Display issues: white screen, blocks instead of text and images Windows 10, Parallels 13, HighSierra

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paul_b

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For some reason, Windows 10 is showing up as blocky, without any text, and with a solid white screen in Parallels 13 on OSX High Sierra. I happen to be running this on a Mac Pro 5,1 on a solid state drive (SSD) from OWC called Accelsior E2. I don't know if the SSD has anything to do with it, but it might. On this exact same computer I installed OSX High Sierra on an older traditional hard drive and didn't have this display problem. But the display problem doesn't happen at first. The initial Windows bootup screen looks fine. Then when Windows gets running, everything is blocky, with no text or images.
See a video of what happens here:
(open in 1440 resolution to see the whole thing clearly)
 
I had the exact same problem. That condition did not occur until I updated to the latest update / version. To fix it I had to revert back to my original download which did not include the latest update. Trying to restore to a prior snapshot of the virtual machine did not help. I hope they issue another update to fix the problem. I won't update until I know its fix.
 
I am also having this exact same problem after upgrading to 13.1.0-43108. Is there a link from which the immediately prior build of version 13 can be downloaded?
 
I received the following information from technical support which has resolved this problem on my system:

"Adjust the Windows virtual machine's configuration settings > Hardware > Graphics > disable 3D acceleration."

After disabling 3D graphics acceleration everything works fine for me. I have an old graphics card which is, perhaps, why I encountered this problem.
 
In my case, I went back to Parallels 12. Someday when I have extra time to spare I may try reinstalling version 13 with the option of disabling 3D acceleration. Thanks for the responses!
 
JohnS37 said:
I received the following information from technical support which has resolved this problem on my system:

"Adjust the Windows virtual machine's configuration settings > Hardware > Graphics > disable 3D acceleration."

After disabling 3D graphics acceleration everything works fine for me. I have an old graphics card which is, perhaps, why I encountered this problem.
Click to expand...
Thanks @JonS37 for this solution - I had the same problem after updating to 13.1.0-43108: after disabling 3D acceleration, the blocky style is fortunately gone...
 
I too had the exact same issue. Using Parallels 13.1.0 (43108) on a Mac Pro3,1 (Early 2008 - 2 x 2.8GHz Quad Core) with OSX 10.11.6 (El Capitan) also on a OWC Mercury Accelsior E2 PCI Express SSD and with a NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT 512MB Graphics Card. Disabled the 3D Graphics and all appears good. Thank you for the workaround.
 
This is still an issue on MacBook Pro mid 2015 with AMD Radeon R9 M370X. When the checkbox for "Always use high performance graphics" is checked AFTER installation of Parllels Tools on the Windows 10 client, the system menu font and the system dialogue background fonts are the same color.

As mentioned by the @JohnS37, unchecking the "Always use high performance graphics" returns the font display to normal. There appears to be some incompatibility with the Parallels Tools video driver configuration with the high-end graphics cards. The built-in Intel Iris Pro chipset works correctly and both the scaling and colors of the menus are back to normal.

The biggest difficulty is that once you enable the high performance graphics, the Windows 10 instance becomes almost completely unusable, and you cannot see the actual menu items to be able to use any color changes via the usual Windows system settings dialogue menus, since you cannot see what you are selecting.

Thanks to JohnS37 for posting this solution. This problem still exists with:
  • Parllels Desktop 26 for Mac Pro Edition -- 26.0.1 (57243)
  • MacOS Sequoia 15.7 (24G217)
  • MacBook Pro 15-inch Mid 2015
For Parallels 26, the setting is:
  • Configuration "gear" > Hardware > Graphics > Advanced > uncheck "Always use high-performance graphics"
 
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