In 5.0, Installing Parallels Tools ground my Mac to a halt. I’m back at 4.x.

Greetings,

After installing 5.0, I had the problem described in the thread After upgrade Windows XP virtual machine fails to boot with BSOD. I followed the instructions about reducing the CPUs to 1, and I was able to boot my Windows XP SP3 VM.

Unfortunately, it was very slow, and when it finally went through the process of installing the new version of Parallels Tools in XP, it got much, much slower. When it was going through the final stages it started chewing up all my CPU time, and it was taking on the order of 10 minutes for a Mac menu to register a mouse click and drop-down.

The same level of delays were evident when I tried various ways to switch to other applications. I tried shutting down all my other apps, but the performance degradation persisted. (even after a reboot, and retry.)

I had some slowness when working with a Debain 4 (GNU) install I also had, but running it on Parallels didnt seen anywhere near as slow as with Windows XP.

Since this problem makes Parallels unusable for me with Windows, I have uninstalled 5.0 and reinstalled 4.x, and restored the backup of my XP install I made just before I got the upgrade. After several hours I was back to where I was before the upgrade.

Unfortunately this cost me a good part of my weekend trying to get this working.

Here is my Mac info:

Model Name: MacBook Pro
Model Identifier: MacBookPro4,1
Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed: 2.6 GHz
Number Of Processors: 1
Total Number Of Cores: 2
L2 Cache: 6 MB
Memory: 6 GB
Bus Speed: 800 MHz
Boot ROM Version: MBP41.00C1.B00
SMC Version (system): 1.28f2

System Software Overview:

System Version: Mac OS X 10.5.8 (9L31a)
Kernel Version: Darwin 9.8.0
Boot Volume: Macintosh HD
Boot Mode: Normal

My Windows XP:

Microsoft Windows XP Professional
Version 2002 Service Pack 3
Intel Core Duo CPu
T9500 @ 2.6GHz
2.60 GHz, 1.00 GB of RAM

Before the upgrade, my Parallels Preferences is set-up for:

Memory: 2048 MB
Network: Shared networking

The VM Config:

Startup and Shutdown - Open as Coherence
Optimization - Optimize performance for Virtual machine, Optimize power Consumption for Better performance
Services - Share clipboard, Enable Drag-and-drop, Synchronize time with the host computer every 60 sec
Shared Folders - Share Mac OS X folders with Windows All disks, Map folders to drive letters, Share all Windows disks with MacOs X, Mount virtual disks to Mac OS X desktop
Shared Profile - (not enabled)
SmartMount - Enabled
SmartGuard - Eanbled, Interval for taking a new snapshot 48 hours, Maximum number of snapshots to keep 4
Coherence - Group all Coherence Windows, Do not minimize windows to Dock, Bring notification windows to front, Working area Exclude Dock, Use Multiple displays. (but I only have the laptop screen attached. No external monitors.)
Modality - Stay on top of other Windows, Capture keyboard and mouse
CPU - Number of CPUs 2. (reduced to 1 during final attempts to upgrade.)
Memory - 1024 MB
Video memory - 128 MB
Floppy Disk - Connected, Image File - /Users/[my ID here]Documents/Parallels/Cincom XP.pvm/unattended.fdd
Hard Disk 1 - Image File, Expanding disk, 64.0 GB
Network Adapter 1 - Connected, Bridged Ethernet Airport
Parallel Port 1 - Connected Printer Canon s630
Sound - Connected - Output and Input both set at Default
USB Controller - Enabled but No USB devices are connected.

If you want to look at them, I saved off the Parallels logs before I downgraded. I also saved off the VM before restoring back to the version I had before the upgrade. (Getting the new VM to you might be problematic though.)

If there is other information I might be able to provide, then please let me know.

James T. Savidge, Monday, November 9, 2009

 

I was finally able to upgrade to 5.0

Greetings,

This past weekend I tried to do the upgrade again, and this time I was successful.

