Black Screen of Death on Boot

I see this question constantly arising, and it is getting tedious re-typing or copying and pasting the information into new threads. So, I decided I would just write a few typical fixes down and reference it when people have issues...

A.

1. Back-up your data.

2. Boot up your VM in Parallels (not BootCamp) and try to boot into Safe Mode (Hold down F8 on start-up, for you laptop users depending upon your keyboard configuration it might be fn+F8).

3. Once you boot, un-install Parallels tools. (Control Panel -> Add/Remove Programs, find Parallels Tool Center and select 'Remove Program'. Restart at the end.)

4. You can usually boot back up now. Once you are rebooted in normal mode (this happens by default at the end of the previous un-installer), Install the new Parallels tools. Hopefully everything is working now.


If the above did not work, there are two more things to try:

B. Perform a repair install on Windows from your original Windows disc. (Back-up first)


C. Repair your Disk Permissions. (Back-up first, once again)


D. Completely Un-install parallels and then re-install. Here are the steps:

1. Back-up your data to an external drive. Disconnect the External.

2. Using the same installer as your last Parallels install. Un-install Parallels.

3. Do a spotlight search on your HD running Parallels for any instance of 'parallels'.

4. Delete any remaining instances of Parallels.

5. Reboot.

6. Install the latest build of Parallels.

7. Reboot.

8. Re-place your backed up files to the desired locations.

9. Configure your old .hdd file to a new .pvs (so, your installation will be using an existing .hdd file. This, I do believe is in the Advanced section).

10. Even though if you are doing these in sequence you have the new Parallels tools , un-install Parallels tools. Re-boot when prompted.

11. Boot into Windows and Install Parallels tools.


Hopefully this will fix most people's issues with the Black Screen of Death.

If you had a BETA version installed prior to installing a new stable, skip directly to section D.

If anyone has any comments or additions, let me know. It never hurts to have a list we can add a link to answer people's general questions. It is faster for all parties involved.


~Eru

 

This is not a very good answer - why does it happen that's my question? I have just updated to High Sierra and now Parallels just give me a black screen with occasional peaks at a windows screen. I've read and read and now spent about four hours trying to recover windows 10. I have 44.1GB of disc space and 2gb which I am now recovering it was a few mb not long ago - so why has this now jumped to 2gb. Now it's back to zero! I even get the welcome screen - hope is its going to work this time - no of course not - black screen again!
Parallels is not cheep when you have bought it and then all the updates - the latest version 13 (perhaps that's the issue) should work with High Sierra.

Come on guys give us an answer...