Windows had been working fine - now hangs on startup

J

JOSEPHL4

Bit poster
I have a Macbook Pro with 15 inch retina display. I have been using Parallels to run Windows 10 for more than a year without any problems. I am currently running Parallels 12.0.2 Pro Edition. I have a dual boot system so I can run Windows natively or under Parallels. Last time I tried to start Windows using Parallels, it started doing a very long update which appeared to hang. Now when I try to start Windows, it hangs on the black screen with the blue image of a Window. There is no error message. I tried using boot manager to boot directly into Windows and that works although it cannot find my desktop. My programs are still available under the Start menu however.

I found a knowledge base article that suggested unchecking the option to share Windows files with Mac. I did that but it didn't fix my problem. I found another post where someone had a problem that sounded similar and he was able to fix it by hitting "actions" and "reset" from Parallels Desktop. I tried that and I am still unable to boot.

What can I try to get back into Windows again?
 
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Thanks for the reply. I followed the instructions in the KB article and increased video memory to 758 MB. I'm still stuck at the black screen with the image of a blue window. However I noticed something additional. I'm not sure if this was there before, but there are tiny blue dots flashing and varying intervals just above the black screen. The one that flashes the most frequently is under the HDD icon. There is one under the network icon that flashes less often. There is a third under the FDD icon that flashes much less frequently than the other two.

Also, just in case I just wasn't giving Windows enough time to initialize, I let it sit on the black screen overnight and it was still there in the morning.

I'm not sure if this relates, but when I use boot manager to boot directly into Windows, I get a message "Windows cannot access \\Mac\Home\Desktop" and I get a standard desktop without my app icons. I'm wondering if something went wrong when Windows tried to update itself under Parallels. Also, all of this began when Windows performed a major update that took a very long time and had multiple restarts. It seemed like the update never finished and was stuck for more than an hour saying it was 23% done.

And as always seems to be the case, this all happened just when I had a project I was rushing to finish for tonight (Halloween).
 
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I tried booting directly into Windows and discovered that once I get in, I can't actually do anything. If I try to documents for example, I get a message "Windows cannot access \\Mac\Home\documents. So I can't use Windows with or without Parallels. Why is it trying to find everything in \\Mac\Home\... ? Please help.
 
JOSEPHL4 said:
I tried booting directly into Windows and discovered that once I get in, I can't actually do anything. If I try to documents for example, I get a message "Windows cannot access \\Mac\Home\documents. So I can't use Windows with or without Parallels. Why is it trying to find everything in \\Mac\Home\... ? Please help.
Click to expand...
To resolve the error "\\Home\Desktop" please follow the steps outlined: http://bit.ly/2deRGI6 & http://bit.ly/2cNqkNd
 
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