Hello! I'm using Windows XP for gaming, in previous Parallels versions everything worked pretty good, but in Parallels 18 about 80% of my games are crashing the VM after I start the game. After the game starts usually I can see the intro video, after that VM crashes and suggests me a crash report, and after that in some games I can resume and the game is working just fine (Plants vs Zombies), and in some games I see just a black screen, and sometimes only some parts of the image are working. The games that have the issue is at least: GTA 3, GTA VC, Dune 2000, Plants vs Zombies, Hotline Miami, Need for Speed 3, Scarface, Red Alert 2. Games that are still working: Sims 1, Half-Life (with old launcher), NFS Underground, some old consoles emulators I tried install fresh Windows XP but the issue persists. On Windows 10 the same games are working fine. I tried on Parallels 18.0.1 and 18.0.3. Using MacBook Pro 15 2019, MacOS 12.6.1 Here I collected crash reports for some of the games: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1MP_6afpby4MIx8GRLYJcLs_cGvyjEQJZ?usp=sharing Windows XP support is very important for me, I very hope that can be addressed. Thank you.
We have created a ticket to technical support, we will contact you by email to further investigate the issue you are experiencing.
Support for Windows XP(and some more older OSes) will come to an end soon due to a policy change made by Microsoft. You can fine out more from the Release Notes form Parallels Desktop 18.1.0.
It's not just games. Screensavers such as 3d-pipes will crash it also. Regardless of Microsoft's policies, keeping something from working that used to work is pretty lame. I suppose downgrading to PD 17 is always an option.
Upgraded Parallels from v17 to v18 and suddenly Windows XP machines are unstable and crashing with graphics faults. Firstly, it seems unreasonable to blame Microsoft. Secondly, it seems unreasonable for Parallels to turn its back on Windows XP without including a large disclaimer in their "upgrade" promo material. Saving my investment in a ton of XP software is the only reason I use Parallels. Now I'm out the cost of the upgrade and all my XP software is trash. This is more than a huge bummer.
Another thing to keep in mind is that the further into time you go, support for older Guest OSes tends to drop.
I was finally able to stop the crashes by disabling Direct3D acceleration. From Start Menu, Run... "dxdiag", then go to Display tab on resulting app. Presumably, some graphics will be slower now, but no crashes yet.
