Install problems

J

janiner

Member
Everything is ok now, so this is just a report in case it's useful to anyone.

In case it makes any difference, let me explain my setup. I had installed Parallels on an iMac to try it out. I was impressed enough that I went and bought my own Intel iMac (I was using a PPC model). I didn't want to do the XP install all over again so I installed Beta4 on the new system and then moved over the VM. It seemed to work fine. Then I upgraded to Beta 5....

When I started up the VM after the upgrade, I got a message about the system already being in VMX mode. I googled and found that the suggestion was to reboot the host system and it should go away. So I tried to suspend the VM, but it hung while suspending and had to be Force Quit'd twice.

After rebooting the whole system, I started up the VM again. It required me to restart Windows and took *forever* to come up, but it finally did. Then the Found New Hardware Wizard popped up, first for "Other PCI Bridge Device" and then for "Video Controller (VGA Compatible)". I wasn't sure if this was normal or not and this forum was down for maintenance, so I just cancelled out of the wizard.

I went to suspend the VM and the moment I clicked on the Suspend button, OS X crashed. No messages or anything, the screen just went black and then the system started up again.

When the system came back up I started and then suspended the VM again, and no problems this time.

This morning I installed the updated Parallels Tools. That seems to have gotten rid of the wizard. The only odd thing I notice now is that the bottom edge of the window still says "Click inside Guest OS console to capture input", even after I have done so. I thought those messages went away after I installed the tools on Beta 4, but I might be mistaken.

I haven't tried to run anything under Beta 5 yet except for IE, but it appears to be working fine. This is an *awesome* product - what Virtual PC should have been and never was. My use is mostly for Quickbooks; I can't dump Windows completely unless/until Intuit gets their act together and supports small details like payroll in the Mac version, and it's way more convenient for me to be able to have it running along with all my other windows and not have to switch completely to Windows as Base Camp requires. Great work!
 
Kernel Panic in Beta 4 affects Beta 5

I had many of these same symptoms, and more (such as with video driver/controller, mouse synchronization, CD device, network adapter, and Parallels Tools).

Rather than moving over from iMac, though, I had been running Beta 4 (after 2 and 3) on my MBP, encountered a kernel panic after putting the computer to sleep while Parallels was running, and followed with one successful start on Win XP before installing Beta 5. Apparently the crash left behind irreparable errors.

In the end, I created a new VM and reinstalled XP. Everything now works seamlessly again.
 
I was also a successful and happy user of betas 3 and 4.

Beta 5 is giving me considerable problems now -- I suspect I need to make a new VM and re-install Windows from scratch.

The most basic issue initially was that the Windows Explorer window -- the one you get by double-clicking the the computer icon on the XP desktop -- would allow me to browse files upon an XP re-boot. But after I suspended and resumed the VM later, any attempt to use the Explorer window would result in a hung VM -- the CPU usage was maxing out at 100% and nothing was happening.

Many times this happened and I had to reset the machine which of course caused an immediate re-boot.

At first I thought it might be the new functionality -- USB enabled and Shared Folders enabled -- so I disabled them and tried the same experiment. Each time the VM hung after I resumed a suspended session and tried to use an Explorer window that I had left open prior to suspending the VM.

I even made an entirely new VM, connecting my saved Disk Image to the new VM. Starting this new VM now is resulting in spontaneous Windows Blue Screen OF Death occurrences -- I see an error message briefly in the console but the re-boot happens so fast I can't read it.

I am about at my wits end -- looks like I can go back to beta 4 or bite the bullet and re-install Windows in a fresh VM.

I haven't had any kernal panics but I have had Parallels itself crash and generate a crash report. Perhaps I can have Windows boot in safe mode and see if the Disk Image itself is corrupted but repairable -- like OS X First Aid.

My windows skills are rudimentary so I might just decide to start from scratch.

But beta 5 seems to be less stable (for me) than either beta's 3 or 4.

Jim
 
No success with Suspend

Yes, the problem you describe with suspend I was able to duplicate the first time. If memory serves, my first encounter with PW problems occurred when I suspended the VM (Beta 3, I think). So I consider that functionality non-functional, and just go through a proper shutdown instead. It's not as convenient, for sure, but at least the shutdown/startup process is very fast compared to VirtualPC (or to be fair, perhaps I should say, compared to the PPC).
 
Sorry to hear that you suspect the very act of suspend and resume to be cause of my observed behavior. I had come to rely on that method of putting my VM away for later use. Betas 3 and 4 seemed to me to be quite stable for me -- the Windows Explorer use problem did NOT occur under these betas. Beta 4 fixed a DHCP network loss I was experiencing when I used suspend and resume so I was expecting this to work still under beta 5.

Now however, even trying to use Windows Explorer the first time after a re-boot is causing spontaneous VM re-boots so I may have no choice but to create a new VM and install WIndows XP all over again.

My trial license expires next week -- are we that close to GA for Parallels? I guess I can ask for a new trial licence if the beta rounds continue.
 
Here's what the Parallels team has to say about trial keys until GA: Before that time we'll be prolonging trial keys to allow uninterruptable operation of Betas. So you shouldn't have any problems (with that, anyway).
 
Don't worry!

Please don't worry about soon-to-expire keys! If we have not yet reached GA by the time keys start expiring, we will implement a system that will either extend your current key, or get you a new beta key. We're evaluating options for this now...regardless of which method we end up using, you will NOT lose your Parallels Beta functionality!
 
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