Cannot run Windows XP without freezing (Parallel Desktop 6)

G

GuillaumeF

Bit poster
Hello,

I hope you could understand my pretty bad English. I'll try to explain my problem.

I'm running an XP OS with Parallel 6, from a few years (first for some games, then for some websites that only support Internet Explorer). I installed first Parallel on Mac OS Leopard, before updating to Snow Leopard and Lion. My Mac is a MacBook Late 2008 with Intel core 2 duo, 4GB of RAM. Progressively, with Snow Leopard and Lion, XP was freezing more and more. It was perfectly freezing, even unable to leave it by shutting down the virtual machine with Parallel. I can only move the mouse, there's even not the hourglass, that's just frozen. The only one solution is to kill the process prl_vrm in MacOs. First it was after 1 hour, then 30 minutes, and now after a few minutes.

The virtual machine came from a bootcamp session. So I decided to reinstall XP SP2 from the beginning (with 1 GB and 1 core). No difference. I uninstalled Parallel desktop and reinstalled every build that I had on my computer (11992-11994-12092-12094-12106, but some of them don't run with Lion). No difference. I destroyed every .plist file related to Parallel desktop. No difference. It freezes generally after a few minutes, I don't even have time to launch anything. I had only once time to install Firefox and the Microsoft antivirus. Chance maybe. Then, as usual, it froze, and I had to kill the "prl_vrm" process to stop the virtual machine. But even before installing them, it froze, so I don't think it could be related to firefox or to the antivirus. Even the first time I ran XP after having installed the SP2, it froze after a few minutes, after having installed a few windows updates. But I didn't freeze during the installation. I tried SP2, SP3, no difference. I don't have any other Windows Licence, so my solution, for a few months, was to install the consumer preview of Windows 8. And there, it works perfectly with Windows 8 (at least Internet explorer works perfectly on the websites I'm used to visit that only support IE), but I assume I won't be allowed to use the consumer preview in a few weeks/months anymore. :) Windows 8 works perfectly, when Windows XP doesn't work at all...

I read a lot of forum posts about it, tried the proposed solutions, but I didn't find one that works. The only one thing I didn't do is to reinstall Lion from the beginning, but it looks a bit annoying only for a bug with Parallel... Would you have another solution that I didn't try ?

Thanks a lot!

Gouhouf

PS: I hope that's the good forum. :)
 
due to the age of the Vm - i can say it is probably corrupted as it happens with Windows OS sometimes - it may had been corrupted by some virus or incorrectly installed - deinstalled software. Try to disable antivirus and test just to make sure it is not the reason
 
Thank you for your answer.

That's exactly what I thought. That's why I reinstalled XP SP2 from the original CD (in fact, I bought XP online maybe 5 years ago, I downloaded the ISO when I bought it, and burnt it on a CD). After installation, I saved a copy of the SP2. This new virtual machine was frozen like the old one, after a few minutes, and sometimes, randomly, after a few dozens of minutes. I succeeded to install the SP3 on this new virtual machine. Same thing. So normally, this virtual machine is very clean, except if my Windows XP CD was corrupted (that's possible). I tried an XP virtual appliance found here : http://www.parallels.com/ptn/download/va/?va_id=518. It seemed to work, but I didn't succeed to activate it with my licence (Visibly, my licence only works with XP pro). So I installed the consumer preview of Windows 8 on it.

Maybe I could find a working clean appliance of XP pro, that I could activate with my key licence somewhere, but I don't know where. And I can't access anymore to the Microsoft website where I downloaded the XP image 5 years ago.

Gouhouf
 
It looks a bit more stable these last days (the last Macos update ? Or a new XP bug correction ?). I don't use Parallels so much. I'll try to contact Microsoft to have a download link to XP pro.

I previously tried to contact the support, but it looks like I have to pay something for it. So I abandonned.

Thank you very much for your answers!

Gouhouf
 
Parallels 9 (build 9.0.24172) on Mavericks still keeps freezing WinXP as before

I had to update Parallels because of the warning that it would not be able to support Mavericks. Sadly, however, the new build has not in any way improved its behavior with WinXP as a guest system. Windows freezes when left alone and needs to be restarted whenever I need it. I tend to just stop my MacBook Pro by closing the lid and not exiting the system, which I suppose might possibly help reduce the freezing.
 
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