blank / black screen in parallels and vista

A

aaronlosey

Bit poster
Hi,

I've experienced a problem with my parallels desktop on my macbook pro. My system is about 8 months old, core duo, 4 gigs of ram, plenty of hd space left, running tiger 10.4.11 I think, and behaving fine other than parallels. I have been running vista successfully for the whole time, but today it suddenly stopped working. When I would start parallels, it would start booting, and when windows looked like it was about to finish loading it would give me a blank screen, but still allow my mouse cursor to move around in the window. I booted in every safe mode, exact same thing, except it safe mode as it loaded everything it would finally flicker out before going black, slightly different event but same outcome.

So I searched google, I searched your forums, and I tried everything I could find, but since I can't get into windows, I can't get parallels tools to load. I can click install tools in the drop down menu, but it never does anything.

I then went online and thought parallels 3 would fix my troubles. I downloaded this, installed it, got the trial activation code, got it running, and although it has a slightly different interface with new buttons, it does the exact same thing. It simply loads the black/blank screen the exact same way as before.

Any ideas or fixes please? And again it has been running fine for months with no problems up until now, and I don't think I installed anything other than possibly some updates to mess anything up, and those would have been automatic updates.
 
Where do I look to find these files?


edit...

I looked around for a minute, and under Documents/Parallels/Vista/ I found a Microsof Windows Vista.mem file, a .pvs file of the same name, a unattended.fdd, and a winvista.hdd.

Then there is Windows Applications folder as well.

But I don't know what to do with these files.
 
Last edited:
In the Finder, browse to the virtual machine folder (the default path is: Documents-Parallels-Virtual Machine).

Best regards,
Stacey
 
I deleted the file, but nothing has changed with the blank screen problem. And on a side note, I noticed that the mac cursor is hovering over the windows cursor at a slight offset, meaning both cursors are present at the same time. But nothing else happens in the parallels window.
 
Thats a bit more difficult because I'm out of town at the moment and don't have my cd with me to reinstall windows. Any other ideas at the moment? Or are we just running down the list of the normal fixes for random stuff?

Thanks for the quick responses.
 
OK, so we will try to find another solution.
Please tell me if you have done Parallels automatic update that has possibly caused this black screen issue.

Best regards,
Stacey
 
Not unless it automatically did it and I just had to click the box, which it might have done. But I updated all the way from what I bought in the store about 8 months ago, which I guess would be 2.5 or so, up to the current 3.0 off your website. This changed buttons and the look of the program a little, but the problem was the exact same.

So if the program did update just before it died, then what?
 
Before updating Parallels Desktop always downloads the update (usually to the desktop) and then you should click some buttons on different forms, so it is hard no to notice it. So it looks like no Parallels Updates were done.
You said, that you can see the mouse pointer, which means that Parallels is working. So it must be a problem within Windows, more likely the problem with video driver. This issue could be overcome with repairing the installation, because you cannot boot in the safe mode.
Please tell me if you are using Boot Camp.

Best regards,
Stacey
 
I am not using boot camp.

How do I repair the video driver, or delete it temporally so I can get into everything in 640x480 to fix the problem or something.
 
I cannot guarantee that the following solution will help or it will not cause any other problems to your Mac, but you might try to do the following:
1. Back-up your VM. Copy your .hdd and .pvs files somewhere.
2. Shut down Parallels.
3. Open 'Parallels Explorer' and select your VM Virtual disk.
4. Browse to Windows -> System22 -> Drivers.
5. Find 'PrlVideo.sys' file. Copy it somewhere then delete it.
6. Close 'Parallels Explorer'.
7. Start your VM.

Best regards,
Stacey
 
I need help as well, using parallels 3 for a while now. But yesterday, the I have a similar problem. I have read every thread available but can't find something that would work. What I can do with the VM running is send keys "Ctrl+Alt+Del", this shows the windows lock this computer, switch user, log off, change password, shut down/restart button. If I switch user, it shows me the user account "have only admin", clicking this will bring me back to the blank screen. help....

Peter
 
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