Screen Flickering - Help :)

C

ChrisP7

Junior Member
Firstly, I would just like to say that I am still on the trial version of Parallels and absolutely love it and intend on buying a licence as soon as the trial is up.

Just upgraded my Mid 2012 MacBook Pro with a 500gb Samsung Evo SSD and put 8gb of RAM in there. Everything is running smoothly and quickly.

The only problem I have is that when using a chat application, the screen starts to flicker extremely quickly. Everything still loads but the screen flickering makes it unusable.

Any advise on how to sort this out?

Many thanks.
 
ChrisP7 said:
Firstly, I would just like to say that I am still on the trial version of Parallels and absolutely love it and intend on buying a licence as soon as the trial is up.

Just upgraded my Mid 2012 MacBook Pro with a 500gb Samsung Evo SSD and put 8gb of RAM in there. Everything is running smoothly and quickly.

The only problem I have is that when using a chat application, the screen starts to flicker extremely quickly. Everything still loads but the screen flickering makes it unusable.

Any advise on how to sort this out?

Many thanks.
Click to expand...
Please try reinstalling Parallels Tools then observe how it works and keep us posted.
 
Hi ChrisP7, screen flickering occurs due to the lack of video memory assigned to your virtual machine.
You need to increase the virtual machine's video memory:
1. Shut down the virtual machine.
2. Open the virtual machine configuration > switch to the Hardware tab > select the Video (Graphics) option in the left pane.
3. In the right pane, increase the video memory to 768 MB.
 
Thanks Paul,

I have tried this and unfortunately it has not fixed the problem. It only happens on one application, on everything else it works fine :(
 
I kindda have the same issue. I just got this MacBook Pro 2016 with Touchbar (4 days ago) and while running windows 10 in full screen it started flickering for more than 40 seconds (I was able to film it on my phone see link below)... It stopped all of the sudden and its working fine now. I did a diagnostic test with apple support and he didn't find anything wrong with my laptop... but i schedule an appointment with them to check the hardware just to make sure. Do you think its the laptop or its the parallels software that causing the problem?

Parallels version 12 for Mac with Parallel tools
Windows 10
MacPro 13" 2016 w/ Touchbar
3.3Ghz i7 | 16GB | 1 TB SDD

Video: https://www.dropbox.com/s/3k3snd6upms0foe/MacBook Pro 13" 2016.MOV?dl=0
The laptop was on battery during this time. After picking up the Skype call from my iPhone the flickers stops.
 
My 2016 MacBook Pro Retina 15" w/ Touch Bar is 4 days old. I use Windows 10 VM in Parallel. Never had any issues until I performed Microsoft Office updates; specifically during the end of the installation process. It continued through to turning the VM off completely. Laptop plugged in and at 100%.

Parallel version 12 for Mac
Windows 10
MacBook Pro 15" 2016 w/Touchbar
2.7Ghz i7 | 16GB | 512GB SSD

Video: https://www.dropbox.com/s/h0glbpl0hvwlj95/Screen Flicker.mp4?dl=0
 
I have the very same issue with my 2016 MacBook Pro 13" (Touchbar). This only happens when a Parallels VM (Win 10) is running. Disabling DirectX is not really a solution as the performance is so bad that I can't really work. I hope you guys get this sorted out quickly, otherwise I have to go back to VMware Fusion...

One more detail: it seems that the flickering mostly starts right before the machine is going into sleep mode (when the display dims).
 
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I just did some more testing and found out that the flickering in my case only starts when:
* the VM is visible (full screen)
* the sleep mode kicks in and I'm moving the mouse shortly afterwards

When I switch spaces a couple of times, the flickering is gone again. When I don't have the VM visible (is on a different space) while the sleep mode kicks in, no flickering is happening...
 
Thanks for your responses guys, I have tried all of the above but i'm still having the same problem! Getting really frustrated now! I appreciate the help but I have tried everything and its just not solving the problem. Anything else we can try?
 
Hello Guys, please try the following steps and let us know the results:
1. Shut Down virtual machine.
2. Open Virtual Machine configuration
3. Go to Hardware > Boot Order > and paste in Boot Flags box:
video.hw_pointer=0
 
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