Windows 10 freezes for 30+ minutes in Parallels 15 on macOS Catalina

I'm running Windows 10 (1903) in Parallels 15 (15.1.3) on macOS Catalina (10.15.3).

Every so often, Windows 10 and the Parallels app will completely freeze, and macOS will simultaneously grind to a halt. When this happens, there's nothing I can do to try to unfreeze things - Windows won't respond to any input at all, and anything I try to do on the macOS side (like launch Activity Monitor to see what's going on) will just give me a spinning beachball or crash. I just have to sit there and wait, and eventually it'll clear up and start working again (until the next time it freezes, whenever that is).

When it freezes, the freeze can last for anywhere from 1-2 minutes to upwards of a half hour! And it doesn't seem to matter which apps or resources are being used in either macOS or Windows; I've had it freeze while sitting at the Windows desktop with no apps open, and I've had it freeze even if Parallels is the only Mac app running. The VM is stored on my Mac's internal SSD (with ~100 GB of free space), and I have 16 GB of RAM, so I'm not short on resources.

I've tried doing "restore defaults" in the Windows VM's settings to make sure I'm running it with the optimal CPU/RAM settings, and I've tried both the Parallels hypervisor and the Apple one, but nothing's made any difference.

I'm tempted to say this is an issue specific to Catalina, as I didn't notice it on Mojave, but I upgraded to Catalina months ago and the freezing only started more recently (within the last few weeks).

I pay for the Parallels subscription, but I'm going to cancel it and switch to Fusion if I can't get this resolved. I'm running the latest versions of Windows, Parallels, and macOS, so I expect this to be a supported configuration that should work without issue. Having my VM freeze for 30+ minutes with no warning is unacceptable!

 

Hello. I'm experiencing the same problem. Yesterday, I did the Parallels´ update, and today, it is freezing on a black screen. I had to turn off the MacBook, because everything stopped work! How can I fix it??? I need for work!!!

 

Hi, did you reset your VM?
Also did you run any specific app into your VM? Did you get the high CPU usage before freezing?

 

I have the same question while starting parallel desktop 15. I have generated the technical report 335397037 for this issue. please help solve it. thank you.

 

Update: I tried making the following changes and the freezes completely went away:

• In the settings for the Windows 10 VM, I unchecked "pause Windows when possible," turned off all file and app sharing between macOS and Windows, and disabled TRIM
• In macOS System Preferences, I disabled automatic graphics switching

I also want to mention that until changing those above settings just recently, I hadn't touched them since I installed Parallels over a year ago. But the freezes only started within the last few weeks or so. So something must have changed in a recent update to Windows, macOS, or Parallels that made one of these settings (or combination of settings) go haywire.

I don't know which of those settings (or combination of settings) did the trick, though, but I haven't had a single freeze since. I'll have to start turning things back on one at a time until I can narrow it down, though I'm reluctant to do so now that everything is running smoothly.

 

I had exactly the same hang problem, with two entirely separate Windows 10 Virtual Machines.

The *only* workaround I could find, was to use Time Machine to revert back from 15.1.3 to 15.1.2

This is an extremely serious bug - I hope you can fix it soon. I won't risk installing another Parallels update until I read this as being fixed in the Release Notes.

Thanks, Pete

 

No, I wasn't able to try resetting because the whole Parallels app and VM was unresponsive. I did have Activity Monitor open while the freeze was happening and it didn't report any CPU or memory usage that was out of the ordinary.

 

I hadn't tried downgrading Parallels to 15.1.2, but that makes sense that it could be a bug with something that was introduced in 15.1.3, since the freezes started pretty recently for me.

 

I have this issue with Parallels 15 since release, going back to Parallels 14 solves the issue, even on Catalina. There are several reports from different people for this issue since last year and it is really annoying that Parallels won't sort this out for months!

 

Exactly the same is happening for me when just browsing the web. Very annoying. I managed to click generate technical data (337398452), but it only completed 'on unfreeze'. macOS Catalina 10.15.4 running on Mac mini 3.2GHz 6-core 8GB RAM and plenty of SSD space, but it also happen on my Macbook. On both computers I'm trying to run Windows 10 Pro 1909 (18363.752) with Parallels Desktop Pro 15.1.3 (47255). When it works it works very smoothly. Will try JamesS39's trick.

 

I am experiencing the same problem on Parallels 15.1.3. Just started happening.

 

Exactly the same for me as well (catalina), only started to happen after the latest update so 100% a major bug that needs sorting out. I'm running Windows 8.1 Enterprise here but the same symptoms - use the windows VM, at some point (usually quite quickly), the windows vm will start the spinning ball, then shortly after that the Mac will freeze, anything upto an hour is the record so far - I just need to leave it be and walk away, waiting for it to return.

