Environment - new iMac, OSX 10.5.2, Parallels build 5582, freshly installed, XP-Pro retail version in client. Symptom - At shutdown, windows goes through the normal process until reaching the screen "Windows is shutting down...". At that point it hangs indefinately. I had a free afternoon, so have let it sit there as long as 2 hours. I'm pretty sure it's not shutting down. If you then 'power off' the virtual machine, XP will reboot and run just fine. There are no messages about improper shutdowns detected, etc. But when you go to shut it down, it once again hangs. Possible solution: After reading various forums, etc, I see that others have had similar problems with various windows flavors. In all cases, doing a safe boot and then doing a normal shutdown solved the problem - the shutdown after safe boot worked, and subsequent shutdowns from normal boots worked fine. Complicating factor 1: people say hitting F8 repeatedly during the boot process will cause XP to do a safe boot. Unfortunately, this shiney new iMac has the new Apple keyboard that changes the meaning of F8 to 'pause iTunes.' Holding down various combinations of function, control, alt, and command don't seem to help. Complicating factor 2: the boot process under parallels is so damned fast it's less than 1 second from 'bios' screen to Windows booting. On physical hardware, that's when you have to hit F8 to get a safe boot, and you've got a fair amount of time. On parallels, very very little time. Not that I'm complaining about fast boots, noooo. Just saying it's a complicating factor. So: using the new low-profile iMac keyboard with its different key mappings, how does one get XP to boot into safe mode?
Hah! Found it. The new keyboard has a FN key that, when held down, reverts the function keys to being plain function keys. The trick is, it's not any of control, shift, option, alt or command. It's over to the right, just below the F13 key. I rebooted XP in parallels, held down FN, and tapped F8 rapidly while it rebooted. Voila! XP came up in safe mode. I shut it down, and it 'powered off' the virtual machine correctly. Thereafter XP shuts down and powers down correctly.
