Mac Freezes after some time Parallels 9

I have a similar issue. Hardware is MBPr 13 inch Mid 2014 running OS X Yosemite 10.10.1 and Parallels Desktop 10.1.2 (28859). With the latest Windows 8.1 running as a guest, if I close the lid and wait a few minutes, and then open the lid, OS X and Windows resume without issue. If however, I let it sleep overnight, most of the time, I am greeted by a black screen of death and have to press and hold to power off.

I have gone through all of the normal troubleshooting steps with Apple support over the phone, including disabling all other 3rd party software, resetting the SMC, BIOS, etc. I took the hardware into Apple and had the geniuses check it out for several days, running various hardware and software tests, running a known good external drive image, etc. They even completely wiped the drive and reinstalled OS X. I installed a fresh copy of Parallels, and a fresh copy of Windows 8.1, and have ended up with the same result. This is a Parallels 10 bug.

 

So...Parallels , any comment about this?
Are you trying to fix this?
Do you investigate this issue? It seems it is not 1-user problem.

 

I can't believe this is still an issue. I have been running into this since parallels 7. I have made it a habit to always suspend my VMs whenever I need to close the lid. But every once in a while, in a hurry, I might forget and have to turn off the macbook with the power button or wait for the battery to run out. This happened to me today, hence why I was googling and ended up here.

 

Hi,
Please check for updates and update your Parallels Desktop 10 for Mac to the latest build: 28883
You may also download the latest build of Parallels Desktop 10 for Mac from: www.parallels.com/directdownload/pd10

 

Mervin
I am talking about PD9 not PD10.
If your only solution is to buy another version (in this case PD 10 ) to maybe fix the problem, i assure you i will not do it.
Did Parallels fixed the PD9 or not?
VMWare doesn't have those issues.

 

Any news about issue? !!

 

It seems like their competitor's product also suffers from this. It was suggested in their forums to change the hibernation mode and some people claimed to have fixed it for them. So I ran this on my MBP

sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 0

And so far I'm happy to say that I haven't had any more issues. Only time will tell if this is an actual solution, but for now I'm relieved.

 

@enriquein
Thank you for info. I will try this. Kudos for you.
But what are the cons of this?. What will I lose if I do this hibernation trick?

Still, i will claim that this is problem with PD and they should fix this. Maybe they should speak with Apple, but this is Parallels responsibilty because they cause the freezes.

 

This makes your Macbook change it's default hibernation mode to use some power while sleeping in order to keep what's in memory alive. If you lose power, then effectively all your unsaved work will be lost and your Macbook will power off dirty.

By default Macbooks write memory to hard disk while hibernating to avoid this in case of power off. In my case I have my VM set to use 8GB of ram, which means that when hibernating MacOS would need to write those 8GB to disk (which is a really, really long operation) when you close the lid, and then read those same 8GB from disk and load them into memory (again, a very long operation) before even showing the login promt.

What I think is happening is that either this operation is timing out somehow, or MacOS just hangs while trying to do this. The fact that both Parallels and their competitor's product behave this way leads me to believe this. This also seems to only have been happening ever since Mavericks came out. IIRC, Mavericks introduced new sleep modes, so that also points into an OS issue and not a Parallels issue.

If I come off as being apologetic, then no. I don't excuse anyone in this equation and the above only reflects my theories on the matter.

 

Hi , Could you please tell me how to change hibernation mode as you mentioned. where to you run this command ? sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 0 ? and did it really solve the problem ? many thanks in advance

 

Hi,

You do this on the Terminal app. Go to your Applications folder, you will find it there. For more info about running commands through the Terminal, refer to http://blog.teamtreehouse.com/introduction-to-the-mac-os-x-command-line

I've had to rerun this command after applying some MacOS patches. Not sure if there are some that reset this setting, but keep it in mind just in case.

 

Thanks for the prompt reply. so what exactly this will do and is this 100 % safe ? i mean will not cause any issue , what if i need to reverse its effect if it doesnt solve the problem , how can i do that ? sorry i am not an expert and trying to be careful ..Thanks Again !

 

While this command is safe to run, you need to be aware of what it is that you are changing. First of all, and before changing the values, make sure you do pmset -g and look for the value to the right side of hibernatemode. Write this down somewhere in case you need to revert to the default setting.

To answer your other question, running sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 0 will make your Mac use the classic "sleep" mode when you close the lid. This means that if you lose power while your Mac is in this state, you will lose any unsaved work and the Mac will not do a clean shutdown. It also means that while sleeping, your mac will drain your battery faster than it would if it were using the newer hybrid sleep mode. This may or may not affect you much, depending on how you use your laptop.

If you ever need to revert, just run sudo pmset -a hibernatemode N , where N is the default value I mentioned in the first paragraph.