Windows 7 Crashes Then Starts Fine

[ESomething]

I have been encountering a strange problem.

I have a 15" MacBook Pro Mid-2009 2.8 GHz with 4 GB of RAM and OS X Lion.

I'm running Parallels 7 installed over a Bootcamp installation of Windows 7.

I'm seeing a strange thing. When I start Win7 with Parallels, it boots Windows but a couple of minutes into the session, Windows freezes. The "wait" circle goes round and round... clock stops... everything freezes. A CTRL-ALT-DEL does nothing.

I then use Virtual Machine / Reset to restart the VM and the second time everything runs fine.

This is not a one-time fluke. It happens every time I start up Win 7 in Parallels. I was hoping that the upgrade to Parallels 7 would fix it but it's still happening.

Anyone else have this problem?

Any ideas what might be causing it?

- Ethan

 

[strells]

Does Windows boot OK when using it for Boot Camp? If so, try uninstalling and reinstalling Parallels tools. If not, there could be something wrong with your Windows installation.

Steve

 

[ESomething]

Thanks for the quick reply. I just started up Win 7 in Bootcamp. Worked perfectly the first time.

I guess I'll try reinstalling Parallels, though it's just strange that it always crashes on the first try and works fine on the second.

- Ethan

 

[Parallels User]

Open Activity Monitor.app (Applications>Utilities) and check the memory usage, most probably you're running out of RAM (not inside the VM, but globally) when Windows 7 is booting so the system starts paging and that makes some apps hang.

You have a total of 4 GB RAM, Windows 7 is configured by default with 1 GB RAM in PDM, if you are running Safari at the same time, it will very easily consume 1 or 1,5 GB (or more if there is Flash running), Parallels itself consumes about 400 MB, OSX consumes around 800 MB/1 GB also. So it's very easy to exhaust 4 GB, unfortunately. I blame mostly Safari for the memory leakage, but Parallels itself consumes a lot of RAM.

My suggestion, shutdown Safari before starting your Windows 7 VM. you can also try running Windows 7 with less RAM (I wouldn't recommend unless what you do in Windows 7 is very light on resources).

EDIT: The probable reason why Windows 7 starts fine the second time is that the paging has already taken place and there is more free memory to use.