All of a sudden, this morning, XP VM fails boot (crash)...

I'm still trying to collect the exact conditions of this.
I was using build 3036 without significant issues since Dec 1.
I shutdown the VM (XP SP2) and the Mac exactly like everyday yesterday.
And upon booting in its VM, today XP crashes (blue screen - which I don't have time to read before it clears). It crashes right after the color Windows with a progress bar, right when the screen flicker to draw the background color and display the login dialog box.
It might be video driver related.

I could boot in safe mode and fully uninstall the Parallels Tools.

I can then boot normally, without issues.
I re-installed the Tools.
And got the same crash on next restart.
Removed the Tools through safe mode and now it works okay (without Tools).

My problem is that I don't see what could have changed yesterday either at my Mac OS X level or at the Windows XP level in the VM. For 4 days and a half, I ran 3036 using its Tools (which I installed as soon as 3036 was installed) without problems. I now it looks like the Tools trigger a fatal exception on Windows as soon as they are installed.

Some detail must have changed, but I'm puzzled looking for it.
Parallels, what info could I gather to better report this to you (I mean more usefully)?

 

In Safe Mode, look at your system restore point.
See if anything was changed in the last few days and resvert to an early restore point.

ajm

 

No changes occured and the "last few days" only span 5 days from Dec 1 to Dec 5 as build 3036 was not available before. There is something really buggy in the video driver, and I was outrageously lucky not to have it bomb on me during the first 5 days. It changed mind on day 6.

I reverted to build 1970 and will come back to 30xx in some days or weeks. That's only beta software after all. When it runs okay with minor issues, it is always a pleasure to test and share experiments. When it starts to really fail, then better to move on to something else for some days. ;-)

 

I had this happen to me as well. I suspect that the issue is that when I am home I have my Mac Book Pro connected to a 23" Cinema display. Now when I take my MacBook Pro away from the monitor Windows crashes with the blue screen of death. I should also point out that I was in coherent mode the last time the machine booted. Changing this setting did not impact the problem at all.

I suspect that is what the problem is related to. I'll test more tonight when I hook it back up to the 23" monitor.

Is my situation the same as yours?

-mark=

Don't forget to pick up VM2Go at
http://homepage.mac.com/markmanes/FileSharing3.html

 

Samething has just happened to me

I came home from work to find my 24" iMac locked up. Well I could move the mouse around, but it was a spinning beach ball and I couldn't interact with anything. I held the power button down and rebooted.

Paralles was last in Coherence mode when it crashed.

Anyway on reboot I restarted parallels and I get the same blue screen. I booted into safe mode, was able to uninstalle Parallels tools, and then boot back into XP like normal. I then reinstalled parallel tools and rebooted to find it crashing on the same blue screen. This time when I boot into safe mode I can not uninstall parallel tools as it says I need to boot back into the VM to finish it's installation (which I obviously can not do now)

Below is a screen capture, had to try a bunch of times as the screen is only up for a split second. Looks like it's trying to write to read only memory.

 

1 step forward 2 steps back

So I found that I could select Use last known good configuration to get back into XP. From there I re-deinstalled parallels tools. I then shutdown Parallels and restarted. This time XP came up normal (no tools). I looked to see what other programs I had installed and it showed that the tools were still installed. I removed them again and rebooted, this time it seemed to be gone for good. I shutdown the VM. Shutdown my mac and rebooted everything.

This time I got into XP and tried reinstalling parallels tools, I rebooted no blue screen this time, but I have NO MOUSE! The parallels window captures my mouse input, but the mouse doesn't move around at all.

I tried shutting down and restarting but no go. I'm pretty stuck now!

 

Got it working again

I had this problem after after disconnecting from my 30 inch dell and flying across the country. Steps that got 3036 working for me again.

1. Uninstalled Tools
2. Installed 1970
2. Installed 1970 Tools
3. Installed 3036
4. Installed 3036 Tools

Turned on coherence after boot up. Everythings happy again.

Hope this works for you.
-s
http://initapp.com

 

Yup, this is exactly what I just did, I was going to post that it worked to find that you posted the same thing.

