Builds 11990 and 11992 compatibility issues with Mac OS X 10.6.5/10.6.6

Hello,

We have found a critical issue in Mac OS X 10.6.5-10.6.6 memory management that could lead to Parallels Desktop virtual machine instability and even virtual machines corruptions in some configuration. We have filed the bug to Apple and helping them with investigation.

Problem affects Parallels Desktop 6 Builds 11990 and 11992 running on Mac OS X 10.6.5 or Mac OS X 10.6.6 computers with more than 4CPUs and more than 4GB RAM, or with virtual machines running on external drives (USB or LAN storages).
However, this problem doesn't affect virtual machines running on local hard drives of all MacMini, MacBook, MacBookPro and MacAir models.

Until the fix becomes available please use workaround described in the following KB article:
http://kb.parallels.com/en/9697

Thank you.

UPDATE
From now you could update to new build with fix included.
http://forum.parallels.com/showthread.php?t=108763
Note: You could remove system flag from your VMs after update.

 

Thank you for this official response. Can you please clarify whether affected VMs have 4 CPU and 4 GB RAM, or 4 CPU or 4 GB RAM? In other words, are VMs with 4 GB RAM and only 1 or 2 CPU affected or not? Regards

 

this workaround seems to have cleared up some problems for me so far.

 

Fantastic!

I thought I was going crazy with all the crashes and black screens and BSOD and none of our programs working correctly. I actually made a new VM with a fresh install of Windows 7 that nothing would work in. I was pulling my hair out!
This little tag solved all our problems (with the caveat of moving down to 1 CPU from 2 as well). Now everything runs like it did before the update. FINALLY!

Thanks for the fix. It kept me, our UPS tech rep and our Fedex tech rep from murdering people.

 

It doesn't matter how many CPUs VM have assigned. It matters how many CPUs and RAM you have on the host.
Host should have >4CPUs and >= 4Gb RAM.

*OR* your VM should reside on remote storage like USB/LAN.

 

First let me say how disappointed I am to see that you _now_ respond while the issue came up more than 6 _weeks_ ago (see http://forum.parallels.com/showthread.php?t=107483), anyway, thank you, however, this workaround does not work for me (I have 8 Gb RAM, but my VM is on the internal drive and I'm on a Macbook), see problem report 7906941, I can also send crash reports if it helps, no problem to produce these ;-) Ah, and yes, i reinstalled parallels tools.

 

Hello, Peter!

Actually Mac host kernel panics are not related to this issue.
We are aware of the kernel panics you are faced (according to the panic log in the report). Could I contact you if more info will be needed?

 

Ah, ok, if thats a different issue ...ok, sorry for whining And yes, feel free to get in touch.

 

Option seems to solve my Problems. Testing with Win7 32Bit (4GB/2Cores) on i7 2,8 16GB Host works. No explorer.exe crashes till now. Will test with WinXP Pro & Win 7 64Bit now.

 

Still Crashing even after doing this

I have imac 27 with I5 and 10 Gig and have been having a nice daily set of crashes. Thought this would do it for me, but no dice.

I did the KB Workaround and even adjusted my CPU count to 1 and it goes blue screen when i least want it to. Happened about 4 times to me in the last 3 hours.

Forgot this stuff: osx 10.6.6 Latest Parallels Windows 7 32 Bit

 

I have experienced a number of issues with kernel panics on my MacBook Air (late 2010, 2.13GHz) since upgrading to 11992. I haven't tried downgrading to an earlier build but am wondering if Parallels is causing them, since hardware tests from Apple have turned up nothing.

 

Build 11994 Available for Download

Just noted an updated version is now available for download.

 

I have exactly 4 cores and 6GB of RAM, and I was seeing this problem. I had two VM's trashed and had to roll back to an old version of Parallels and reinstall the virtual machines' OS's over this. Needless to say, I'm currently running an evaluation copy of VM ware as my main VM to see how I like it. I've tried to stick with Parallels because I really like the product, but this bug is completely unacceptable on a production machine.

That said, I'm still testing 11994, and it's stable so far, but all I've done with it so far is booted it up a few times. Then again, that's more than 11992 could manage...

 

with build 11994, is it recommended to delete "vm.mem_anonymous=0" from the VM config?

 

Yes, you could remove this flag. It doesn't make a sense in build 11994.

 

THANKS FOR THIS INFORMATION.

 

Worked Fine all last week but today it is BSOD

Well i had a nice week last week on my imac 27 i5 with 10G ram Win 7 32 bit using the 11994 release and then today my VM started again blue screening.

Is there anything else I can do because this is super frustrating

 

I updated to 11994 and i'm still getting 2 or 3 crashes daily in my Macbook Pro Core i7 (2 cores but shows up as 4 cores) with 8GB of RAM.

I get this in both my Linux and Windows guests.

this is really frustrating, i'm backing up every single day because i'm afraid of losing data in those crashes.

I opened a ticket on February 4 (#1094178) with a detailed report and crash report and all I got was a 'download and install again' answer. Which I did, to no avail.

a.

 

I'm thinking of upgrading today from Parallels 4 to Parallels 6. I'm using a 27" i7 iMac with 4 GB RAM, running 10.6.4.

Will this cause problems for me? If so, I won't upgrade. P4 is very stable, and I don't have time to futz around.

/Mr Lynn

 

These builds still affected my 2Gb MacBook

FWIW, contrary to what was mentioned earlier by Parallels support, the issue with these builds *did* impact on installation/operation of both Parallels and XP SP3 on my brand-new late 2010 2.4GHz 13" MacBook with 2GB standard installed RAM. After many attempts it simply would not work properly (particularly internet access issues = network) but reverting back to the earlier build (fortunately on the supplied disk) solved all problems and it now works an absolute treat. Even better with 8GB of RAM now installed (I strongly recommend more RAM).

I certainly appreciate a new release by Parallels (more feedback during the problems would have been even better....) but given my experience it still seems the actual problems with these builds haven't been completely identified, otherwise my machines spec (and as mentioned pretty well blank except for OS) would also have been included in the "watch list".

So as mentioned with Parallels build 6.0.11800 working really well (I also totally understand why others have switched) and the documented difficulties in rolling-back versions I won't be upgrading until absolutely necessary.