new iMac freezing with minimal install; Apple suspects Parallels

C

chrobb

Bit poster
I've got a brand new 17" Core2Duo iMac that I've been trying to get configured for my mother in law as a gift for Mother's day. I had a suite of apps that I installed for her to get her going, including Parallels, MS Office, Firefox, and a few others. I noticed a week ago that the machine was freezing up at seemingly random points. The system would go unresponsive, though the mouse would move around on the screen. The machine was unpingable, and all action on the screen stopped, so i know it was a system freeze and not just a USB flake-out. I did a low-level reformat and re-install of the OS. I put the suite of apps back on and got the same results. I called Apple and they noticed a whole bunch of Parallels messages being logged even during when the system was frozen. They think there's some issue there, so I took the system *back* to a stock install with another reformat, and installed everything except Parallels. I'm not having the problem anymore, so I'm starting to think Apple may have been right here.

This is with the latest build of Parallels. Mind you, I hadn't actually installed a virtual machine or even USED parallels yet. It wasn't started up, except for all the extensions in the background. Anyone had similar problems?
 
no

but parallels is incomplete until a VM is set up and parallels Tools installed

why complicate the old lady's machine?

WinXp Sp 2 needs all the standard housekeeping
ante virus, firewall, ante spyware, . . . . . ..

a plain mac would be better for many users

Hugh W
 
The latest version of Parallels is 3188. If you assumed that a copy you bought in a store is the latest build, it may not be the case. There are plenty of copies left on store shelves that do not support the core 2 duo chip.

This is easily fixed by downloading the current release from the Parallels website. The same key should work if you are in the US.
 
Parallels is in the clear. The machine finally gave up the ghost last night while I was showing her how to play some of the networked games that come with new Macs. No Parallels installed. Looks like I'll be taking it into a repair center. Hope they have better diagnostic tools than Techtools to run because it passed all those.

As for putting Windows on the mac: I would, of course, prefer not to, but the reality is that she's familiar with it from work and is looking to take some classes that need it. Why would anyone install Parallels unless there was some specific reason? :-)
 
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