Parallels Desktop 11 w/ Windows 10 Extended Monitor Problem

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AaronK1

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I don't normally say things like this in posts, but at this point I am frustrated with this software: I have used a lot of VM software (VMWare, VirtualBox, HyperV) and now Parallels. Parallels makes me feel like I am playing with VirtualBox, that's an insult and NOT a compliment. There are so many bugs with this software.

When I first created the VM with Windows 10 and setup the VM to use all monitors when in fullscreen mode I had no problem with the monitors all showing the VM windows. Now that I have updated to the latest update for v11 (11.1.1 32312) and the Parallel Tools I am having an issue with my Mac Retina display always showing up as a grey screen (attached image). The grey screen has zero interaction with my actual VM which is easily confirmed by looking at my mouse pointer; on Mac it's black with a white outline and in the VM it's white. When I click the mouse in the grey screen it's still the Mac pointer, but when I click the mouse in the main VM screen it's white and interacts with the VM.

When I finally finagle things to get the Retina display to show the VM the grey screen is still existing. I can close the grey screen and there appears to be no impact to anything.

Thanks for the help!
 

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Hi Aaron, please start your Windows virtual machine and go to "Action" from the Mac menu bar and choose "Reset" and check let us know how it works. Thanks!
 
That didn't help. After a reset and trying to get into fullscreen mode the grey screen comes back. Some more behaviors I noticed - If the grey screen is full screened and I try to set the VM into fullscreen mode the VM flickers on 2 of 3 monitors and comes out of fullscreen mode, it must think the grey screen already has the VM in fullscreen mode. The grey screen is still in fullscreen mode. If I then take the grey screen out of fullscreen mode and tell the VM to enter into fullscreen mode the VM will enter fullscreen mode with my Retina display as a black screen. At this point I tell the Retina display to exit fullscreen mode and it removes the black screen and leaves me with a grey screen, while the other 2 monitors are still in fullscreen mode. Only if I go to one of the working monitors (non-retina) and tell the VM to exit fullscreen does it actually take the VM out of fullscreen mode. But I am still left with this mysterious grey screen. It doesn't matter how many times I go through this, I am unable to use my Retina display and am always left with a grey screen that acts like it's a different VM.
 
That didn't necessarily fix my problem. Telling the VM to not "Use Mac OS X Full Screen" when I had my third monitor set to the Mac OS X desktop caused the VM Windows taskbar to always show at the bottom of the third monitor. That made it real easy to accidently hit the taskbar and turn my third monitor back to the VM desktop. Turning off Spaces is not something that is going to work for me, I use spaces to organize all the apps on the desktop, really handy when there is only the one monitor. However, I decided to just take advantage of the Mac Spaces and move all the spaces to the left of the grey VM windows. Hopefully this will help with the annoyance of the grey screens popping up on my third monitor and taking over, time will tell.
 
I was on 11.1.1 (32312) and have updated to 11.1.2 (32408). This has seemed to fix the problem. Now instead of my Mac Spaces having a bunch of extra grey screens I just have a Space for each monitor and no grey screens that I can find.
 
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