Parallels + Boot Camp + XP = HANG

W

webdeck

Member
I'm running Leopard 10.5.2 with Parallels 3.0.5584, Boot Camp Windows XP Professional partition on a 2GB MacBook.

If I boot the MacBook into XP using Boot Camp, everything works perfectly.

If I boot the MacBook into Mac OS X and use Parallels to run XP on the exact same Boot Camp partition, things run okay right up until the point when I log in. Things begin to hang when it gets to the "applying your settings" dialog before the task bar appears. This phase takes more than 5 minutes to complete. The MacBook is 100% responsive during this time, and top shows that Parallels is using less than 10% of the CPU.

Eventually, the Windows desktop will load, and I can use XP without issue, except that anything that involves the Windows task bar and Start menu will have that same slow response. I can close a window, and the window won't disappear from the task bar until a minute later. Clicks on the task bar are non-responsive until a minute later. Again, top shows that the MacBook is mostly idle, and the Mac side of things is completely responsive.

I've tried using windowed, full screen, and coherence mode, and they all behave the same.

I have 768MB of RAM (out of 2GB total) allocated to the VM.

I've tried the following sequence:

- uninstalled Parallels Tools from XP
- repaired permissions
- uninstalled Parallels
- rebooted
- repaired permissions
- installed Parallels
- rebooted
- repaired permissions
- launched Parallels
- installed Parallels Tools in XP
- restarted XP

The whole time, I continued to see the same behavior, whether or not Parallels Tools was installed.

I'm about to switch to VMWare Fusion because I am so frustrated with this. I used to have this setup working, but my MacBook hard drive died and I had to start over again from scratch, and this performance problem is making it unusable.

Thanks,
-Mike
 
I don't see how your reply was relevant or helpful, but I will answer your question anyway.

I need Boot Camp to run applications like games that do not work under Parallels. I want to use Parallels with the Boot Camp partition so that I don't need two Windows installs. I prefer using Parallels so that I can use it alongside my Mac applications, but since I work for a game developer, I need to be able to run games as well.
 
Hello,

Webdeck, here is the article on how to resolve common troubles between Parallels and Windows under Boot Camp.

Best regards,
Xenos
 
The issue appears to be shared networking. Since this is a MacBook, I wanted to use shared networking so that the networking would work equally well with both wired and wireless connections, depending on where I am using the MacBook.

If I change it to bridged Ethernet, then it works properly. However, then I have to pick to bridge it to either the wired or the wireless Ethernet interface before I start the VM, which is very inconvenient.

Any idea why shared networking isn't working?

Thanks,
-Mike
 
Hello Webdeck,

The reasons why I proposed you the article:
1. You should repair Windows installation (see the link in the article);
2. Creating two hardware profiles is recommended when using Windows under Boot Camp.

I can not explain why Bridged Ethernet is helping you.
Could you provide a screenshot of Mac System Preferences -> Network -> Network Status?
I would also like to see the output of the command ipconfig /all (Windows Start menu -> Run -> type CMD -> run the command in the CMD window).

Best regards,
Xenos
 
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