I know this is a tired topic, because I think it has happened upon every single update recently. You'd think Parallels would fix it by now, but I guess not... I was up and running on an older version of Parallels 8 the last two updates of Parallels 8 both had this issue - after the update, I could not get past the Welcome screen when logging in. Tried lots of things like re-installing Parallels 8, Re-installing Parallels Tools, etc. No joy on any of the fixes, so I went back to the one version of Parallels 8 that worked, the original version I installed and created the Windows VM on. So now I went and bought Parallels 9, hoping that it would be better, and of course, I have upgraded to mavericks, so surely the combination of the two would be better! WRONG. After the upgrade to Parallels 9, the same old ugly issue came back. I can't get past the Welcome screen when logging into Windows. After some hunting in the forums, I found a couple of solutions that appeared to fix the issue. 1) I completely un-installed Parallels Tools from Control Panel and then re-installed Parallels Tools. After the reboot of Windows, I was able to log in - exactly one time. 2) I turned off Parallels User Profile Service, set it to manual at startup, and rebooted Windows. Turned it back on and rebooted Windows again. Something like that. Again, it worked after the last Windows reboot - exactly one time. 3) I turned of sharing of Mac folders with Windows. Rebooted Windows and turned sharing back on and then rebooted Windows one more time. Once again, it worked exactly once. If I can remember to turn sharing off, log into Windows, turn sharing on and then reboot Windows each time I use it, I can log into Windows. That's a time consuming process to log into my Windows VM though, it should just work (and it did in the old version 8, two updates back). Is there nothing I can do aside from completely re-doing my entire installation, including re-imaging my Windows VM (which seems to be the only thing that truly works)? This will be the last time I update or buy anything from Parallels if they can't get this right with a simple update installation. My time is far too valuable.....
I just ran the update because I got a prompt to do so. I wish I'd browsed the forums before running the update. Now all I get is Parallels Desktop bar in the middle of my screen with the wheel going round and round and round... I've tried restarting my Mac and re-launching Parallels. No luck. Any suggestions?
The only thing that has "worked" for me is disabling Mac folder sharing, log in, enable Mac folder sharing and then let it reboot. Very inefficient, but I almost always get past the stuck Welcome screen. This has been an issue for the past two version 8 updates as well as this version 9 release, so I am not sure why Parallels ignores it. I guess they have our money already and don't care? In fact, I am close to going back to Parallels 8, because I am having more issues on a regular basis. I am also getting a lot of application crashes with Primavera P6, my Windows applications as well as even the start menu get to the point where they are unusable (all the text goes away, even though the windows are there and they respond). Wish I could offer more advice, but Parallels isn't helping here....
Update: I've now gone to just leaving Mac shared folders un-checked permanently. As a work around, my Mac hard drive shows up under Network on the Windows 7 side, so I've just created a few shortcuts to my most frequently accessed folders. Not exactly ideal and certainly not how it's supposed to work (and it did work many updates ago - thanks for screwing it up Parallels), but at least I don't have to reboot a couple of times each morning. I've sent in two trouble tickets on this issue without any response whatsoever. I am not expecting resolution anytime soon, nor do I expect any fit ire updates to address it given the past record of the last 3 versions or so. So much for Parallels 9 being built for Mavericks and all of its glory...
