Generic USB issues in Parallels 17

Discussion in 'General Questions' started by Mark Fine, Feb 14, 2022.

  1. Mark Fine

    Mark Fine Pro

    Messages:
    482
    Think we're not 100% out of the woods with Parallels 17 USB issues just yet. Yeah, it's now recognising things, but there are other side effects that would not necessarily be readily apparent. Here are the observations:

    1. In all VMs (Android 9, Linux FC35, Win11) the trackpad mouse erratically zips across the screen without warning. It often disappears completely after clicking in a terminal window.

    2. I do related development for a USB-based software defined radio on macOS, Linux (FC35), and Win11. On the Linux and Win11 VMs the radio erratically loses, then immediately regains sync, as witnessed by annoying audio dropouts and redisplay of specific station information.

    3. I have three external drives, one of which is a time machine drive. Often when a Parallels Linux or Win11 VM is running, the VM erratically attempts to capture the drive, causing macOS to think all three drives were disconnected without properly ejecting. God help me if a time-machine backup was in progress when this happens. Even worse, this kicks off a seemingly never-ending set of mds and Spotlight processes that are required for just-connected time-machine drives and can't be turned off.

    All of these are related by USB (trackpad/keyboard is internally connected on the USB bus) and only occur when a Parallels VM is running. My hunch is that Parallels is doing some kind of periodic USB polling that is interfering with native macOS USB operations and/or communications.

    My system is:
    Machine: MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Early 2013)
    Processor: 2.7 GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7
    Memory: 16 GB 1600 MHz DDR3
    Graphics: Intel HD Graphics 4000 1536 MB
    OS: macOS Catalina 10.15.7, up to date with all available security patches.

    Let me know if reports need to be generated for each VM and each symptom... but that seems like a lot of stuff.
     
  2. Mark Fine

    Mark Fine Pro

    Messages:
    482
    Worthwhile to note: Parallels should be ignoring anything to do with my time-machine drive, since I have it permanently assigned to macOS in the USB options. It shouldn't even ask how to assign it, yet it does.
     
  3. Mark Fine

    Mark Fine Pro

    Messages:
    482
  4. Mark Fine

    Mark Fine Pro

    Messages:
    482
    Bump, because none of these was solved in 17.1.2, and there's a new annoying symptom:
    Running Parallels now causes Time Machine to go into perpetual 'Preparing Backup...' mode.

    So now, either the local snapshot or the external/USB Time Machine disk (the one that should be completely ignored in the Parallels settings as being permanently assigned to 'Your Mac') is being disrupted, likely the latter.

    I'll keep bumping this until these critical issues are finally dealt with. This really is pathetic support considering the years of subscription money.
     

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