The only weird thing I'm experiencing now is right clicking with my wireless mighty mouse seems to be hit or miss when in XP. It wasn't doing that before. Also I have to set the display to 24 bit instead of 32 or the windows are streached out in coherence. I don't remember what it was set to before all of this other then I didn't do anything special to make it work the first time.

 

Very similar indeed. But hooking it up again to the 23" didn't solve anything. It looks like *once* you shutdown while in coherence mode on a 23" monitor, you're stuck.

- I use a 23" apple display at work and a 20" apple display at home.
- I had build 3036 running very nicely from Dec 1 to Tue 5. I used it at home and at work. At work to get Coherence to work on the 23" I had to lower windows color settings.
- I used coherence on the MBP screen, on the 20" and on the 23" screens without problems (except this limitation on colors on 23").
- As this is a beta, for the first days I was walking on eggs : I carefully switched back from full-screen or coherence to windowed mode BEFORE shutting down XP and then the VM.
- Except for ONE day : Tue 5 in the evening, about to leave the office in a hurry. I remember I did shutdown XP **while** it was in coherence mode **on the 23"**.
- Wed 6 in the early morning, on the 20" at home or on the MBP screen itself, it started to refuse booting XP (well booting, then crash later as you know, before the login screen).

Any amount of uninstall / re-install of the Tools didn't help. On any of the screens.
So if that is related to having shutdown XP while in coherence mode, the culprit might some setting left behind in the registry which I would need to clear to get it working as good as it did in the first days.

Since I reverted back to build 1970 and re-used successfully that same VM with 1970 and its tools, maybe if I re-install again 3036 I'll find myself back in the correct configuration and be able to use 3036 until the next beta comes out...

I'll spend some time this sunday to check this...

 

Indeed. Did that (re-installed 3036 and tools after having moved back to 1970 and its tools for the last 3 days) : it works.

Now I must think to always revert to windowed mode before shutdown of XP VM, especially when using it on the 23" inch, but that is not a big issue for a beta.

 

Yes it definitely is the video drivers. I managed to uninstall Paralells Tools, and then reinstall all but the video driver (and mouse sync, as that requires the vid driver), and it still worked. But install the vid driver and BOOM.

Just in case they got corrupted, and because they were still there after a reinstall, I tried deleting the video drivers (prlvideo.dll and prlvideo.sys) from the Windows system32 & drivers directories, and then reinstalled, but no luck. Something must be stuck somewhere. I'd really rather not reinstall.

Now, as for this:

When you say "Installed 1970". Do you mean you just up and installed it without uninstalling 3036 first? And I take it this means you're not using boot camp as your vm as there would be no way to install the 1970 tools on it.

 

OK!!! I FIXED IT!!!!!

And without crazy reinstalls! Here is how to do it (or at least, how I did it).

1) Uninstall paralells tools.
You might have to boot into safe mode to do this. If it says you have to complete the installation before you can uninstall, reboot in "Last Known Good" mode, and then uninstall. Restart vm into regular mode.

2) Set the resolution in the VM to the same resolution as the last time you shut it down (i.e. on your big monitors). For me, this was 1920x1200. This is the critcal step.

3) NOW, reinstall paralells tools. Restart. Hooray!

4) Don't be stupid next time, and shut down only in (small) windowed mode.

Hope this helps.

 

Thank You, Mike!

Thanks for saving me so much time and trouble, Mike. This is exactly the solution to a very similar problem.

During last night's Windows Update while I had Outlook running in Coherence mode, the session restarted (as a result of Windows Update) and this morning was stuck in this never ending reboot cycle from the BSOD.

I was able to uninstall following the Last Known Good Configuration method as you suggested; I was also able to uninstall by removing the registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\RunOnce\ParallelTools (or something similar to ParallelTools). The trick was in finding the correct resolution; of course I had changed it while booting into Safe Mode.

The lesson learned: do not let Windows Update reboot the session. It may have something to do with having Coherence enabled before the reboot, but I really don't want to find out again.

Thanks again, Mike!

Rick Wargo
http://www.rickwargo.com/