Frequent window-size problems

[pgib]

I've been experiencing frequent problems with my Parallels OS window not being the correct size. I'm running Windows XP in my VM, and what's happening is that the Parallels window is only display the lower left corner of the Windows OS. The mouse seems to be mapped to the upper-left region of the window, so I can't even click on elements that are on the screen (the click is registered elsewhere on the Windows desktop). The Parallel windows itself is also cropped, as I do not see the right toolbar nor the bottom-right resize widget. Restarting the VM and Parallels sometimes fixes it, but often it does not. This has been happening with the last three builds of Parallels including the most recent 3186.

I can use keyboard navigation to go into the Windows display properties and manually change the resolution, but it does not have any effect on the size of the window. Has anyone else experienced this? I'm using a MacBook 2.0GHz Core Duo with 2GB of RAM and Mac OS X 10.4.8 with all of the latest updates. I tried clearing my preferences files for Parallels thinking it had something to do with the number of times I've installed a Parallels update, but that did not make any difference either.

I've attached a screenshot to illustrate what's happening.

Oh yes, there's one more symptom that always happens when there's a problem. When I start my VM, the entire display flashes white before it starts up, even when I've turned off any transition. This doesn't happen during the times where it's working fine.

And lastly, not sure if this is related, but about one out of every times I start up Parallels, it bounces and bounces, using full CPU on my second processor, but never starting. I have to force quit it, and then it loads fine on the second try.

 

[sparker]

I'm seeing this a lot too with the new build (3186). It's like Parallels has decided to "show" me the lower-left quarter of the screen, but thinks it's displaying the center of the screen. If I have a dialog box where I can barely see the Cancel/OK button, I can't click on them directly, but I can click about 3/4 of the way down on the "blue desktop" and parallels thinks I clicked the button.

There seems to be no way to resize the window either.

If I hit ALT-ENTER (full screen), I get that view in the upper-left quadrant of my Mac screen, but it doesn't take over the whole mac screen (3/4s are left behind). Hitting ALT-ENTER again brings me back to the lower left quarter of the screen.

Stopping/restarting the machine doesn't help either.

Steve