Update 5582 Trashes all VM's

M

mrfearless47

Member
I've been running the 5570 beta version of 3.0 for about 8 weeks or so. Before that I've had Parallels running successfully since version 1 and have paid copies on several machines. The particulars of the machine where the trouble occurs are: Mac Pro, 8 GB RAM, 2 Terabytes of Mass Storage (4 - 500 GB drives), quad core 2.67 GHz, and the 7300 Video card. Up until yesterday I wasn't having any trouble. I noted that the final build 5582 was out (for about a month) and downloaded and installed it (I have nightly backups of everything). After installing, I tried running parallels. It would load, get to the screen where I had my VM's listed and would let me select a VM to run. The moment I pressed the green arrow to start the VM, Parallels would enter an endless loop and even "killing the task" would leave shards of Parallels still running. Although it doesn't show up in activity monitor or at the command line using "top", the Parallels icon is still active in the dock with a little windows logo in the lower right hand corner. I can click on that all day and the choices always tell me the application "is not responding" and gives me the option to "force quit". The only way to rid myself of this scenario is to restart the system - a not terribly pleasant option. Moreover, restarting doesn't regain control over parallels. If I try running the VMs, the same thing occurs over and over again.

So, I try my Ubuntu installation - also running just fine before the 5582 install. It does the same thing.

Since the install did not, to the best of my knowledge, touch the VMs themselves, I assume I've got a bad install of Parallels. So, I use the Parallels uninstaller to remove the application from the machine. I restart the machine, download a completely new copy and reinstall Parallels from a fresh dmg file. After doing so, the same thing happens.

OK. Let's assume that the install somehow corrupted the VMs. So, I wipe the folder containing the VMS (hdd and pvs files) and move over last night's backup of same onto the main drive. Restart machine, run parallels, and instant freeze.

Now I'm getting pissed. So I wipe out all the VMs on the main drive, all ancillary files I can think of, and I use Parallels transporter to import a VM that I have in Fusion. It does its thing, creates the new Parallels VM from a fully working (checked five minutes before) VM from Fusion and at the very end tells me it is finished and asks whether I want to run the new VM in Parallels. I say, of course. I brings up a VM configured about the way it ought to be configured and when I click on the green arrow to start the VM, the same damn thing happens again.

I *could* start a fresh install of Windoze (I have a site license CD with XP2), but this is an awful lot of effort without any assurance it is going to do anything. To me there has got to be a file corrupted somewhere that isn't getting deleted when the uninstall occurs and which got overwritten and corrupted during the upgrade process. Before I go through all the trouble of reconstructing a Windows (and Linux) VM from scratch, I'd like to explore other options. If I mount the Parallels VM disks (hdd), everything is in tact and all files that are supposed to be there are. So I'd hate to lose all that information for no reason if there is another solution.

If I were to do a complete removal of EVERYTHING Parallels installs everywhere on the system, how would I go about doing so? Where are the hidden files such as the license files, the plist files. I can't seem to locate them anywhere and I'm betting on a corrupt plist somewhere.

I'd like to keep using Parallels (along with Fusion) if I could, but this experience has put me in an ugly mood.

Thanks.
 
mrfearless47 said:
If I were to do a complete removal of EVERYTHING Parallels installs everywhere on the system, how would I go about doing so? Where are the hidden files such as the license files, the plist files. I can't seem to locate them anywhere and I'm betting on a corrupt plist somewhere.
Click to expand...

Please try the instructions in this article and see if it helps. I'll also add that if you want to delete everything from Parallels except the VMs (but including the license files and such) then you can also delete the /Library/Parallels folder, the ~/Documents/.parallels-vm-directory folder, and files that have names that start with "com.parallels" in the ~/Library/Preferences folder.
 
I haven't tried reinstalling 5570 as I no longer have the dmg. I have followed the detailed instructions provided by KBirch to no avail. I have repaired permissions on the Startup drive and the drive where my VMs are stored. I have used the Uninstaller in the 5582 dmg to uninstall everything removed by that uninstaller. The step 5 folders are not found on my system after the uninstall, so they are not deletable. The same is true of the various kext files stored in /System/Library/Extensions/. I've repeat this several times. I've then, following multiple reboots, reinstalled 5582. It installs fine, as it always does. I then try to run any of the VM's (those I've been running successfully prior to this version, as well as the 5582 transporter version of a VMWare Fusion Windows XP VM). So, I have three valid VMs and not one of them will run with 5582. Parallels just freezes and then produces a system error that I'm offered a chance to report to Apple - not to Parallels. Even after killing the task, the dock icon remains with the Windows logo pasted to the lower right hand corner. There is no way to make it go away without rebooting the machine.

