And emailing Parallel's support team has resulted in zero responses. I downloaded Parallels 3.0 (4128) on my Intel Mac mini (Core Duo 1.66, 2GB RAM) which is already configured with XP Pro SP2 via Boot Camp. I installed the app, entered the registration info, and everything seemed in good order. Parallels identified the Boot Camp partition and it looked like I was ready to go. I clicked the green arrow to launch Windows. The dock icon turned into the hourglass which spun around a couple of times, my Windows partition disappeared from the desktop, and a few seconds later Parallels crashed. So far my experience with the demo has been limited to watching it crash about half a dozen times. Is there a Parallels that WORKS? Or, at least, is there a way to make the demo actually functional? Paying ~$70 for an app where the DEMO crashes is hardly a good investment.
Try repairing permissions via Disk Utility, that might fix your issue, you can also try a good cache cleaner like Onyx. We still use Version 2.5 in our office for stability reasons.
Parallels 3 is very stable for me .. and so was v. 2.5 The only issue I have is with it occasionally grabbing my app files when in OS X when I have Parallels suspended, and Reset Windows Apps seems to fix that. The big issue for many will be the lack of an Image Tool to increase hdd size. If I had not serentipitously already upped my hdd to 30 GB I would have had to regress to 2.5 to do that. Parallels needs to provide an Image Tool, or similar capability, to v. 3 soon or many will have problems. Phil
Figured out the problem. I figured out the problem, and as I count this as a bug in Parallels. My main computer is a quad processor Power Mac G5. My Mac mini acts as a personal file and backup server -- and runs without keyboard, mouse or monitor. Whenever I need to directly access the mini I use Apple's Remote Desktop (v3) to do so. If I launch Parallels on the mini via Remote Desktop, it crashes 100% of the time. If I connect a monitor, keyboard and mouse to the mini, Parallels launches and runs without incident. So it seems that Parallels has a problem with either a machine that runs headless, or with being accessed via Remote Desktop.
Try going to Preferences and disabling everything under the Animation tab and see if you continue to have this problem.
Dunno what it is. Does your XServe have all of the current OS updates installed? My mini is completely up-to-date (10.4.10, etc). The only thing my mini has running at any given time is MAMP, Retrospect, and No-IP Client (and yes, I've tested Parallels without any of those running). I have no haxies running and no other major applications on it; as I mentioned, it functions only as a light-duty file and backup server.