10.6.3 / Parallels 5.9344 / Win-7 / Machine lockup / Part II

Hi, ok, my problem re-appeared. After complete deinstall, boot, re-installing and using Parallels 5 now for some time I have the same situation:

- MBP locks completely locks-up
- Only turning it off helps
- Spotlight indexer is running like mad
- Full-text mail.app search is not working

I now deleted ParallesMD.importer, because I don't know what it does and doesn't seem to be necessary.

IMO there seems to be a serious bug somewhere in Parallels kernel-extension. Otherwise I can't explain why the whole machine locks up.

 

Have you tried excluding Parallels from the items that Spotlight is indexing?

 

Yes, my complete VM folder is excluded. I even have deleted the ParallelsMD.importer but no luck.

This system lock-up problem is really annoying as I need my VMs quite often. So, only workaround for me now is to switch to VMWare Fusion...

 

One more information: What's interesting is, that I don't have any problems on my Mac-Pro system with VMs and 10.6.3 Server.

 

Have you tried playing with the memory settings of the VM (and of Parallels) - in particular reducing them so that Parallels and the VM do not use more than, say, 1/3 of our Mac's memory?

 

Well, I have 8GB in my MBP and the VM gets 1,5 which is < 1/3 of total mem.

So, that's not the cause. This is really so annoying... I have to switch to VMWare to be able to continue my work.

 

I'm still facing machine lockups.

I have the suspicion that it's only happening if I have my UMTS stick running in OSX. Maybe this is a USB problem, somehow spitting into the Parallels world.

Are there are any USB / UMTS problems known?

 

I have been having the same problem on my Mac Pro, with 8 cores / 16GB RAM. After I uninstalled Parallels, I didn't have any other problems. I am also heading towards VMware. It used to happen once a month, on OSX 10.6.3, but after my 10.6.4 upgrade it locked up 1-3 times a day. It hurts to not have access to the VMs, but I need a stable computer, more than the VMs.

It was locking up, even with no VMs running, but more often when they were. Not a single lockup, since removing parallels.

 

I faced the same problem with VMware, not that often but still.

So I bite the bullet and re-installed OSX and than only use VMWare now. Which works without a problem.

I still use Parallels on my MacPro and don't have lock-up problems there. But the spotlight searching is impacted and full-text searching in Mail is not possible if Parallels is installed.