In case I didn't mention it in my earlier message, I'm running Leopard 10.5.1. As I said before, I've been running Parallels since its version 1 beta. I'm no stranger to the application and this is the ugliest problem I've faced with any piece of Mac software since converting about two years ago. I have no idea where the problem is, and no idea how to even get a clean reinstall.

FWIW, I notice a whole bunch of .plist files in \Users\Marc\Library\Preferences that have Parallels in them. Undoubtedly one of them has the license file, but at this point, I'm about to go through and delete every one of them. I have copies of my original licenses and so am not terribly concerned about recovering them. Any reason not to delete them?
 
Just FYI. I located the 5580 RC and downloaded it. After applying all KBirch's steps, it too fails. I suspect that the 5582 original installation must have trashed the actual VMs as well. There is a suspicious looking note when the 5580 RC build is fired up for the first time that reminds users of the change to the VM format. It appears to me that without the 5570 build, I have no way to recover these VMs without simply reinstalling Windows and Ubuntu from scratch. This is not a happy moment for me, especially when this occurs in the released version of a piece of software.

Anyone from SWSoft - Ben et al care to comment or offer help/suggestions before I reinstall Windows again.

Crankily yours,

mrf
 
mrfearless47, I just sent you a PM with a link to get build 5570. Also here are a few more ideas:
-In your virtual machine configuration(s) try setting the "Acceleration Level" to "Disabled" and uncheck "Enable Intel VT-x support"
-Try running the MacFUSE installer to ensure that MacFUSE is installed properly (if it isn't it could be causing Parallels to hang)
-If you have any snapshots try removing them (while you have build 5570 installed)
-Try disabling single window transitions from the Parallels preferences
 
The install of 5570 did the trick. While I reinstalled MacFuse 10.5.1 (for Leopard), it made no difference in the later builds (5580 and 5582). Ditto for cutting down the acceleration and turning off VT-x support. Once I removed everything from the later builds and reinstalled 5570, it works fine and I have my VMs back.

So the question for Parallels people is: "what significant matter got changed between 5570 and the RC and ultimately the release build that trashes everything for me?" I'm happy to take this off list if the Parallels folk want more details from my system.

FWIW, I had no such problem on my new iMac 2.8 GHz, which leads me to believe it is a problem indigenous to my MacPro or some interaction with other software running at installation time. Given the number of pieces of software that have been upgraded for Leopard in the past 3 months, it would almost be impossible to work through which one or ones might be causing the problem. But it is a really nasty problem. Hopefully the 5570 beta won't expire anytime soon because I'm not upgrading again until I see another release (and I'll have mirrored my entire hard drive just minutes before I try the upgrade).

Thanks again for your help and, most of all, the link to 5570.
 
Same Issue - Need link to 5570

I am having the same issue. Leopard with 5582 and ZERO networking capabilities at all. Everything on the Parallels side looks fine, NAT etc is Green, shows connected, but within XP I see no ethernet card and no ability to add one. Trying to go into My Computer, ardware shows no hardware at all. Trying to click "Add new hardware" fails.


I would like to downgrade, but only have links to 3212, 4560 and 5160.
Emails to tech support go unanswered. :-(
 
Have you had success with the 5570 build? Your situation is a bit different than mine. My VMs didn't even come alive after applying the 5582 upgrade. In fact, the only way I could regain access was to downgrade to 5570, after which I could do everything.
 
Hey mrfearless47 -

My VMs work ok, but just lost all networking within them. Everything else within the VM works fine, just no connectivity even though everything is green!
 
rsears,
There are several discussions on the networking in the latest build, have you perused any of them? Did anything get you partially there from the discussions?
 
I have not located anything similar to what I have seen. If there is a thread specific to my problem, could you shoot me a link..?

Thanks
 
Here are three I took part in, I dug them up via the search... Let me know if any of them help, if not go ahead and post in the most relevant one, if none are relevant start a new thread or find a more relevant one.

http://forums.parallels.com/showthread.php?t=18504&highlight=internet+connection+build+5582+shared+networking

http://forums.parallels.com/showthread.php?t=18855&highlight=shared+bridged+networking

http://forums.parallels.com/showthread.php?t=18099&highlight=shared+bridged+networking
 
Problem Fixed

OK, I am not sure what the actual problem ever was, but the fix was uninstalling build 5582 and reinstalling 5570 from scratch.

Once I did that, everything worked as it should. Being adventurous I then reinstalled 5582 over the top of 5570 and now it too works!

Thanks for all the help and suggestions everyone!!
 
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