Thunderbolt monitor doesn't wake up

J

Joshua Waldrep

Bit poster
I have a MacBook Pro (non retina) hooked up to a thunderbolt monitor. I'm running parallels 10.1.2 (28859) and a Windows 8.1 VM. If the Mac goes to sleep while the VM is running; when I try to wake it up, it takes much longer to wake up than usual and when it finally does wake up it's like the thunderbolt monitor isn't connected. I have to unplug and plug the thunderbolt cable back in and then it works fine again until it goes to sleep.

I have had this problem with windows 7, 8 and 8.1 VMs and with parallels 8, 9,and 10. The recommendation I received from filing a support ticket was to re-run the parallels tools installation after disabling antivirus, etc. That seemed to help (only requiring the cable to be unplugged 75% of the time if the VM is in windowed mode, fullscreen still always fails), but didn't fix the problem and has to be repeated after every parallels update. I don't have this issue on Linux VMs at all. I don't have this issue unless Parallels is open and a windows VM is running (It's not a problem with the Mac or OS X).

This is my last hope at getting this fixed as I'm about to wear out my thunderbolt port due to having to unplug and re-plugin the cable 5 - 10 times a day. Does anyone have any ideas?
 
I think this has something to do with powernap on the mac. Parallels tries to sync some things (outlook etc) while the mac is sleeping via powernap. To see if this is your problem, turn off PowerNap on your MBP.

System Preferences => Energy Saver => Uncheck "Enable Power Nap". I'd do both plugged in and battery. See if that fixes the problem.
 
I tried setting the VM to Sleep @ 5mins and the host at 10. The idea being that if it's a sync issue, the the VM should already be sleeping when the host goes to sleep. Unfortunately it didn't work and the monitor still doesn't want to wake up.
 
I had a ton of issues unrelated to Parallels with TB (mostly keyboard wouldn't connect when docked). But not sure about the Parallels / TB issue. This may sound counter intuitive but can you try VMWare Fusion and see if the same issue exists. Also, did Apple say anything about it?
 
I initially suspected That is was a mac/thunderbolt monitor issue as well. And there are a lot of cases out there on google. But they are older and appear to have been fixed by a thunderbolt firmware update, using the keyboard extension cable and/or PRAM/SMC resets (all of which I've installed/done). Also, I have been trying to track this down off and on for 18+ months and have tried a bunch of different configurations (parallels quit, parallels running VMs suspended, parallels running VM in windowed mode, parallels running running VM fullscreen, VM set to sleep before host/ after host/ never in window and fullscreen).
It has never happened when parallels was off; or running with all the VMs suspended.
It only happens when parallels is running and a VM is running, the VM sleep mode doesn't matter.
It sometimes works if I follow the support recommendation of re-installing the tools after every update with all firewalls/ antivirus/ etc disabled. However, it's never been better than 50/50 and once it fails it continues to fail, using fullscreen fails 100% of the time.

Switching to VMware fusion is a last resort. I just bought parallels 10. I turned here hoping to avoid that, but if I can't get it working I guess that's what I'm going to have to do.
 
I didn't mean go to VMware, I meant try it as a testing measure as I believe it might be something to do with your actual Virtual machine or some settings in it. I have tried to recreate your problem with Win7, Win8, and Win8.1 (I have lots of VMs) and they sleep/wake properly. However I do have a newer rMBP so maybe that might be the reason it works.

A few things to check for is under power options in Windows make sure that parallels is selected. Also, I'd try pausing (not suspending) the VM and have your laptop go to sleep. Pause is is under virtual machine menu bar. Let me know the results of this one.
 
There is one more thing to try. How much memory are you giving your VM?
Do this...
Launch the VM. Let your laptop go to sleep for a min of an hour. Don't hook into thunderbolt, just wake it up. Does it take a very long time to load?
 
Sorry to disappear for so long, The VM has 8Gb of RAM (out of 16 in the host). It wakes up very quickly when not plugged into the monitor.

I have also noticed that it will sometimes wake up if: it's only been in sleep mode for a few minutes AND I use the usb keyboard that's plugged into the monitor to wake it up and don't touch the mouse or anything on the laptop until it's awake and at the login screen.
 
I have the exact same problem and tried every suggestion made here. Still the Thunderbolt Display only wakes up, when I unplug it and plug it back in.
My configuration is similar to Joshua's. I am using an early 2011 MacBook Pro and Windows 8.1 as a guest OS.
 
Unfortunately, I don't think anyone at Parallels cares about older hardware not working. I've opened 2 support tickets and received the same advice, "reinstall the parallels tools manually after each update as this can be caused by the tools installation itself". If they were really concerned they would either fix the parallels tools installation (even thought I'm not convinced it's the real cause, and have seen it work less, and more often not at all lately) or fix the problem with parallels. Like the other poster said, it doesn't seem to be a problem with newer hardware, so I guess they're taking the apple approach: ignore problems on older, fully functional, hardware so that people will buy new stuff they don't need. It seems like a waste to me. This laptop is more than enough for what I need and this parallels/windows/thunderbolt issue is the only problem I have.

If it's not fixed before parallels 11 comes out, I'll be going to something else: VMWare or Virtual Box or something.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top