Parallels 6: BSOD with Window 7 64

Just an FYI

I was having the same BSOD issues with Windows 7 64 bit on Parallels 6, however installing SP1 fixed all problems. Try this if you haven't already..
 
I appreciate the comment but if you mean SP1 for Windows, how am I supposed to install that if I can't get into Windows at all? My BSODs are at startup...
 
Robertv - your problem sounds more like a corrupt installation of Windows than the random, occasional BSOD's the rest of us are experiencing when the VM is set to >1 CPU. Sometimes problems with Windows are problems with Windows, not with Parallels. :) Have you tried a fresh VM?
 
I have not tried a fresh VM. I was holding out hope to salvage the existing one. In my current VM I have a plethora of software installed, most of which is a lengthy registration/activation process. If I create a new VM, I will need to spend a significant amount of time on support lines getting software de-and-reactivated. I was trying to avoid that.

What is most bothersome about this whole event is that prior to last Saturday everything was working beautifully. I have a support ticket in and am hoping a positive outcome there.

Meanwhile there are two other questions that somebody could perhaps point me to the appropriate threads:

1) How can I access my Windows drives? It seemed I was able to look into them before but now, even though Parallels Tools says they're connected, I cannot seem to access my files...
2) How do I change my forum nickname? I've hunted through every possibly page on this website...

Thanks for all the replies...
 
Sorry Robertv, I was in the camp of folks whose W7 install works with 1 CPU, not more. I would recommend allowing windows startup repair to run during bootup (don't do System restore, just let it attempt recovery from). This took approx 25 mins on mine, but left me with a bootable Windows 7 + 1CPU. (Before I allowed the repair to run I could not get past the BSOD).

hope this helps..
 
Just to share my similar experience - I have upgraded from Parallels 5 to 6 (version 11994) about a week ago (Windows 7 64 bit), and had the same kind of trouble. In the beginning I had frequent freezes, Parallels crashes and different Windows blue screens. After a Windows repair it got a little better (a BSOD about every 1-3 hours without any apparent reason). After reading this thread I changed the number of CPUs from 4 to 1, and left it running overnight - no crash so far, which is a large improvement, but the performance is a lot worse, of course. Downgrading to 5 is not an option, as while that was quite stable, it always crashed on an OpenGL-intensive application I have to use.
Do you know if Parallels is working on the problem, and if they have enough information to fix it? A would really like to work with more CPUs again...
 
Does anyone know if this problem (crashes with more than one processor under Windows 7 64 bit) has been fixed in build 12090? - Thanks.
 
To answer my own question: the problem is still there. I had to do the Windows repair again after I switched to 4 processors and crashed, and I'm back to 1 processor now again.
 
I just bought Parallels 6 on Amazon a couple days ago, and I'm having this problem as well. I ended up having to install Windows 7 with my system set only for 1 virtual cpu.

I'm installing updates right now, and once the updates are done I'm going to make a system restore point and try to boot with 4 cores, though I'm kinda doubting that it'll work.
 
Yes - the problem still exists within PD6. I've tried all different configurations, and have seen it on both 32 and 64-bit Windows 7 installs ... all versions. I really wish that Parallels would get this issue corrected - a few of my Win7 installs, because of the dev tools that I run within, just can't pull the load with a single CPU. What's the purpose of having the option for multiple CPUs if it doesn't work?!
 
Yeah...I'm not sure I would've been able to justify buying PD6 if I had known that this issue was present.

I tried installing SP1 and switched to 4 and 2 cores, and both attempts failed. Switched back to 1 core and it works again...this is frustrating
 
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Same issue here.

Am wondering if any MAC related Firewall related rules might cause this issue to happen if the base VNIC's cannot talk properly? It's the only thing i can think of besides the multiple CPU related posts that have been posted previously. Or perhaps something to do with Video.....i have 3 x monitors ( 1280x1024 each ) and have guest in coherence mode. After every crash it's in window mode.

I have turned off 'adaptive hypervisor' and 'tune windows for speed' options and still had the issue with 2 x CPU ( and both 2Gb and 4Gb of RAM assigned to guest).

I am running on an older intel Mac pro 2007 model with 10Gb of RAM.

problem happened on 10.6 and 10.7 and also between the previous parallels update and current version (6.0.12094 Rev 676494).

Am trying now the single CPU to try and get some stability and also turning off sharing apps with mac and vice versa.

Issue happens at random times sometimes while actually working on the guest or other times when i have been away from the machine.

hope to work it out soon.
 
@PaulS: I have the same kind of Mac Pro, with 2x4 cores and 8 GB RAM. The problem happens with all versions of Parallels 6 that I have tried if more than 1 processor is selected, and does not depend on the display mode (also happens without Coherence, in full screen or Window mode) and some other options I have tried.
As soon as I switched to 1 processor, all crashes are gone, independent of the other options. So the options you have at the moment are:
- switch to 1 processor (quite annoying if you are doing several CPU-intensive tasks like compiling at once)
- downgrade to Parallels 5 (not an option for me, as it crashes on OpenGL-intensive apps)
- buy a new Mac (crash does not happen at least on the newest Powerbook)
- try to convince the Parallels folks to fix this...

I suspect a multi-theading issue in one of the MacPro-specific 64 bit drivers, may be the graphics driver...
 
It's not specific to 64-bit windows (I tried Windows 7 32-bit as well), so I don't think it's necessarily related to 64-bit drivers or something.
 
@Aneesh: Ok, this was just a wild guess because some BSODs looked like corrupted driver memory... What kind of hardware do you use? Is it also the "old" MacPro? Maybe it is an issue for these machines, then...
 
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