3.0 GA: Windows Vista Boot Camp freezes on startup

I was quick to upgrade to the 3.0 GA when it became available and I was able to successfully run my Windows Vista Ultimate Boot Camp partition. I even managed to run Quake III Arena very smoothly in a VM on my MacBook which blew my away. So far so good.

This morning however, I have been unable to successfully start-up my Vista Boot Camp VM. It systematically freezes at some point after I enter my password and while it is finishing-up loading my desktop (the Vista VM freezes -- not the Parallels application). I'll see my Windows Vista desktop, start menu. I can tell it's still finishing up the startup sequence as the animated Vista wait spinning wheel pointer icon is displaying. All of a sudden, the icon (and the whole desktop) freezes and I can't do anything else in the VM. The fans quickly start kicking in as the Parallels app uses 100% CPU.

At that point, I can use Parallels menu to invoke Action | Reset or Action | Stop to restart the VM but the same thing happens over and over if I try restarting.

I rebooted back into the native Windows Boot Camp and after the required ACPI hardware detection and reboot (whatever that is - it is annoying), the Vista Boot Camp works perfectly - no freeze. I reboot back into Mac, launch Parallels and the Vista Boot Camp VM and I get the same freeze at the same point.

So far, I tried:
- Windows Vista Safe Boot (it works but is obviously not very useful)
- Disabled Parallels Networking Support (still freezes at same point)
- Disabled Intel VT-x support (still freezes at same point)
- Tried Full Screen, Windowed and Coherence startup modes (still freezes at same point)

Needless to say this is pretty bad, though I am relieved that there appears to be no damage to my actual native Boot Camp partition thus far.

How can I tell what is causing the freeze and am I the only one experiencing this?
 
I have exactly the same problem. I did a bug report from within the Parallels application and also sent a support email.

However, I'm not holding much hope of a response since I'm on a 15-day trial license (not a great start really but inevitable with this kind of cutting-edge software).

I'm glad I'm not the only one experiencing this. I've got a new MBP (Santa Rosa) and have tried various things:
- Re-installing Vista completely
- Preventing Windows Updates from running during installation (just-in-case an MS update broke something)
- Booting in to safe mode when using Parallels (this seems to work but not very useful...)

Anyone else experiencing this or have a solution?
 
Apparently, it is a conflict with the new Boot Camp 1.3 drivers. Indeed, when I installed the new 3.0 GA, I was still running my Vista Boot Camp with the 1.2 drivers. I only installed the 1.3 drivers yesterday evening (under native boot) and did not try restarting the VM in Parallels after.

It is only this morning that I rebooted the VM with the new 1.3 drivers for the first time and witnessed the freeze.

I suppose we can all look forward to a quick Parallels 4126 release within the next few days so I am not too worried. That'll teach me to wait a bit more before applying BC driver updates next time...
 
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