P6 - multiple virtual machines causing keyboard not working in host

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PetrN

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Having the latest version and build of Parallels 6 I am experiencing very strange behavior in my Mac OS X 10.6.7. When I run 1-3 virtual machines simultaneously, I have no problem at all, but starting with 4 and mainly with 5 or 6 virtual machines running at the same time, the keyboard starts behaving unpredictable in my Mac OS X - it does only react on some keys - lets say Command and TAB, all functional keys are working well, but normal alphabet keys do not react. But they do react in all virtual machines (mixture of XP and W2K8 - our development and testing environment).
What is strange, that it does not happen always and it does only happen for some limited time.
I thought at the beginning that it is caused by some key being pressed but it does not look like a cause, what always helps is turning off all virtual machines. Or system restart of course. When I leave the computer alone, it usually fixes itself on its own, but sometimes not. Completely unpredictable. And only with 4+ running virtual machines.
Any thoughts?
Current environment: 10.6.7, 8 GB RAM, 256 GB SSD + 750 GB HDD, Parallels 6 build 11994.
 
You probably know way more than I do, but how much memory does running that many VMs take? I know XP doesn't use as much as Win7 & I'm not familiar with what the other 1 you mentioned is, but just wondering if they all have enough memory to be happy.
 
You are right, I was also thinking of this cause, but testing showed me, that it is not the root cause.
I gave to each of my WXP machine 512 MB of ram and to W2k8 and W7 1 GB of ram. It is enough for them to run smoothly as we do use W2K8 as server for serving apache. So even when all are running they take just about 4-5 GB RAM and I still have 8 GB. I even have a bit in the green slice in activity monitor. Also when this happens (and it does not happen always and in regular times, I try stopping another virtual machines and it does not help until I stop the very last one and quit the whole PD. So this is why I believe memory isn't the main or root cause.
P.
 
Not sure about this, but I've heard that even when something is quit, it may still have a latent memory usage until shut down or something. As I recall Windows did say you could run XP with 512 MB but I guess it depends on what else is running. I had 1 GB on the my XP machine & it was getting a bit slow it seemed.

I only partly understand all this. I just know things tend to like a lot of memory for stuff they do in the background besides what is obvious. I was wondering if I needed more with 4 GB since when I'm running in Parallels (which isn't installed right now as things have been crashing so haven't reinstalled everything since they are going to be replacing hardware soon. But typically I was running Win7 64 bit in bootcamp as VM in Parallels 5. & then I might have several IE windows open as well as Outlook 2007 & then on the Mac side Safari with maybe more than 1 tab open as well as maybe Pages & Numbers & iPhoto.

Well hope you get it figured out & I hope the hardware replacement will fix the issues with my mac, although I'm a bit skeptical as the hardware tests didn't show hardware failure apparently. Still wondering if there could be some conflict.

1 thing I did notice, I had originally accidentally created a 2nd VM from bootcamp the 1st time I tried to use it. Didn't know how to delete it until a few weeks ago. After I did, things were working better for awhile. I think I had Parallels set to auto for memory so it would use what it needed rather than me set a certain amount.
 
You are right about the memory usage. That is why I had not only to stop all machines, but QUIT PD so that no process was in memory which would look like Parallels and first then the keyboard went OK again. Which makes me think of Parallels as the cause. Wouldn't it be obvious, when you could type ANYTHING in Parallels machines and almost nothing in host OS? And once virtual environment quit host gets back to normal? I think it all point so a bug in Parallels somehow dealing with more resources demands.

Regarding my multiple virtual machines - as I wrote before, they are purely for testing, not for work, so I have a clean virtual machines with only fresh windows and 5 browsers installed - the run fast as they are still almost virgin - no temps or other jung on them. And I use a smart snapshots on them so I start them fresh every day. So they do not need more then 2-3 hundreds of RAM at all.

To be honest I have no experience with bootcamp as I purely use clean VMs on external or second internal disk, so I can not share any experience.

Just a short message at the end. I love Parallels and I believe it is the best you can get on Mac. my post is not a complaint, I just want developers to surround the issue and fix it.
 
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