Do Not Install 5060!!
08-06-2007, 10:07 AM
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zumwalt Member Join: Jul 2007 Posts: 30 |
Do Not Install 5060!! On the Santa Rosa Laptops. I downloaded it, ran the install package, told it to upgrade. Here is the end result. HARD CRASH. Well, step 1 after install was to click on it so that Parallels menu opens up. This showed me a list of my VM's. I choose my typical Windows XP Pro SP2 and clicked on the lovely green PLAY button. Total machine freeze. No way to reboot other than solid power down. So after waiting about 5 minutes for my lovely MBP to boot back up for it to do its standard 'check things out' routine, I braved the blue bonnet one more time. This time, it started 'almost normal' then FREEZE. This is totally UNSTABLE, should have been further tested and it is not considered Beta at this point to me, it is considered ALPHA just throw something at the users to shut them up from complaining about all the other problems parallels has that vmware doesn't. This build is scary to say the least. |
08-06-2007, 10:13 AM
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zumwalt Member Join: Jul 2007 Posts: 30 |
I'll also add this, after 4 tries to just get it to BOOT, it finally opens windows. Now, I am thinking yay I got it to work... WRONG NOTHING WORKS. Every program I try to open gives me the good old fassion "Send MS error report" and closes the application. At this point, I can't even use Parallels. It is totally fubar. Congradulations to your QA team on this one. Its a guaranteed show stopper. |
08-06-2007, 10:44 AM
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dkp Senior Member Join: May 2006 Posts: 1,416 |
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08-06-2007, 11:00 AM
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 Archy Parallels Team Join: Oct 2006 Posts: 202 |
zumwalt, what do you mean by "hard crash"? Kernel panic, segmentation fault or just BSOD in guest OS? 1. If kernel panic, please provide me with panic.log via PM 2. If segmentation fault when you get yellow window with "Report..." button copy all contents of log to text file and send me via PM. 3. If BSOD please find in C:\Windows\Minidumps memory dump and send me. 4. Please specify your primary OS version. __________________ Best regards, Archy |
08-06-2007, 11:03 AM
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Ramos30 Junior Member Join: Aug 2006 Posts: 5 |
It looks like its tools I had crashing error messages AFTER installing Parallels Tools. Nothing was working right and anything using DirectX was freezing on launch. DirectX issues are tough to deal with when you have a laptop as you can't install other GPUs to provoke the forced install or update of DirectX - I did the following. I uninstalled the DirectX that's part of XP Sp/2 which wasn't easy and got it back to 8.1 then grabbed the 9.0bSDK and extracted the retail from it and installed using their MSI. Then I updated. This worked to the point where DXDiag now saw the normal version of DirectX but still things weren't right. I finally blew away my BootCamp volume and started over- that's always time consuming work on the Windows end. I examined the .dll files and other parts of DX and found some were stamped with WINE. Hrmmm.. I don't like overwriting my systems vital APIs with stuff. I confirmed the same named files after the reinstall were ok and not stamped with the like name. I spent the money on Parallels and its been fun up to this point. But there's no excuse for lost data. Last night I purchased VMWare just under the wire and got the discount price. I'll be trying that for a while- it doesn't appear to be altering anything as Parallels has. Lessons learned, Parallels team? |
08-06-2007, 11:06 AM
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Olivier Senior Member Join: Apr 2006 Posts: 282 |
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__________________ Best Regards, Olivier. |
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08-06-2007, 08:38 PM
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sixsigma9999 Junior Member Join: Jul 2007 Posts: 7 |
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Beta is when there are very few, known and documented, severity 1 bugs. You should be testing interaction with the permutations of software and platform in the external world, all the execution pathways that exist. You should not be testing basic functionality - which seems to be the case here. Rapid software development and the open source community efforts, have created a hi-bred where the community is an integral part of the development and testing effort. One advantage is speed to delivery, another is low cost due to volunteer efforts. Perhaps Parallels has blurred the line here and is confusing 'beta testers' with 'external testers' and labeling the software 'beta' whenever they want / need external testers. I suggest they properly