallels next year and I'm working on the forecasting. It is truly an elegant solution for our users, but I can't recommend it if I am having so many problems with it with no support to boot. I realize that support is ramping up, but this is not the first time I've posted about the EPOD.

Something. Any answer (or a peep from Parallels) would help. If there's anything I can do to help, I will. I'll run test cases, document bug reports, whatever. You have a free beta tester who's had extensive software testing experience. I hate booting into Boot Camp, but at least that doesn't crash into nothingness for me.

Anyone? Bueller?

--
Danny

 

How many machines have you tested and found this problem on? I had a problem a while back that was cured only by reinstalling OSX. After that, Parallels worked like a charm. I was unable, with the resources I was willing to devote to it, to find the problem, but I'm quite sure the reinstall fixed an instability. If you try another Mac, and find it works, you've localized the problem to the machine (hardware or software).

 

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Danny,

Two things. Firstly, is that really a registered trade mark? And secondly, what does Bueller mean?
.

 

Hello Danny,

Could please give me more details about your problem?

1. What does *poof* means? Does it mean that your XP is suddenly Power Off and application with stopped VM remains or whole application vanishes?
2. Is VT-x setting on?
3. Please try to remove all devices except HDD from VM config. Does work now?
4. What is your memory configuration? Host, guest and Preferences->Memory->Reserved memory limit?

 

1. No, it is not really a registered trade mark. =) It looks cool, though...but I might get sued by Apple because I'm using 'pod' in the name...

2. Bueller - famous line from Ferris Bueller's Day Off where Ben Stein (as the teacher) was doing roll call and gets to Ferris. "Bueller? Bueller? Anyone? Bueller?" Or something like that. It's been a while since I've seen the movie.

--
Danny

 

Andrew, Andrew, Andrew... *sigh* He is talking (I am sure!) about the same problem that I have posted about many, many times. Just do a search for the word "poof" and you will find lots of posts that describe the problem in great detail.

You will even find "Poof! the movie" that shows it happening.

One week ago yesterday I overnited a DVD to you containing a .pvs and .hdd file that DEMONSTRATES THE POOF -- a consistent repeatable failure case that should make debugging a snap!

By email you acknowledged receiving that DVD. Go get it and hand it to somebody who can FIX this stupid long-standing problem!

Danimal39 -- if you put the .pvs and .hdd files on a DVD you, too, can send a failing test case to Parallels.

Of course it appears they may not know what to do with one....

 

thorby,

Your problem is under investigation - thank you very much for DVD! But I am not sure that danimal39 has the same problem as you. Thats why I asked those questions.

 

Same problems as thorby, actually. I can do the same and send out a DVD. To answer your questions:

1. Answered above - exactly the same situation as thorby. XP would be running like a champ, then I get the VM properties page with no warning.
2. Yes, it is. I'll run XP some more with VT-x off.
3. Did that, and in 30 minutes of running Parallels (can't do much, though, with no network or shared folders), it hasn't EPOD-ed. VT-x is on.
4. Host = MacBook Pro 17". 2GB RAM. VM - 512MB, reserved memory limit - 1628MB.

Of note, not that it should make a difference...I have my hdd file on a FAT32 partition that I also have Boot Camp on. I've moved it out of that partition (and back on to a HFS+ volume) when I did step #3 and the poofs have not reappeared. Thanks!

--
Danny

 

Andrew, I want to apologize for my snarky tone. You've been very helpful & you don't deserve a putdown. You were quite correct to ask for more details.

 

You realize that a FAT32 partition doesn't support files larger than 4GB.

Perhaps you're VM goes POOF when it tries to access part of the virtual disk that would be beyond the 4GB limit. Sounds like an interesting experiment for Parallels to run to see if that's one possible cause of this problem...

 

Fat32 on the host causes the poof.

I had this same problem. I moved everything off of the Fat32 partion and "POOF" the poofing was gone.

--borphos

 

I have seen "poof" with Ubuntu Linux as well. Does it have a similar limit?

 

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What file system are you using with Ubuntu?
.

 

I did think about the FAT32 file size limit, but my hdd has not gotten to that size just yet. After further experimentation, the EPODs went away with my hdd on the FAT32 volume, but with step #3 that Andrew suggested. I turned everything off except for hdd, and the installation is now as stable as can be, although I can't do much without networking and CDs and stuff. =)

When I get the chance after the weekend, I'll try to turn items on one by one to see if I can isolate the offending hardware item. The plot thickens...

 

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Just leave the sound disabled, and you should be right.

I'd be betting that an update is not far away, and sound will be fixed.
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3GB system poofs on its second day

I guess I am just the luckiest guy around. Every WinXP virtual machine I have built has begun to "poof" (go directly back to the Parallels property window without warning or diagnostic) on its second day of life.

Yesterday, in response to the above posts about disk capacity, I created a new WinXP VM with a 3.8GB disk. I also specified NTFS (? spelling? Whatever the alternative to FAT is) file system during the Windows install process. Which I believe I had done with the previous VMs as well.

I completed the Windows install process and defined two users. That was yesterday.

Today I fired the VM up for its second day of testing. It booted up and presented the login screen with my two user names. I clicked the one for Notan Admin, the non-admin user. It said it was loading Notan's personal preferences and...

poof.

Back to the properties window.

So the hdd issue is definitely a red herring. A 3.8GB hdd with the non-FAT file system poofs just like every other damn VM I've ever made -- this would I believe be number 7. And I have yet another failing case I could copy to DVD and send off for diagnosis...

 

It's not the file system of the virtual disk. It's the file system where the virtual disk was stored (i.e., the file system on the Mac). A couple of users had placed their virtual disk (i.e., .hdd file) on an external drive formatted as FAT32. That would limit the virtual disk to 4GB.

 

Thorby,

Just for completeness, does the .hdd file that you're creating itself reside on a non-FAT32 partition (i.e., MacOS Extended, etc.)? The issue that palter was suggesting was not that filesystem inside the VM needed to be formatted as NTFS, but rather that the filesystem the .hdd file itself resided upon shouldn't be FAT32 (for the reason that was specified).

Edit: aah - and I just saw palter's answer to the above as well. So... what he said.

 

Could you find out which exactly device cause these poofs? You can start from the full configuration and remove devices 1 by 1 and find which device being removed will fix poof problem. It will help us to localize this bug.

 

Still trying to isolate the problem here, Andrew. Thanks for the tips. It seems that one of the devices is causing the EPOD problem. I've been running Parallels in the background for hours now (again, not able doing a whole lot without devices, but...) and so far it's been rock solid.

On a separate note, since Windows is usually such a stable OS anyways (ha ha), does Parallels have the ability to display the blue screen of death? Reason being that it's always a good way to troubleshoot real XP systems, and a crash log usually has entries in MS's KB. If not, perhaps it should be in the next release as a new feature, if you can call it that...

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Danny