Upgrade from 4560 to 5160 killed BootCamp

Parallels App hangs after first-time tools install on boot camp partition

Hi Alicia,

I mentioned that the Parallels app seems to hang after the reboot during the first time tools install on a boot camp partition. Since I've been going through the process step by step, this time I've captured the stack trace when I force-quit the parallels app. See the attached text file (zipped).

RTH

 

Hello,

rth, thanks for all this information - of course it's very useful. It would be great if all who experinced this issue repeat your actions among other things as well.

Best regards,
Alicia.

 

I've been experiencing the same thing rth described.. with the unfortunate exception that I hadn't made a system restore point from the start to return to so bootcamp is still broken... It works under parallels, but restarting the Mac from the bootcamp disk gets to the point of the black screen that says windows.. and its loading windows and the green dots are moving back and forth.. and then the green dots stop moving and its hung.. attempting to boot next time to safe mode gets to crcdisk.sys and then it stops/hangs.. Booting to the windows install CD and telling it to repair leads to it claiming it couldn't find any problems..

I'm also running Vista Ultimate, an 8 core Mac Pro with 9 gig RAM and lots of disk space.. Bootcamp broke back around one of the version 3 releases, likely the same one rth found to be the issue, and I've upgraded to each new Parallels release (now up through 5570) and after running running under Parallels with the newest tools installed (hoping something might have been fixed).. I've shut down and tried to restart the Mac under bootcamp and still gotten the same problem.. I also upgraded the Mac to Leopard and when running under Parallels tried installing the newest Bootcamp drivers off the Leopard install disk.. and still the same problem..

It'd be useful to know what files Parallels broke and how to fix/reinstall them.. I'd prefer not to need to need to reinstall vista on a new partition, etc.. (don't know if there is some version of the vista install (rather than just repair) that will keep all my data but fix the issue by writing missing/corrupt system files that repair didn't spot..).

Obviously if Parallels doesn't find a way to fix their bug I may need to waste time to create a new Bootcamp partition and install Vista from scratch, etc.. Though until they fix the bug presumably the new bootcamp will just be broken by parallels again (though I'd have a restore point to fall back on). I can do without booting the Mac to bootcamp for the moment so I'll try to wait till Parallels has fixed things before wasting time on new bootcamp partitions..

As another data point, I'd waited a long time before trying this to avoid further complicating things, but I just used VMWare Fusion with the same Bootcamp partition, and it was able to boot.. then I tried again and the Mac still has the same problem booting directly to the Bootcamp partition.. So whatever it is that Parallels broke is used by bootcamp run directly.. but not when run under a VM from either company..

 

Hey RE,

Vista automatically saves restore points, and should keep them for 'years'. If you follow my process by booting off the Vista DVD, select your language/region settings, then on the next screen select repair. You'll get an automatic search for your OS. It should find your main OS installed on C:. It will be highlighted, if you click in the white area to unselect the OS then click next it should drop through to the advanced tools (or if you go through the automatic repair and it completes, there's usually an option to go to the advanced tools, click that). You should see a list of tools, one of which is the command prompt, click this. In the command window type rstrui.exe /offline:c:\Windows, this should start the system restore wizard. There should be a fairly short list of restore points, but there's an option near the bottom of the window to show restore points older than 5 days, click this. You will probably see a much bigger list. Scroll down to find where you installed the Parallels tools (there are 5 or 6 lines of parallels tools), then select the point below this.

In your case though you need to consider what you might be doing here. It sounds like you have been running Vista for some time since installing the Parallels tools. If you use system restore to wind back to before Parallels, you may well 'uninstall' other software too.

I'm pretty sure that re-installing from the DVD works too, but it usually moves the existing Windows folder out of the way, (renames it), then installs a new copy of windows. Doing this will affect a number of installed applications (you'll probably have to re-install applications as well), but it will leave your user data in place.

I suspect you don't really want to do either of these two suggestions!

Best of luck
RTH

 

Thanks for trying to help..
Oddly when I tried to tell it to do a system restore out of curiosity just to see what was there, it didn't find any.. Though I hadn't tried your rstrui.exe command line method, in actual fact it was more out of curiosity since I wouldn't have rewound, was just noting to Parallels that it appeared (at first glance at least) that I didn't have that option even if I'd wanted to roll everything back..

I wouldn't have used that method since I realized what you point out here:

Which is why I hesitate also to do the install of Vista over top of the existing disk in hopes it'd fix whatever unknown Parallels bug.. (which it might not)

yup, thats why I hesitate to use that method.. Since I'm in no rush I'd prefer to just have parallels find and fix their bug and hopefully simply repair this..

If it would work it'd probably easier to backup, install Vista on an fresh Bootcamp created paritition, then restore everything including programs i'd installed.. ( assuming I can do that without it breaking whatever Parallels broke.., I hadn't checked, since usually the issue is trying to restore a disk to the state it was in, not to try to find a way to get the OS files fixed that parallels broke using this sort of hack)

 

Is this issue still being worked on?

My problem didn't relate specifically to upgrading from one build to the next. I currently have a boot camp partition that I'm using with the most recent version of Parallels. It was working fine transitioning between standard boot camp and virtual. Then one of the last time's I booted in with Parallels I saw it install a few drivers and now I have exactly the same behavior, it BSoD if I try to launch in Boot Camp, too quickly to make out what is being said on the blue screen... launching in Parallels works without too much problem, but for some reason I've got limited access to the OS. I can't get in to the Control Panel or anywhere else that allows me to work on the OS. I can pull up Window's Explorer and any 3rd party apps, but everything else closes unexpectedly before loading up (control panel, network center, even computer preferences). The only additional software running on Vista right now are Office 2008, Steam (with Half Life 2 ep 2 on it) and iTunes. No antivirus software or anything else.