MBP sleep and Parallels

Hi Guys,

I mostly run my MBP on an external monitor when at work. Doing this I have all kinds of problems when trying to take my MBP somewhere. I have resigned myself to shutting everything down. The external monitor just messes everything up.

I'm wondering though how many of you are having success at using Parallels on the regular MBP screen and just sleeping the MBP (IE closing the lid)? Does this seem to work well? Does your Parallels instance seem to tolerate the MBP going to sleep or does it even allow it to?

M

 

We're having the same problem with our new MacBook Pro.

I'd say it happens about half the time when our MacBook Pro falls asleep while Vista is running (Business Edition). When we wake it up, the Vista portion is just a completely black screen with what looks like a single DOS-type cursor and nothing else. It doesn't matter if Vista was left in full screen or windowed mode.

Anyone else have this issue? Or anyone know of a fix?

 

So far in my limited testing with 3120 and WinXP if I suspend the VM prior to sleeping the notebook things are ok.

I haven't had the guts to try a typical sleep from the MBP.

 

Thanks, I'll give it a shot... but sometimes you're just called into a meeting and you can think about having to suspend, etc. Worth a try, though.

There's got to be a fix...

 

Windoze has no equivelent to the Mac's sleep mode and I think it just does not know what to do with it. If I close the lid on my Mac with the VM running, the Mac will sleep fine and wake fine but windoze does all kinds of wacky things when the computer wakes. Sometimes there's a black screen, sometimes the whole thing is frozen up and even when it seems OK, the apps that were left open need to be re-launched. One thing I have found that helps a bit is to switch to the finder before closing the lid. But its best to just pause or stop the VM....

DD

 

Have you tired completly disabling Windows power management? Perhaps this will help.

 

This seems to have done the trick. Thanks for the suggestion!

Oh, and dd55, I think the Windows equivalent of the Mac's sleep mode is called "hybernate"

 

Have any of you guys found that the newest Parallels builds make sleeping the MacBook Pro very slow. I have disabled safe sleep with the following:

sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 0

and it used to take a few seconds to sleep. Now it takes 30-60 seconds on my MacBook Pro (Core Duo, the original) running 10.4.8, 2G memory. This is really annoying when you want to close the lid and go. If I take the Parallels folder out of the /LibraryStartupItems folder and reboot, then sleep is back to normal and fast.

I have posted this elsewhere and gotten zero replies yea or nay. Hoping one of you here will reply.

 

Have you tried using "Detect Displays" when connecting/disconnecting the external monitor?

 

I'm using Parallels 3150 and Vista Ultimate on an up-to-date but early MBP, and OS X sleep or closing the lid is no problem.
-Ian Duff.

 

"I think the Windows equivalent of the Mac's sleep mode is called hibernate..."

Yes but it's not "equivalent". Windoze takes almost as long to come out of hibernation as it does to boot up from a full shutdown and even then most apps have to be re-launched. It's nothing like the Mac's sleep mode. There's a bunch of stuff on the web about the differences but, trust me...it's not the same.

DD

PS How does one go about "disabling" windoze power management? I've looked in the control panel and I don't see any option to disable it.

 

In XP it should be right there in the Power Options control panel. In Vista you have to open the control panel and click on one of the links on the left side. You'll be able to tell the display, computer, etc. to never sleep.

Sorry to hear hibernating doesn't work out too well for you. I don't recall ever having to re-load apps or anything and it never takes more than 10 seconds for Windows to resume for me when being woken up from hibernating. Definitely nowhere near as fast as the Mac's sleep but it's still very usable for me.

 

"You'll be able to tell the display, computer, etc. to never sleep."

Right...knew about that stuff. Just thought there might be some option that would simply switch the whole thing off that I was missing....

"Sorry to hear hibernating doesn't work out too well for you."

Don't lose any sleep (no pun intended) over it....I don't like windoze anyway and only use it because of one critical app that is not available in a Mac version.

Thanx
DD