Periodic Mac Bootup-Freeze Since Installing P4

Since installing Parallels 4 when it first came out of the beta program, I've experienced somewhat frequent, but not consistent freezes upon booting up the Mac. I have a 24" iMac running Leopard (I keep it current), and on P4, I have XP Home Edition. I also have a Boot Camp partition for hard-boots to Windows. Parallel's shares the Boot Camp partition.

I've noticed that the Mac tends to freeze after using Parallel's or installing Parallel's upgrades. I've had my Mac tested at a local specialty repair shop and they have confirmed that they ran the Windows directory repair utility "chkdsk", ran the same utility for Mac (Disk Warrior), ran three hours of comprehensive hardware diagnostics on hard drive, RAM, etc... The tech then cleared Apple Cache files and ran permission repairs on the Mac OS. Parallels functioned perfectly at that time, and the system boot was timed at 30 seconds.

When I corresponded with the service tech today, he indicated that calling the Parallels support line is GREAT ADVICE and may very well net a solution, as they have experienced exactly what I have described with respect to freezes after running Parallels or updating the software. Unfortunately, I've been putting up with this issue for months testing different scenarios until I finally confirmed that the issue occurs in conjunction with Parallels. So at this point, I would have to pay for a service call. I'm hoping the forum can provide some advice on this.

Thank you.

 

Clarification - Mac Boot Freeze

The freezes I have described above have occurred over the past several months, and happen whenever I upgrade P4 to the next revision number in addition to periodic freezes after the use of Parallels.