For various reasons, including the problems with my past attempt, I suspected that there were “hard disk errors†on/in my XP VM. So I went out and bought a copy of System Mechanic by iolo Technologies, and installed it in my XP system. It found some disk errors and some serious fragmentation. I don’t know for sure, but I think fixing those things had a lot to do with the successful upgrade.

As an aside, this leads me to suggest that Parallels should have some improvements in how it responds to guest OS “hard drive†errors. If my Mac slowing to a crawl during the upgrade was because of this, then if at all possible the error handling for this class of errors could use some improvement.

After I ran the repairs, I started the upgrade process again on Friday. Starting the upgrade of my XP, the “starting percent†counter quickly went up to 100, but then I was given the spinning beach ball cursor. My Mac remained responsive, and I was able to run other programs, but after 30 to 40 minutes, I forced quit Parallels, recopied my XP from the back-up and started it up again.

Once again the “starting percent†quickly went-up to 100, and I got the spinning beach ball cursor. This time I decided to let the process continue, and after an hour or two, the spinning stopped, and I was given the option to sign in to XP. (I had shut-down the XP VM before the upgrade so I could reduce the CPUs to the recommended 1.)

I would like to request that in the future, that some kind of progress notification be presented so that I can know that Parallels hasn’t locked-up and something is actually being done to the Guest OS.

At any rate, the “Parallels Tools†installation started, and within the hour I was able to get it to start the installation.

(Please note that during the install process, the installer tried to contact one of the home servers for Parallels. I saw this when my copy of Little Snitch warned me about it. If I had not been watching the upgrade at that point, and authorized the access, Little Snitch would have defaulted to disallowing it. If upgrades are going to take this long for some users, the documentation might need to be updated to recommend the Little Snitch be turned off during the upgrades.)

And after awhile, the progress bar on the installer went all the way to the right, for what I assume was the last time. Unfortunately it just stayed there, and the dialog box never updated to say it was finished, and that I would need to reboot. Hoping that there was just something it needed to finish, I let it go. It seemed to be doing something because I saw the sound and drive icons on the bottom of the window flashing. However, after waiting for 48 hours, I used the Process Manager to shut down the installer, I shut down the XP VM, and rebooted it.

It asked me to reinstall the “Parallels Toolsâ€, I started it, but this time it managed to finish within an hour or two.

I rebooted again, and everything looked OK. I’ve been using it for a couple of days now, and everything appears to be working without problems.

In future version of the Tools installer, I’d like if at all possible the option to display some information on the dialog that describes which files are being worked on by the software. That way I can tell if it is somehow “stuckâ€, and I won’t have to guess at when I can kill the process, or be able pass on some information here that could fix a potential bug in the installer. (And I won’t feel I need to have it run for 2 days before I take a chance and kill it.)

As an additional aside - I also upgraded a Debain 4 Guest OS, and I had problems installing the Tools in it as well. I was finally able to get that to work after I asked the installer to remove the existing install. After doing the un-install, and doing the install again, I was finally able to get X11 working again, and the GNU GUI to come back up again. Perhaps in the future, some of the problems I experienced might be avoided by always doing the uninstall first. (This might end up being something that should be recommended.)

Anyway, two things made this upgrade experience frustrating for me.

1. Bad IO exception handling - Simulated disk errors should not lock-up my Mac.

2. Too little “user entertainment†- During the times when I was presented with the spinning beach ball cursor, and when the “Parallels Tools†installer seemed to go on forever, I had no idea what was happening. I just had to wait and hope for the best. And later when my considerable patience ran out, I had to reboot the Guest OS and hope for the best.

Please let me know if there is any other information I can provide that will help make this upgrade process less painful for others in the future.

Just in case any of the secondary things I did to prepare for this upgrade had something to do with its success, or the problems I encountered, the rest of this message will be about config settings and such:

-----------------------------------

Because of my prior performance problems with the attempt to upgrade, I quit as many of my other Mac programs as possible. This also included deactivating my Folding@Home background processes.

