Parallels window hangs 2-4x a week

[edeslaur]

Hi everyone.

My Windows OS hangs 2-4x a week. Prior to the 4.x version of Parallels, Parallels would hang altogether, and it would be bad enough I couldn't Force Quit Parallels and would have to do a hard reboot.

With 4.x, Parallels now doesn't hard hang, but from time to time, I do have to reboot the Mac to get good behaviour after one of these occurrences.

I'm not convinced it's the Windows instance that's hanging as it's from a canned image my IT group has used on every Mac here, and I'm not running anything different than anyone else. This does not appear to be a common problem within the company (lucky me).

This is becoming a pretty painful issue, so all help appreciated.

Thank you.

 

[ddahle1970]

Do you do any maintenance - i.e., running any cleanup apps (Disk Cleanup, CCleaner, ?)

Also, how are you entering / exiting your VM? start / shutdown or suspend / resume? If the latter, that feature is apparently so YMMV-prone I only start / shut down my VM.

 

[edeslaur]

It'll actually hang while I'm using it. One second i've clicked something (and not really the same thing), the next - hung.

Cisco's Meetingplace seems to exacerbate the problem, but is only running for about 1/3 of the hangs.

I don't suspend Parallels, but I do suspend the Mac from time to time. After a Mac suspend, it could be hours (or a couple days) before the Windows side hangs.

use case 1
- Leave the machine running (it does stuff overnight) 24x7

use case 2
- close the lid (Mac suspend), take it home, use it. close the lid, go to work, use it.

I reboot very infrequently.

Yesterday, for example, I did a Windows Restart (shutdown -r -t 0) and the parallels instance shut down to the 640x480 black screen, then hung. I had to do a Stop, [then I] shut down Parallels completely, then restarted it. (With 3.x, I'd have had to hard-reboot the whole machine, so 4.x is a bit better - though I am not prompted to report crashes to Parallels anymore, so maybe it's not...).