Creating snapshot takes hours?

Hello,

I have been trying to diagnose a problem for eight days now, trying to get Parallels to run. Tech support had me reinstall Parallels 5 with the newest build, but I continued to get an error message about contacting tech support for help.

This morning I accidentally clicked on "safe mode" instead of "start", and the gray Windows XP screen came up with the twirling animation thing, and it said "Creating snapshot...". I waited probably more than a half hour, then had to force quit. I re-booted my computer and tried starting Parallels again. Clicked "start", and it immediately went into "Creating snapshot...". I waited for another half hour plus (it's 10 a.m. eastern, and I've been at this since 8 a.m.), then decided to RE-reinstall.

I followed tech supports instructions to the letter, first uninstalled, then reinstalled, started Parallels, and SAME SCREEN came up immediately (Creating snapshot).

Any suggestions?

Thanks

 

Snapshot broken

I'm having the same problem. Can someone help us?

 

Just a note: since April 2010, the problem was resolved somehow, but I don't recall what changed or how it happened (sorry!) since it was so long ago. I have since installed Parallels 6 for Mac, Build 6.0.11828 Rev. 615184 AND upgraded my memory from 4GB to 8GB. Everything's working like a charm now.

 

I'm having the same problem. "Creating snapshot" hangs, and apparently isn't doing anything significant (Activity Monitor shows zero disk activity, and only 10% CPU usage).

All of the commands in the Virtual Machine menu (Stop, etc) are grayed out, and if I Force Quit/Restart Parallels, I end up at exactly the same place - still "Creating snapshot".

 

Solution to never ending "Creating Snapshot"

After force quitting Parallels Desktop, I trashed PVM file (User > Documents > Parallels > xxxxx.pvm) and all the Parallels preferences under User > Library > Preferences > com.parallels.Parallels.plist and com.parallels.Parallels Desktop.plist. Do not launch Parallels Desktop yet because this will resume back the same problem of never ending "Creating Snapshot". Restart your Mac (very important). Launch Parallels Desktop, now you can remove the corrupted Virtual Machine from the List. Unfortunately this basically wipe out the entire VM hard drive file. I am using Retrospect to backup my PVM file from now on instead of relying on Parallel Desktop's Snapshot which is NOT so reliable!