Build 5582 on Leopard: Complete system freeze?

K

Khoji

Member
I'm not yet 100% sure whether this is a Parallels issue or not, but it is only happening when Parallels is running and only while working in Parallels. I upgraded my Mac Pro (5GB RAM, 2.66GHz) to Leopard and initially everything seemed to be fine. In the last couple of days I have started getting random freezes of the entire system -- suddenly no keyboard or mouse input is possible. I've tried connecting the keyboard and mouse to other USB ports and connecting a different keyboard and mouse but the only thing that helps is pressing the power button for a hard reset.

Things I've checked:

* Direct X is not switched on
* Everything in the Windows Applications folder is deleted
* All available Leopard updates from Apple are installed
* I'm not using Spaces (have two big monitors and don't need it)


One thing I need to check is whether it is connected with sleep mode. I'm not sure about yesterday but today the freeze happened after returning from sleep mode with an XP VM in Parallels active. It did not happen immediately, however, but after working for an hour or so. I used to always shut down Windows and Parallels before sending the Mac to sleep but recently I've become more confident about leaving Parallels open -- maybe I shouldn't be.

Another possible factor is disks spinning down: On Tiger I had set up a cronjob to make sure that no disks would ever spin down, but I've just discovered that updating to Leopard deleted this. I've just reactivated it, maybe it will help. My suspicion is that this is the most likely cause, because I haven't experienced these freezes on my MacBook Pro with Leopard and Parallels and I let that sleep with Parallels open all the time.

Has anyone else experienced anything like this?
 
Follow-up: I've reactivated the cronjob so that no disks can spin down and so far everything seems to be going fine.
 
I had a similar problem with a complete system freeze on my Mac Book Pro 17"

Mac OS 10.5.1, Build 5582

What does your cron job do to prevent disk spin-downs?
 
mcbuckeye said:
What does your cron job do to prevent disk spin-downs?
Click to expand...
It just does an ls and sends it to dev null once every 10 minutes. You can find the instructions here -- the best method is using Cronnix (free tool), it's explained in the fourth comment, titled "Simpler crontab for drive spindown prevention".

You can try it, but I think it's unlikely that a freeze would be caused by disk spindown on a MBP. It's much more likely on a Mac Pro with multiple disks, on my MBP I've never experienced Parallels crashes and freezes associated with spindowns, it's always been on the Mac Pro, with Leopard and the current version of Parallels and with Tiger and earlier versions.
 
Another follow-up: It isn't either the disk spindown problem or the sleep problem. It happened again today while I was away at lunch -- I came back and the Mac Pro was dead, and now the disks can't spin down and I didn't have Parallels running while the computer was sleeping last night. I just talked to AppleCare about it and they didn't report anything specific but they said that they felt that the most likely culprit was Parallels because they've had "a lot" of reports about Leopard problems with Parallels, also with the current version.
 
What do your logs have to say about things, Khoji?

I would be hesitant to suspect a problem with Parallels if it was not running... Yet, if Parallels were running overnight, they would be the first place I would point my finger...

Did you wipe, then re-install the Parallels app after upgrading to Leopard and/or Build 5582?
 
Parallels was running when the crash happened. What I no longer do is leave it running overnight while the computer is asleep (I don't generally shut down, I just put it to sleep, but no longer with Parallels running). However, that didn't seem to help.

I uninstalled Parallels with AppZapper before upgrading to Leopard but I think that some components got left over. Perhaps I should zap it again fully and try again before I do a full clean reinstall of Leopard and all my applications -- which was not really how I was planning to spend the Christmas vacation...

Another thing I have heard is that these freezes may also have something to do with Rosetta and Office 2004. However, I'm pretty sure that Word/Office weren't running during the crash today.

However, I've also found how I can shut the computer down safely even when the freeze happens: I just need to use screen sharing from my MacBook Pro -- that still works and that way I can now shut down and restart again safely when it happens. And that would seem to indicate that it's keyboard/mouse driver problem.

As a first test I'm going to completely zap and reinstall Parallels tomorrow and try it for a while and see what happens.

Another interesting point: I did a completely clean install of Leopard on a reformatted hard disk on my MacBook Pro and I have absolutely no problems there. So maybe upgrade install is a bad idea after all, even though everyone is trying to claim that it works now. I've never really believed it -- there's just too much that can go wrong...
 
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any updates on this issue? I'm experiencing the same

This is a really frustrating issue. I am experiencing very similar behavior- my system freezes up and I have to kill the power.

Sometimes it happens when Parallels is not running, but if I start Parallels now, the system freezes everytime. It only started happening recently, but I've been using Parallels for 6 months.

I initially suspected either a bad hard drive or bad RAM, but I removed the newest RAM I installed and it still freezes up. I also suspected Time Machine but there has not been consistent behavior to back up that theory.

I have an appointment at the Apple Genius Bar in a couple days. I'll report back if they have anything useful to say.

Parallels Support??? Any help here???
 
To the best of my knowledge this is no longer an issue with the current versions of Parallels and OS X -- I haven't experienced anything like this for months and I work in Parallels all day, generally with several virtual machines at the same time.
 
billybeaker said:
This is a really frustrating issue. I am experiencing very similar behavior- my system freezes up and I have to kill the power.

Sometimes it happens when Parallels is not running, but if I start Parallels now, the system freezes everytime. It only started happening recently, but I've been using Parallels for 6 months.

I initially suspected either a bad hard drive or bad RAM, but I removed the newest RAM I installed and it still freezes up. I also suspected Time Machine but there has not been consistent behavior to back up that theory.

I have an appointment at the Apple Genius Bar in a couple days. I'll report back if they have anything useful to say.

Parallels Support??? Any help here???
Click to expand...

Try to install 5604 from http://download.parallels.com/v3/en/GA/Parallels-Desktop-5604-Mac-en.dmg
 
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