label the software according to quality, and not according to audience. This is alpha software which they have asked us to test. But say Alpha, not beta. Create a public bugbase that tells us what you already know, and then allows us to add to it. If you want a community of effort, then make it possible to channel user discovery of bugs, whether of design specification or funtionality execution, into product direction and not leave us hanging with complaints. Start closing our bugs and improving the quality!! And then give us at least a solid framework that can properly manage the virtual hd's, a way to install two different versions of the emulation software without them stepping on each other such that they interact (bad test envirornment) or make it impossible to roll back to a stable version without major MacOS surgery. In the worst case, give us an uninstall that worked, so that we could then re-install a working version. The ideal of course is that they should be able to co-exist nicely so you can do side by side testing. Imagine being able to copy off a current VHD, install a new build, test it on the VHD copy to determine if a particular gnat has been swatted, and report back a bug close without concern that your existing functional system will still work. But the virtual machine mgmt environment is fragile at best and poorly designed, without even a simple re-name feature. The idea that quitting a virtiual environment, quits parallels, without an option to first drop into a manager mode to work on something like a problem is design lunacy. BTW, Do not use the finder to re-name images either, as it seems the manager cannot dynamically re-build it's list of images, even if they are properly placed, named, and with signatures and permissions. Bottom line. I'd like to see Parallels succeed, and I think the community would like to as well. We are rooting for you. But they have to either, set their quality standards higher before declaring beta, or to be honest and declare it is 'alpha - external functionality test'. As it stands, either their QA is abysmal, their mgmt is clueless, the cost curve is outflanking the profit curve, or all of the above. And none of them portend long term success. |
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08-08-2007, 09:17 AM
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zumwalt Member Join: Jul 2007 Posts: 30 |
By hard crash I mean total machine freeze, no kernel message, no Mac screen in 4 languages telling me to power off with power button, no Windows guest OS blue screen, nothing, just can move the mouse around, but nothing works, can't click on anything, can't do anything, nothing. When I did finally get into the VM OS, all it said was "this application has terminated unexpectedly, send error report" etc. No memory dump, no dumps at all. I have sence rolled back to 4560 since it is stable compared to v5 pre-alpha. (I refuse to call it Beta, it doesn't fit the requirements of Beta software which means it is at the very least functional) FYI for those thinking that it is "BETA" by definition of working logic when it comes to SDLC, first you have Pre-Alpha, this version has no guarantee's at all, meaning it is not even guaranteed to boot, its not guaranteed to have anything working, and if your lucky it won't format your machine. Alpha, well, its working, has many many bugs, but needs fine tuned and bugs sorted out. Beta, this is working, most of the bugs have been resolved, and it is feature testing capible. CTR, or client technology review ready, this is final stage, has very few known bugs, and mise well be considered a public version. So, don't jump at me and say its Beta, because it is not. It fits in the Pre-Alpha state. I am back to running 4560 because there is so much wrong with 5060 I wouldn't recommend anyone install it unless they work for Parallels as an internal tester, I recommend pulling it from public download. Edit: Olivier, no I do not have any other VM programs running (aka VMWare which works) at the same time as Parallels. I own both and test between both since my clients can use either and my application needs to run in both instances. |
08-08-2007, 09:27 AM
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Olivier Senior Member Join: Apr 2006 Posts: 282 |
I share most of your appreciation regarding what should be named alpha, beta, or whatever, though seeing it miserably fail on your configuration doesn't mean it doesn't work for numerous others. What looks pre-alpha on your own experience might look beta on others. That's the sad things of software development. I have been running build 5060 for a full week now. And beside visual glitches and slowness of screen drawing (all expected according to the release notes and known bugs), I have not encountered a single crash or fatal bug of any sort. Look at my config, it is pretty much ordinary, not the even latest / newest machine. I keep myself as far as I can from the Vista though as well as from Bootcamp, so if all issues are related to using vista along with parallels or switching between bootcamp and vm usage of the same setup, then it probably explain why I have no hard issues with Parallels while others have. |
