Converted VM always says "Preparing to configure your virtual machine" on every resume

S

shubb

Junior Member
I have a Windows 10 VM that was previously a Fusion VM. I did the conversion to Parallels, and that all completed fine. Once the VM is running everything works as it did as a Fusion VM. I have removed the VMware tools and installed Parallels tools.

Every time I start the VM, or resume from suspend, it always says "Preparing to configure your virtual machine" for about 5 minutes before it finally allows me to do anything. Once it completes, the window is very small, about 1/4 of the screen, even though when it was suspended, it took up the entire screen. The resolution of the VM screen is the same that it was previously when I suspended it, but the window is small so everything on the VM screen is tiny and too small to see. Initially, I cannot resize the window. Hovering over the bottom corner of the window does not show me the arrows to resize. After a minute or two, I am able to see the arrows and then drag the window back to the size it was before.

I also have an Ubuntu VM that was also converted from a Fusion VM, but that one works perfectly. When I resume it from suspend, it takes about a second before I can use it, so it is only isolated to the Windows VM.

How do I fix the Window VM so it resumes faster and remembers the screen size before it was suspended?
 
@shubb, could you generate the tech.report please right after the issue reproduced and post the report's ID here.
Also after the report generation, please try to add your Windows VM hard drive to the new create empty VM and let us know how does it work.
 
Hi, due to our company's security policy, I can't send a support bundle. Is there any other way I can gather info to troubleshoot?
 
shubb said:
Hi, due to our company's security policy, I can't send a support bundle. Is there any other way I can gather info to troubleshoot?
Click to expand...
Technical reports do not include personal or confidential data and contain only basic technical information (system logs, a description of the hardware configuration of the Mac itself and the settings of the current virtual machine). May be this description helps to collect report and send the id to us.
If not, please let us know.
 
I have inspected the support file, and it does contain personal information: my login name, my company's name, company AD Domain name, all processes running on the computer.

If you can tell me a file to look through, I can look for any errors or message that I can scrub and show you.
 
I have exactly the same problem with Parallels 20 and a virtual machine converted from VMware Fusion. Did you ever find a solution?
When the "Preparing to configure..." dialog starts I can cancel it and the VM starts in a small area of the screen. It takes some time until it goes fullscreen.
When I don't cancel the configuration it resets all my settings to default.
 
I'm going to give it a try again. But since I'm new to Parallels, where to you add vm.compat_level=2?
I checked in the config GUI but it doesn't seem to have any section to add this.
Is it in a file somewhere?
Thanks for any light
 
Hi Steve,
in the configuration of the VM you choose "Hardware" and the last entry in the list "Boot order". Then click the button "Advanced" and you will find the entry "Boot flags".
I asked technical support what this flag exactly means and if there is an alternative but just received a general answer that "using bootflags normally is not recommended" and I should make frequent backups. Not very helpful.
The bootflag was documented here:
https://kb.parallels.com/de/122973/
Even there no real explanation what it does or how to resolve the underlying problem (i.e. the possible misconfiguration mentioned in the article).
 
ok thanks Not very intuitive. But that did the trick
It boots normally now but shutting down is still extremely slow. I'll do some more tests.
thanks for your help
 
Here is another (better?) solution to the problem that I discovered. The support unfortunately wasn't very helpful.
Edit the file DiskDescriptor.xml in every virtual HDD that is added to your VM. You may have to use the context menu "Show package Contents" on Your PVM and your HDD files to get to the file DiskDescriptor.xml
Find the line "<CompatLevel>level2:v</CompatLevel>" and remove the :v (colon and v)
The line should look like this now: <CompatLevel>level2</CompatLevel>
At least my VM now starts without the annoying reconfiguration and it directly shows the screen in its full size.
No guarantees as I am just a user that compared files from different VMs to find this difference. I have no further documentation about it, but it works in my case. The Boot-Option "vm.compat_level=2" described above is not needed anymore.
 
Thanks for your trials. I gave up Parallels because of horrible perfs inside the VM, but may give it a try again with your modifications. Who knows?
I suspect though that if I reinstall from scratch, perfs may be better, but I did try a clean install of Windows 11 Pro and a compiler and it was stil 3-11 times slower than in my VMWare machine.
 
If you are happy with VMWare now, stay with that. It was just announced that it will be free even for commercial use. Just wondering how long it will be available if they do not charge for it. And I did not like how Broadcom treated their customers and partners after they took over.
 
As a software developer myself, I have no problem to pay for a product, especially if it's a good one.
The acquisition by Broadcom is the main reason I'm looking around for a replacement. I always disliked them. And also, their website... sorry but it looks like early 90s. It's awful and almost impossible to get the free version of Fusion. If you were a previous paying customer, it's almost impossible to find it since it appears in your licenses but you're not allowed to download it because you need a company ID. To get one, you have to have a support subscription. This is ridiculous, you're not even allowed to redownload your own Fusion versions you paid for. Fortunately, I backed them up.
 
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