4560: Is It Safe?

I've been reluctant to upgrade to 3.0 because 2.5 works perfectly for me and I read all the horror stories here about 3.0. Nevertheless, I want to take advantage of the features of 3.0 and I'm wondering if the latest build (4560) has addressed the bugs. Is it finally safe to upgrade? Note: Remember "Marathon Man" where the question "Is It Safe?" was followed by major pain. I'm hoping that doesn't apply here.

 

No, 4560 still crashes frequently for me. It takes a little longer than the previous 3.0 build, but it's still pretty bad. I've disabled nearly all of the Parallels Tools features, which has helped.

The fastest way to crash it is to put your Mac to sleep. Parallels is just gone when you wake it up.

I'm downgrading back to 2.5 again today.

 

Since the crashes installing the drivers Parallels 4560 has been rock solid for me.

And I have not had a single crash since.

Robin

 

This is the best build ever, i think...

 

It is working well for me.

 

I'm glad it's working well for some of you. It's been almost as bad as the previous build for me, and is completely unsuitable for actual use. I'll try again in another build.

 

I would suggest staying with 2.5. 4560 has caused serious crashes for me with both WinXP and Vista, and I cannot get Parallels Tools to install completely. I have 6 or 7 fully paid licenses, and I have to say, Parallels has gone from really great to just plain dangerous. I assume they will wake up and fix these things sometime soon.

I do wish they would communicate with their customers about their efforts.

 

If you are having crashes then please post the crash logs if you have not done so already.

All these issues that people have been reporting here are not all that common, or they would have been fixed before the update was released publicly. I personally have not had any problems whatever with build 4560.

 

If there were crash logs I'd have shared them. Unfortunately, the app is simply going away with no logs that I can find anywhere.

 

There are a ton of complaints about 4560 and not a peep out of Parallels. I'm disgusted with them. Once you lose the confidence of a customer it is hard to earn it back. I'll be a VMWare customer when their product comes out of beta.

Al

 

Actually when I posted a problem to their support web page I had a response within 3-4 hours.

Robin

 

I can't get into the suppport page because it won't accept my email login, even though I have a license number, paid for the product, registered, and wrote the company 3 days ago with my purchase info trying to get it fixed. Still no word from anyone in Parallels. I've reported this whole 4560 mess to Macintouch who has published it. I also sent a note to Macfixit but so far they have not posted anything about it. I see that someone from Parallels has finally acknowledged the 4560 problem and has promised a build "real soon now."

Not hearing from customer service about my login coupled with not being able to use Parallels for a week with zero word from the company ( I also wrote and faxed them) leaves me feeling they could give a damn about their customers.

I used to do a lot of writing on open source when I was in the Linux 'world'. Maybe I'll start writing on problems that Macs have in their vendor community. Maybe a spot of bad publicity will shake up the Parallels people. They better wake up because a major 'giant' is coming after their market (Fusion).

http://www.inc.com/articles/2005/01/opensource.html
http://www.inc.com/articles/2005/02/opensource.html
http://www.inc.com/articles/2005/02/adware.html
http://www.inc.com/articles/2005/05/webservices.html
http://www.inc.com/articles/2005/05/usenet.html
http://www.inc.com/articles/2005/09/webdesigner.html
http://software.newsforge.com/software/05/05/17/2114251.shtml?tid=132
http://www.linux.com/article.pl?sid=05/08/31/1533252
http://www.desktoplinux.com/articles/AT3405272862.html
http://www.linux-watch.com/news/NS5206957474.html


Al

 

I just came across the thread in which you posted your panic log, and I would recommend that you downgrade for now (until the fix comes out). To downgrade, download build 4128 and run the uninstaller that came with the installer for build 4560. Restart and install build 4128. Then restart again. Hopefully you will be able to then use Parallels again without crashes.

After reading that there is going to be a new build to fix a problem that causes kernel panics, you might want to wait just a bit longer. I haven't had any myself, but since you are worried about the possibility of being one of the few that has problems, waiting just a little longer wouldn't be a bad idea.

 

I just upgraded to the latest version and Parallels crashes everytime I log into Windows XP. At this point, it is completely unusable and it must be an issue with Parallels Tools because I installed the update onto my MBP without upgrading Parallel Tools and it seems OK.
I am going to roll back to 4128 and hope it works. This is really my first bad experience with Parallels in the year+ I've been using it however it has been out for over a week and am surprised that this hasn't been fixed yet.

 

Let us know how the install of the older version went.

Al

 

Recently Upgraded from 2.5 to 3.0 (4560) -- Works Great!

I upgraded from 2.5 to 3.0 once build 4560 was released, and have not experienced a single crash -- or encountered any bugs -- during the 10 days I have been using 3.0. (Note that I am running Windows XP Pro SP2 inside my VMs.) Bottom line, reliability gets a big Thumbs Up from me.

In terms of overall performance, 3.0 seems at least as fast as 2.5. The one exception is Parallels Compressor: for whatever reason, compacting my VMs takes much longer in 3.0 than 2.5. But apart from this one complaint, performance also gets a Thumbs Up.

Bottom line, count me as a fellow Parallels 2.5 user who waited for the first 3.0 bug-fix release, before upgrading. I never used the first release of 3.0, but I can say that build 4560 has made me a happy 3.0 user.

 

What hardware and OS version are you running?

Al

 

Aside from the issue of having a too-small VM, I've had 0 problems on the three machines upon which I have Parallels installed: Mac Pro, 8GB RAM, MacBook CD 2 GB RAM, and a June 2007 Build MacBook Pro C2D (Santa Rosa) w/4 GB RAM. I'm running 4560 on all three machines without difficulty.

I can say that I have noticed that 4560 boots the VMs more slowly. I'm using XP Pro, SP2 on all three machines.

 

I am running Parallels 3.0 Build 4560 on a first-generation MacBook Pro 17", with 2 GB of RAM and a CoreDuo processor running at 2.16 GHz. Mac OS X is version 10.4.10.

 

Install 4560? That would be a resounding NO.

After good operation with 4560 for the last week or so, on attempting to load Parallels from a saved state - kernal panic. Nothing I have attempted to do since helps, including all the obvious and non-obvious things like checking the disk package XML files, reinstalling, doing a complete fresh install with a fresh disk image from XP (kernal panics out at the point where Parallels reads the OS DVD). After numerous crash/reboots, I am now attempting to downgrade to the last stable release following brkirch's advice above.

Colour me unimpressed. This has been a waste of an afternoon on a very busy day.

~ Rodney