Parallels 14 early adopters: Any reason to wait before upgrading?

Those of you who upgraded to Parallels 14 right away: Any regrets? Did you encounter anything that makes you wish you had waited for the first set of bug fixes?
Parallels has a pretty solid track record, but major updates to any software can introduce new bugs.

 

Hi @mcgroarty, I installed Parallels Desktop 14 for Mac and running my Windows 10 perfectly fine
Kidding aside, feel free to try Parallels Desktop 14 for Mac Trial and check how it works, we really did worked hard to deliver great improvements and features for Parallels Desktop users.

By the way, how do you use Parallels Desktop? For what workflow? Tell me and maybe I can highlight something interesting from this release for you.

 

I was a long time user of Parallels 12 and Windows10. I do the same thing every day. Start the Mac, start Windows 10. Get the password and copy/paste programs going, then then primarily use email (Thunderbird) and the Web (Firefox). No gaming. There were minor problems with 12 but there wasn't a crashing issue. I upgraded to Parallels 14 on Aug 23 or so. Several Mac and/or Windows freezes. Blue screen of death about twice a day. Windows slows way down as time passes. Wastes a lot of my time getting things going again after a freeze, where the mouse, keyboard, and keyboard shortcuts do nothing. Disappointed with the upgrade, at least so far. Maybe there will be fixes as more people report what would seem like major issues.

 

I've got Pro so I believe I don't need the free trial to jump up to 14. I just don't want to go through downgrading and recovering VM images if it turns out it causes problems.

I use Parallels for:

• isolated machine images for Windows malware reverse engineering
• intercepting network proxy to inspect traffic from mobile apps and IoT devices (wifi AP attached to a USB network adapter in Parallels bridge mode, works well)
• developing, testing, and packaging programs for multiple releases of multiple Linux distros

I don't know if there are any new features that apply to my specific use cases. But if I get a little more speed or drive space back, I'll be happy enough. I typically have around 20-25 virtual machine images in "Control Center" at any point, so every bit helps.

 

Hi @MarkL20, I am sorry for such experience. There are several crashes of Parallels Desktop GUI that we will patch in the upcoming hotfix, but virtual machine should not be affected. Please send us a technical data report via Help menu > Send Technical Data... Please post the report ID here, I will take a look.

 

Hi, I upgraded to "14" running Windows Vista in support of only one program. I run Quicken Windows for Home and Business. Prior to the upgrade, things were running great however, after the upgrade, I cannot import data from downloaded financial transactions. I get a pop-up window that informs me that Quicken cannot find an internet connection for verification of source of data file. I have not recently updated/upgraded Quicken so I suspect the source of the problem is within the connection of Quicken to the internet - through Parallels. Any Suggestions?

 

Every one of my VMs crash whenever a snapshot is taken while they are running. But, aside from that, it's seemed pretty stable.

 

It does appear there is a workaround for the snapshot crash (use Parallels Hypervisor instead of Apple's Hypervisor): https://forum.parallels.com/threads/pd14-crashing-when-taking-snapshots.345274/#post-843511

 

It sounds like experiences are mixed, and there might or might not be issues that warrant waiting for the first patch set. No matter how good a dev team is, a few issues always sneak into major update releases.

I've got two Pro licenses, so I'm spending some time with it on my laptop before deciding if I should wait on the desktop. It's easy to roll the laptop back to a previous Time Machine image in a pinch.

Thanks for the responses all

 

Yes, you are absolutely right. We will definitely fix this issues anyway, but switching from Apple to Parallels hypervisor permanently is my recommendation (better stability and performance).

 

Right, I should've checked your license first. There should be no issues with your virtual machines after upgrade to Parallels Desktop 14 for Mac, definitely no data loss. Based on your workflow I may suggest that full support of mmap() system call for Linux Shared Folders might be interesting for you. To save space I suggest that you archive VMs that are rarely used.

 

Okay, sounds reasonable, keep me posted.

 

Thank you, I will try to get to that. All this time I have been using Windows 10 on a second screen. The problem seems to have disappeared when I did two things. 1. I am not now using Enter Full Screen Mode. 2. I have had minor problems loading Windows 10 in the past when ClipMate 7 was included in the automatically started programs. So I changed it to manual startup. Now I manually start ClipMate 7 each time. So when updating to Parallels 14, Windows 10 or the Mac kept freezing and crashing during the day. So I have temporarily stoped running Clipmate 7. No crashes all day today. Soon, I can turn ClipMate 7 on all day and see if crashing returns. Maybe that will narrow the problem down.

Two days later: Crashes both in Windows 10 and separately with the Mac continue. Windows freezes, crashes, or the mac crashes. The computer finally went haywire and I had to revert to the last snapshot. Lost a complete business day's worth of work. I am so busy recovering, and getting things done between surprise crashes, I don't have time to make a tech report. The only change from a very functional Parallels 12 and Windows 10 VM has been upgrading to Parallels 14. All my energies go into barely getting anything done. Would it do me any good to try and convert my Parallels 14 license into a license for 13, should I just revert to my permanent license of version 12, or continue suffering while waiting for some kind of a hot fix. Parallels 14 is not working for me. From my limited experience and reading the forums, I feel it was a very buggy release, and I don't have any more time to waste being a guinea pig beta tester. I may have to revert to Parallels 12. Will sit on it overnight, leaving work undone because I'm tired of opening windows, setting it up for functioning, and then have it crash in an hour (sometimes it functions even longer) Can't take it any more. Maybe after a nights sleep, I'll come up with a better plan.

Here is the report ID 273354181. Thanks

Here is the conclusion of the matter, and it is good news. I now think it was a coincidence. All my problems came right after upgrading to Parallels 14. Problems began and intensified until the Mac was broken. Apple Care concluded it was a hardware problem and has to go in for repair. Had to buy a new Mac to stay functional. I took a chance and put parallels 14 on the new Mac. Many issues. I finally found that there was a phone number for Parallel support. They accessed my machine and made lots of changes. Everything seems to be working fine now. I don't know how I could have made all the changes they did. But success in the end. The techs were patient and did what needed to be done. Should I run into new problems that I can't solve, it is very comforting to know that tech support is available by phone, and not just via the forums.

 

When cometh the Hotfix? I will wait to upgrade my two systems till then.

 

I have a 500GB SSD on my MacBook Pro 2014 and had a 200GB virtual machine on Windows 7 which had about 50GB free before I "upgraded". During the upgrade I got a message that the Mac was running low on space and did I wish to increase it. The result was that my windows 7 VM then had 511 GB (and still has) and I had to try to reduce the VM partition size using parallels 14 which now has a quite different way of resizing. I compressed a windows 10 preview and reduced win 7 by about 40GB to 214GB but looking now at my win7 drive C properties it is still showing 511 GB.
Help please as I have no idea what is going on!