After doing that, these are the Parallels program options, and the Guest OS options I had set during the upgrade:

-------------------

Settings for upgrade to Parallels 5.0

General:

Use detailed log messages - Off to begin with, later turned on, but the logs didn’t seem to reveal much.

Appearance:

Dock Icon - Parallels Desktop
Use Start button in Coherence - ON
Bounce on Notification - ON
Transition to full screen - Disabled
Animate - All animations turned - OFF
Window animation speed - just a little to the left of the middle

Keyboard & Mouse:

Enable Mac OS X system shortcuts - ON

USB:

When a new USB device is connected - Ask me what to do

Network:

Connection type - Shared networking
Enable DHCP Server - ON

Memory:

Set the total memory allocated to Parallels Desktop and its virtual machines - Manually - 3072 MB

Security:

Require password to - None selected

Speech:

Enable spoke commands - OFF

iPhone:

Allow connection from iPhine - OFF

Update:

Check for updates - ON - Once a week
(no other options on)

Feedback:

No, thanks selected.

---------------------------------------------------------------

VM options:

General

Processors - 1
Main Memory - 2048 MB

Options

Startup and Shutdown:

Start Automatically - Never
Starup view - Window
On shutdown - Keep window open
On window close - Ask me what to do

Optimization:

Enable Adaptive Hypervizoe - OFF
Enable Auto Compress - OFF
Tune Windows for speed - ON
Optimize performance for - Virtual machine
Power consumption - Better performance

Services:

SmartMouse - Auto
Optimize modifier keys for games - OFF
Time - Synchronize with Mac - ON
- Allow a different time than on Mac - OFF
- Use MacLook - OFF

Security:

all options off

Shared Folders:

Share these Mac folders - None
Access Windows folders from Mac - OFF
- Mount virtual disks to Mac OS X desktop

Shared Profile:

Enabled Shared Profile - OFF

Shared Applications:

Share Windows applications with Mac OS X - ON
- Show Windows applications folder in Dock - OFF
- Pause the virtual machine when no applications are running - OFF
- Enable SmartSelect - ON
Share MacOS X applications with Windows - ON

Internet Applications:

All options set to - Default

SmartMount:

Enable SmartMount - OFF

SmartGuard:

Enable SmartGuard - ON
- Notify me before snapshot creation - ON
Take a snapshot every - 48 Hours
Number of snapshots to keep - 4

Undo Disks:

Enable Undo Disks - OFF

Crystal & Coherence:

Bring notifications windows to the front - ON
Do not use Dock area - ON
Show Windows system try icons in the Mac menu bar - OFF
Disable drop shadow - ON
Do not minimize windows to Dock - ON

Full Screen:

Active Screen Corners - Default values
Adjust Mac Resolution in Full screen - OFF
Use all displays in full screen - OFF

Modality:

Opacity - 3/4 to the right
Stay on top of other windows - ON
Capture keyboard and mouse on click - ON

Gestures & Apple Remote

Enable Gestures - OFF
Enable Apple Remote - OFF

Hardware:

Boot Order:

Boot Order - All on but this section is disabled
Select boot device on startup - OFF
Boot flags - NONE

Video:

Video memory - 128 MB
Enable 3D acceleration - OFF

Floppy Disk:

Connected - OFF

CD/DVD 1:

Connected - OFF

Hard Disk 1:

All options disabled - Source has the note of - Expanding disk, 64.0GB.

Network Adapter 1:

Connected - ON
Type - AirPort
Mac address - (auto filled in)
Send the host’s MAC address to DHCP server - OFF

Printer Port 1:

Connected - ON
Source: Canon S630

Sound:

Connected - ON
Input - Default
Output - Default

USB Controller:

Connected devices - none listed.


-----------------------------------

James T. Savidge, Tuesday, November 17, 2009

 

switching off smartmount seems to have sped up my startup times for parallels.