Parallels 11 (Shared) Home Folder Disappears - Win8.1 Visual Studio 2013 IIS Express

T

TS-Micah

Product Expert
When compiling a Web site or MVC site the Home folder contents disappears and becomes inaccessible. I sent a problem report ID# 72527686 just now. This is incredibly frustrating and now I have to figure out how to downgrade in order to be productive again... I'm not sure what in IIS Express is causing the issue but I'm leaning toward some type of I/O issue, the moment IIS express is stopped, the drive contents returns. I can't work like this. Has anyone else had any similar issue?
 
I've uninstalled Parallels Tools, rebooted and am in the process of re-installing it. I'll reboot just to be sure and try again.
 
Yep, problem STILL exists the moment VS2013 launches IIS express, say BYE BYE to the home folder mount... Downgrading to Parallels 10.
 
Last edited:
After downgrading it seems that the issue might actually start during VS2013's build process. I received build errors that weren't coming up while using Parallels 10. I'm using the shared Home folders to consolidate disk usage and to have access to the code outside of the VM.
 
When you say disappears in VS or in explorer? Reason I ask is because VS a lot of times restarts as admin when debugging. When you get UAC popup, you are actually switching user-context. Any and all network shares are based on a user, not the OS, so launching something in administrator mode, all shares disappear. Can you confirm?
 
I don't even get to debugging. The folders disappear as soon as I try to build anything. Visual Studio monitors files/folder for changes in order to prompt the user to reload the file if changed by external processes. I suspect this filesystemwatcher is causing something to crash.

In any case, I downgraded to Parallels 10 - can't wait around for this to be fixed.
 
Good thought @AlekseyM! I am not getting the UAC prompt and it's not switching to the Admin user when I'm building the Website for local development. When I have explorer open, start to build, hit refresh on explorer viewing the home folder share, everything disappears. When it does disappear I get bogus build errors from VS, IIS Express loads with an error looking for the Web.Config file (which is now no longer accessible). The \\PSF "server" goes away for some reason and I can't get it back until I exit Visual Studio.
I'm using Visual Studio Pro 2013 Update 5.

@NarayanS: Thanks for the post - good to know that the issue would persist in Win10 as well.

@AlekseyM: Are you guys able to reproduce this issue?

Thankfully the Parallels 11 Upgrade/Parallels 10 downgrade was a pretty easy process.
 
I'm getting the same thing - visual Studio 2015, Windows 10 and parallels 11 pro edition.

The same setup worked just fine under parallels 10.

The problem seems to occur when I run a website - it might work fine at first but then it's like it reaches an open file limit and the \\psf share becomes inaccessible.

When it happens, if i go to Windows Explorer then the \\psf directories show no files or folders.

Rolling back to PD10 in the mean time.....

Update:
Rolling back to PD10 fixes the issue
 
Last edited:
@AnthonyB2 Thanks for the reply! Good to know that it occurs in Windows 10 as well (and I'm not the only one experiencing this). I was wondering if the issue would occur in Windows 10 as well..
 
Occurs in Windows 10, but quite honestly I'm at a loss as to why. I mean, in IIS Express you shouldn't be hosting sites on network shares, but that's not to say you can't. I've tried a similar set up on a windows pc (non-VM) and tried to store the entire site, code, etc, on a network share and I had the share be disconnected for some reason. But simply opening up reconnects it.

Can you do me a favor. When it disconnects, can you Win+R => "cmd" and type "net use" and list everything that shows up?
 
What basically happens is that everything in \\PSF just stops showing up until I close VS which then closes IIS Express. It's one or the other that's creating the issue, I haven't tested just doing a console project to check yet. It's been working fine for more than a year actually and I really like the idea of using the shared user folders to consolidate on space usage. I should have a chance to do this later this evening or during the weekend. I can also test on a non-VM PC as well this weekend to see if I get the same results in Win8.1.
 
Going to try a few things. Will let you know my findings.

The only thing, I can think of without further investigation is that the psf folder is not really a true network location. There is a driver behind it. I'll let you know what I find,
 
Myself and one other person are have the same issue since upgrading.
Visual Studio 2015, Windows 10 and Parallels 11. The only change in our systems is upgrading from Parallels 10 to Parallels 11
 
This is still happening in 11.0.1 (31277).

I don't have to run/debug for it to happen - I have one particular visual studio solution with 100+ Projects in it, and at some point while loading all those projects it stops me from browsing shares within \\psf or \\mac.

The solution appears to load OK but then trying to open an individual file results in the not found error message: "The item <filename> does not exist in the project directory. It may have been moved, renamed or deleted".

If I then go to Explorer.exe and Z: (which for me maps to \\psf\Home) it doesn't show any files or folders there. Instead the window shows the message "This folder is empty." like when you create a new folder and immediately go into it.

If I type \\psf in the address bar and hit enter it displays the shares at \\psf. Same for if I go to \\mac. I have one share 'Home'. If I double-click Home however to view the Home directory it shows the 'This folder is empty' message.

If I try to go directly to \\psf\Home\Documents (or any other directory that I know exists) it takes me to the directory but gives the message "This folder is empty.". It knows the directory is there, as if I go to a directory I know that doesn't exist (i.e. \\psf\Home\NotThereAtAll) it immediately gives the alert 'Windows cannot access <directory name>'.

The moment I close Visual Studio again, all the files are listed and accessible in Windows Explorer.

It looks to me like Visual Studio is doing something where with too many files read/accessed/opened at once the share reaches a limit where it can't be browsed any longer.

If I do a 'net use' at any point through it shows just one entry:

Z: \\mac\home Parallels Shared Folders
 
Last edited:
I'm also suffering from this issue. My setup is Parallels Desktop 11, Windows 10, Visual Studio 2013 Ultimate. The home drive contents disappear while compiling a large project in Visual Studio.
 
Have the same problem! Version 11.0.1 (31277), Windows 7 Ultimate + VS 2013 and VS2015RC (none of them work). I can see all my files in Z:, but when I run the VS application the IIS does not seem to be able to load the files.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top