Parallels 6 crashes

I have been getting sporadic crashes under Parallels 6.x running Windows XP. My host system is a Mac Mini - latest Snow Leopard, lots of free disk space, 8GB of memory (3 GB configured for Parallels VM).

Usually I am just running Excel or Powerpoint (2007) in the Windows XP VM. When Parallels restarts after the crash, the Windows VM is unaffected - no crash or corruption (so far) Parallels simply restarts and the VM comes up immediately in the same state as before the Parallels crash. It has even crashed when the system was idle.
When it happens, it seems to happen 3 or 4 times an hour - pretty frustrating, to a point I had to dust off my Windows laptop to meet a project deadline.

I have seen another issue under v6.x that seems unrelated - requests for Virtual Hub and Virtual ComboMouse drivers (see thread: http://forum.parallels.com/showthread.php?t=105346 ), but mention it here just in case.

I have on open Support ticket for these crashes, and have sent problem reports when the crashes occur. So far, the advice seems to be try a,b,c,d,... until it gets better. Is there any way to better diagnose this? Increasing memory above 3GB seems dumb, when v5.x ran fine - albeit slower - on a 4 GB Macbook Pro with 2-GB devoted to Parallels.

One other support request was setting a boot flag : vm.app_mode=32. The system seemed slower, and the crashes still happened.

Anyone else seeing this behavior? Any troubleshooting tips?

-- Tim

 

The problem is with the Parallels Desktop application. The application is the GUI that lets you see and control the virtual machine which is running in another process. The Parallels Desktop application can crash without affecting the running virtual machine process. That's why you see it still running when you relaunch the Parallels Desktop app.

Are you running any third party apps that might be affecting the Parallels Desktop app? Like Application Enhancer from Unsanity. Are you running any virus or disk protection software? Time Machine? Try disabling them all.

Do the crash logs in Console.app or "All messages" or "Console messages" give any clue?

Disable 3D acceleration in the virtual machine hardware video configuration?

I suppose one of the suggestions they gave you was reinstalling Parallels Desktop and Parallels Tools?

 

Resolution

Did you ever resolve this issue? I have the same problem and it gets quite annoying. The VM is fine, it's the Parallel's application that keeps crashing. When I restart it, my virtual machine is just as I left it.

I have 8 GB of RAM and a 2.26ghz MacBook Pro, so I don't think it's a lack of resources. I have no virus protection running on my MacBook but I do have Norton on my Windows 7.

Any help would be appreciated!