Unexpected shutdowns in 3120

J

jjeffers

Bit poster
Parallels has been shutting down on me frequently lately. I get no errors in OSX that I can see, and nothing in the Windows event log to indicate that anything has gone wrong. It never happens when I'm actively using Parallels, only when I return to my computer after waking it up--Parallels has just shut down.

I should mention that I never actually put the computer to Sleep as I want SSH to be available all the time. When I say I wake it up, it's only the monitor that shuts off. To be clear, here are my power settings:

Put the computer to sleep: never
Put the display to sleep: 15 min
Put the hard disks to sleep: checked

I'm using an iMac 20" C2D 2.16, 2 GB RAM, OS 10.4.8. I have a second monitor on the mini-DVI port. Don't know if that's relevant, but I thought I should mention it. I'm running Parallels with WinXP Pro in Coherence mode.

One last point--I had the same problem with 3106. I was hoping that 3120 would fix it, but no such luck.
 
It happens to me pretty frequently, though not every time. For instance, I just woke up my display after being off for about 4 hours and Parallels is still running. Almost every time I wake it up in the morning, though, it has stopped and I have to restart it.
 
some people are suggesting this may be the memory leak issues - parallels is quiting when it hits a certain amount.

this does happen to me fairly consistently - usually after windows has been running about 12 or more hours. i would say it is a great surprise when i come to my computer and find that parallels has *not* crashed. i tested for about 3 days but i had to go back to the last stable version since it's my main working computer & i can't have it crashing once a day.
 
Bingo.... I thought I was going mad.... I posted a few weeks ago

http://forum.parallels.com/showthread.php?p=37449

and have also emailed support, but no response yet.

I have 5Gb of RAM, with 1.5GB assigned to virtual machine (reserve controlled automatically). I also think this may have something to do with the monitor settings in power options in XP, as it was set to turn off after 60 mins, same as Mac. I am probably barking up the wrong tree though.

These strange crashes did not happen with 3036 and previous builds. It is really odd that OS X doesn't even report the crash, however the bug report contains.

Received SIGBUS: Bus error
Access to fault address: 0x4
unknown signal sender: 2

The OS X crash reporter contains more info (which I have emailed to support), but I am not sure if it is relevant yet.
 
The only "odd" shutdowns I've seen have related to USB uses, esp when I've pulled out a device that was mounted in Mac OS before I've unmounted/ejected it. I still have trouble remembering that, whereas Windows will "hot swap" USB devices without unmounting them, Mac OS REQUIRES a manual unmount or else it "gets upset". This plays havoc with Parallels, and I need to reacquire my USB devices via the Paralles/Devices/USB menu interface -- or else Parallels will crash.

BTW, I've also been using the Start, Suspend, Start (again) process to get into Parallels so I may be "missing" some of the crashes that others are seeing. This was mentioned in another note on one of the forums.
 
I think the majority of us suffering this crash are leaving Parallels running continuously. It doesn't crash whilst interacting with it, and many times you don't notice it isn't running until you need it.
 
I, too, have the same problem, especially on my Mac Pro with 3 gigs RAM. I also get the situation when I leave the WinXP guest running while I am away, when I come back the virtual screen is still there but it is dark, and the keyboard and mouse do not work in it.

rbodman
 
Sirreal said:
I think the majority of us suffering this crash are leaving Parallels running continuously. It doesn't crash whilst interacting with it, and many times you don't notice it isn't running until you need it.
Click to expand...

I frequently leave Parallels running continuously.
 
Mem leakage

I was having the same issue.

This was posted as a reply to a similar issue in the main thread about the Release Candidate at the top of the forum. It seems there's a leak when you un-check the option to show a live preview of the VM in the dock.

http://forum.parallels.com/post38301-16.html

I run Parallels forever and turning it back on solved my problem.
 
scajman said:
I was having the same issue.

This was posted as a reply to a similar issue in the main thread about the Release Candidate at the top of the forum. It seems there's a leak when you un-check the option to show a live preview of the VM in the dock.

http://forum.parallels.com/post38301-16.html

I run Parallels forever and turning it back on solved my problem.
Click to expand...
Thanks for that info. I do have the live preview turned off. I'll turn it back on and see if it helps. I seem to remember that problem happening around the time I changed that option, so that's probably what it is.
 
scajman said:
I was having the same issue.

This was posted as a reply to a similar issue in the main thread about the Release Candidate at the top of the forum. It seems there's a leak when you un-check the option to show a live preview of the VM in the dock.

http://forum.parallels.com/post38301-16.html

I run Parallels forever and turning it back on solved my problem.
Click to expand...

That option is/was checked and still had an unexpected shutdown.
 
5-6 unexpected quits over the weekend

I wanted to chime in with my 3120 experience. I'm seeing Parallels (XP) unexpectedly quit on some apparently random basis. Here are my observations:
- I'm pretty sure my unexpected shutdowns aren't related to the memory leak. I have the "live dock" feature on (when it's unchecked, I do see a memory leak). I've had 3120 crash when my Macbook was up for 20+ days (with many swap files) and when it's been up for 15 minutes (with one unused swap file and thus plenty of free RAM). [BTW, MenuMeters is a nice way to monitor RAM, CPU, etc]
- Crashes in Coherence Mode and normal windowed mode.
- Has crashed as soon as 15 minutes and as long as after 12 hours.
- I'm not running anything RAM or processor intensive in XP.
- Has crashed while I'm using XP and while XP is in the background.
- I got a full Crashreporter/Parallels.crash.log twice but most of the time do not even get the standard OSX dialog telling me something unexpectedly quit (however, the crash shows up in /Library/Log/Crashreporter/Exited Process.crash.log - but this file doesn't make any reference to Parallels).
- The one thing I've noticed is that the crashes seem to happen when I have XP Windows dragged so that they partially off the desktop. I don't think this is relevant but it seems to be the one constant across the 5-6 crashes I've experienced so far. But again, this is probably more coincidence since I generally drag windows partially off screen.

I sent a detailed email (including OS X crashreporter logs) to Tim Surgent and he replied immediately. So it seems like they are on it.

My next tests will involve decreasing the XP memory from 512MB to 384MB and changing the "reserved memory" from auto to some manual value. I have no idea what else to try besides downgrading or waiting for the next beta. These crashes are a deal breaker for me.

My setup:
Macbook CoreDuo 1.83, 2GB RAM, 10.4.8 (all security updates and EFI firmware updates applied)
WinXP VM with 512MB assigned (Adjust reserved memory automatically)
Shared networking
No BootCamp partitions on my Mac
No USB devices connected
XP screen saver OFF, power settings set to never sleep the display, HD, etc.
 
I have reported the problem in another thread. For me it started with build 3106. Sometimes the app quits after just 15 minutes. Sometimes an hour. I do get an error message from OSX saying it quit unexpectedly. I do not use any USB device in my guest OS so that is ot the problem.

Quite annoying, really.
 
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