08-08-2007, 09:29 AM
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Olivier Senior Member Join: Apr 2006 Posts: 282 |
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Edit: Zumwalt, I see the only real difference with me is the Macbook generation. I have the first one with the "core duo" (yonah). You have the next one with "core 2 duo" and significant motherboard differences. __________________ Best Regards, Olivier. |
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08-08-2007, 09:37 AM
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zumwalt Member Join: Jul 2007 Posts: 30 |
Well, since Mac is based on a Unix type OS, the only thing 'shared' is the hardware components themself aka, display, drives, etc. This is why where 'could' be a problem for VMWare and Parallels to run at the same time. Build 4560 doesn't have a problem running while VMWare Public v1 is running. They seem dandy hand in hand. This type of problem could also be specific to Santa Rosa machines and not the latter (prior Rosa technology) I am presuming you have pre-Rosa on your box? When they release a newer "Alpha" like 5.1.6.1 or something, I'll try to reload it and see what happens, and pray they don't change the ODS of the VM's. (on disk structure to the virtual machine disk repository), I do NOT want to upgrade my current VM Disk but would like to try the next version of the desktop. Although I could stand to blow it away if I had to, wouldn't be a show stopper for me. I have a DVD burn of my VM, but restoring it doesn't really seem viable at this point. I tried one more time to get v5060 up and running with the exact same crash problems and gave up. Rolled back in v4560 and hopefully they can find a way to make it actually boot without killing my Mac. Edit: you posted while I was typing this up :) Yea looks like the primary difference is the system itself. They built parallels for Mac while Mac was coming out with new hardware. This might be hardware driver specific for the problem. |
08-08-2007, 09:38 AM
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Olivier Senior Member Join: Apr 2006 Posts: 282 |
Zumwalt, by the way, before starting your VM, have you reviewed your VM settings? I'm thinking especially of the Acceleration level and Intel VT-X support. Mine are set to High and checked. But it may be a good idea to turn then off and retest. It helped unblock some sad situation a year ago (and more) with much older versions of Parallels. By the way, my XP SP2 VM is also set for optimize for better performance of virtual machine. I don't use undo disks (unchecked) and I did took care of deleting my old snapshots before installing the build 5060. Not sure if it related but that is the measures I take at each Parallels installation, in addition to actually stopping the VMs before upgrading. |
08-08-2007, 10:07 AM
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zumwalt Member Join: Jul 2007 Posts: 30 |
I have tried turning off the accelerations and I do not use undo disks (don't want to waste hard drive space). I definately do not have any VM's running before an upgrade. I actually do not perform the upgrade unless I have just rebooted. This way I do not have any strange items in memory. |
08-08-2007, 10:08 AM
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AngryAnt Member Join: Sep 2006 Posts: 31 |
Stable as always Hi. Just stopping by to be annoying again. I installed 5060 as soon as it came out because I've really craved exposé integration since I first saw coherence. Since installation I've had absolutely no trouble running parallels - its just like my old 3.0 - just with new features. Rock solid in my end. __________________ AngryAnt |
08-08-2007, 02:28 PM
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jdonshik Junior Member Join: Sep 2006 Posts: 23 |
Running Nicely I have been using all of the private and now public betas from 1970 (build #) upward. I really guess I have been lucky, but there really haven't been any significant problems for me. Recently bought fusion 1.0, but I seem to like the implementation of Parallels better!! 5060 runs quite well without crashing. Using Microsoft Money, Dragon 9.1, PaperPort 11, and Clone DVD and AnyDvd. Image tool returning is a nice addition-- I was finally able to turn my plain disk back to expanding (with some minor difficulty). BTW, it seems as if Parallels support is monitoring and responding in these forums more frequently and rapidly. Good luck to all. __________________ Mac Pro 2.66X4, 8GB Ram, 4X500 GB HD Parallels 5584, 1 GB Ram, 64MB Video Ram, XP SP2, 60 GB Expanding HDD |
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