When it does come back to life, the mac is very sluggish so have to shutdown the vm and then things start to pick up. I've resorted to setting up another desktop pc to carry on working (software developer) so not ideal at all.

I'm going to try JamesS39's tip and see if that helps - I'm also now looking to move over to VMWare, this is costing me a fortune in lost development time and just can't afford to take the chance with parallels anymore!

Not happy!

 

Dear All!
I have been having exactly the same problem as described by @jamesS339 above. It has been driving me absolutely nuts for many months and have practically made my Parallels installation completely useless.!! BUT since last Friday my Win10 installation have been running much, much smoother and stable than ever before.

I have tried a lot of things and settings and I am not 100% certain I have nailed the exact optimal solution. BUT my current best guess is that disabling TRIM did the trick - no more freezes and frustrating hick-ups. I will try it out even more of course, but would like to share this with you all experiencing this annoying problem.



I have a MacBook Pro 2014 with 512 SSD and 16GB RAM - I am running Catalina 10.15.4 and Parallels 15.1.3

Please try it out if you want and post back your own experience! It would be super-interesting to hear your experience and maybe there is some other setting combo that have worked much better for you (and for me without knowing...)!

Best Regards, Daniel

 

Dear all,
This might help: do you use Microsoft Teams (which runs all the time in the background)?
My experiences: Windows 10 VM stops responding for several seconds, CPU % goes through the roof, sometimes VM crashes and sometimes OS X gets a kernel panic. All when starting to work with Windows 10 VM with Microsoft Teams running and especially when having an online meeting!
Please let us know if you have the same experience.
BTW the Trim solution did not make any difference for me.
(Latest OSX, Parallels and Windows 10)
Regards, Theo

 

I've been battling this very same issue off and on since October. In December, a Parallels technician made some adjustments to my system to address the issue - these definitely helped, but the problem continued to happen, just more intermittently.

I make my problem worse by killing Parallels whenever the Mac gets into this state. This makes the Mac useable again, but then I consistently run into issues with starting the Windows 10 image.

Last week, I tried a few of the suggestions in this thread without success. I finally created a new Windows 10 image from scratch and haven't had a problem with the new image. So whatever issue was causing my problems was specific to the prior VM image. Once I got all my software and settings in place, I backed up the new VM's image so I should be able to revert to it if the problem returns. It's obviously a pain and takes time to rebuild, but you might consider this if you were randomly spending an hour of your day randomly dealing with this issue (like I was).

 

Dear @TheodK ,
Sorry to hear that the "Trim trick" didn´t work for you - My machine(s) (both OSX and WIN10) is now running quite smooth since I turned off TRIM. But obviously it seems not to be any magical fix - unfortunately. Thanks for testing!

FYI: I am running Teams in both MAC and WIN10 without any problems whatsoever - initiate, participate and share screens etc. works fine. Strange!!

@Parallel developers - please solve this issue once and for all - I am 100% certain you loose, and will loose a lot of customers if you can not sort this out very soon. Running an updated OSX and Win10 must be a very common situation for most people.?

Best Regards, Daniel

 

Dear Daniel and Steve,
Thanks for the reactions and the tips.
Suddenly my problems with the Windows 10 VM disappeared and I really don't know why.
Some changes that might have had a positive effect:

• I found out that the many Teams problems disappear when you log in with an active account. So if you join a meeting as an "outsider" (with the downloaded app but without a Microsoft account) lots of problems seem to occur. And this will also affect the behaviour of the VM.
• Yesterday Parallels Desktop got a new update including a change to the way Parallels Tools installs . This might also have changed some things for the better.

Last but not least: Daniel mentioned that a fresh installed VM solves a lot of problems. That's very true as some VM's might have seen many Parallels, Apple and Microsoft updates already. This resulting in a pile of faults inside such VM's. But let's be honest: no one likes doing a re-install from scratch.
Thank you all,
Theo

 

Note - this is still a problem for me with Parallels 15.1.4 - I've once again had to revert to 15.1.2

*Please* fix the hang-ups!

NB: I do not use Microsoft Teams

 

Hi again.

I though I should let you know that the tip above ("disabling TRIM") seems to have Parallels 15.1.4 working again using Windows 10, but without the horrible hang-ups.

Many thanks to the poster who suggested this - I'd have never guessed to try that.

Pete

 

"disabling TRIM" did not fix the freeze for me
However, downgrading Parallels Desktop from version 15.1.4 -> 14.1.3 seems to have fixed the problem (at least up to now).
I'm keeping my fingers crossed because problem the seemed to be intermittent with version 15.1.4.
Unfortunately, my current license is for version 15, therefore I have to run with the 14-day trial license for version 14.1.3.
I opened a ticket with Parallels Support, and if they provide a solution I will post it on this thread.