Virtual PC 7 Halts the Mac OS (10.3)
 

Hello,

I'm having problems with Virtual PC 7.0.1 running Windows ME. Occasionally, it will completely hang the system (freeze, halt, lock-up). When it does this I can't even move the mouse. This usually happens about every third or fourth time I use Virtual PC. It doesn't do it constantly; it is intermittent. This is quite frustrating. It usually happens when I'm using another application aside from VPC. As far as I know, I've got the latest version of Virtual PC, and I've installed all the Windows updates to Windows ME. My computer is an iBook G4, running 10.3.9. Does anyone else have this problem? Also, I'm going to upgrade to Tiger in about another week, I'll try to let you know if this has any effect. I appreciate any ideas.

Thanks,
Juz10mac

Windows ME is horrible. Now, VPC and the Mac OS kernel are supposed to protect you from the crashes that ME will inevitably have, but apparently it is not.

I'd suggest you create a new virtual machine and load Windows 2000 in it. Windows XP is another option, though most recommend 2000 as a better option.

I don't think that's the problem
 

I somehow don't think that this is a Windows problem spilling over into the Mac OS (such things shouldn't be possible). I really think it is a problem with the Virtual PC application itself... I could be wrong, though (it certainly wouldn't be the first time). It just isn't worth it to me to get a new version of windows for the off-chance that it might solve the problem; I don't really use Virtual PC for much.

These are the Windows that I own:
Dos/Windows 3.1
Windows 95
Windows 98
Windows ME
Windows NT 4.0

Windows ME is the newest one I have, that's why I chose it. Many of the initial stability issues were corrected with Windows updates. In response to your suggestion of trying another OS on virtual PC, I will give it a shot if it still has problems in Tiger. Windows 98 is similar enough to ME, that it should work for what I need.

Thanks

Other than the USB support (which can be added), Windows NT is the fastest and most stable Windows to run in VPC. I think nearly everyone agrees on that. ME was never bug-free, it was just bug-reduced. I made a lot of money in IT work when ME was around.

My only suggestions are:

Remove and reinstall VPC. Remove its prefs files also.

Create a new virtual machine with a new copy of Windows.

Look through crashlogs to see if there is any hint.

Is the "other" application in question RAM hungry? Perhaps it is asking for too much RAM as VPC and the Mac OS wont want to give up the RAM they are using and I noticed your signature says you only have 768MB.

That reminds me of something else... How much memory and HD is allocated to the VM? How much HD is free inside the VM? Have you changed any of the virtual memory settings in Windows?

I think it's got plenty of RAM
 

No, it isn't. Just this morning I opened Mail while Virtual PC was running. Virtual PC and Mail were the only running applications. And unless Mail is RAM hungry, I've got plenty to go around. As soon as I tried to switch back to VPC it froze. This seems to be the way it happens most of the time, when I switch back and forth between Virtual PC and another running application. I have 384 megabytes of RAM allocated to Windows ME. I could try setting a smaller value in the Virtual PC preferences. The trouble with any intermittent problem is that I may not know if a fix is actually a fix for a while. :rolleyes:

This is interesting. My virtual memory in Windows was disabled. I must have disabled it for some reason, then forgotten about it. I'll re-enable it and see if that makes any difference.

Thanks

Just to Second what others have said
 

Windows ME is evil.

Win2k and XP would be fine choices choices.

Win98 Second Edition would be a reasonable choice, 98 first edition a little less so.

Win NT works well but has support for less things like USB and is much tougher to get working for the average bear. And is now offically EOL.

2K is much faster on lesser hardware unless you turn off all the XP eye candy. One way to do this is go to My Computer, Manage, and Set to Maximize Performance.

That seems to be the case.

I've been running Windows 98 now (second edition) with Windows's virtual memory enabled (set to have Windows manage it), I also upgraded to Tiger and I haven't had the problem since. I guess I won't ever know what was causing the problem, but it seems to be gone now. :) Thanks for your help and suggestions everybody.

Juz10mac

I have the same problem now. Since I updated to 10.3.9 I cannot connect to the internet and the screen freezes sometimes. With 10.3.8 everything worked fine.

Virtual Switch or Shared?
 

What network setting are you using: Virtual Switch, or Shared Networking?

When I was using 10.3.9 I used Virtual Switch and didn't have a problem with the networking. Now that I'm using Tiger, I use shared networking (Tiger doesn't support virtual switch). Try changing your setting to whatever it is that you aren't using. The setting is in the virtual machine's 'settings'.

I'm hoping there will be a Virtual PC 7.0.2 upgrade soon (I read rumors that Microsoft is working on it). Hopefully this will fix the annoying freezing that seems to occur with Panther and have support for Tiger's virtual switch. You might want to keep your eyes peeled for this update.

I'm still not clear on what exactly is freezing. Since a total OS X freeze is so rare, I'm suspicious. Are you running VPC full screen? If so, for testing purposes, run it in a window. Then, next time it freezes, see if you can switch to another app to find out if the rest of the Mac is actually still working, if it's only VPC that's frozen. If you can't move the mouse, don't give up. Try holding down the Command key; that forces VPC to the Mac cursor, escaping the Windows cursor which may be all that's frozen. Also try Command-Tab to switch apps if you can't move the mouse.

If all that fails and the Mac is really, truly stuck, then at that point you can assume the problem extends beyond VPC. You may have some bad RAM. VPC is one of the few apps that really tests your RAM.

vpc and osx 10.39 work fine for me
 

vpc and osx 10.39 work fine for me

Do not forget also to potentiall turn of Xps firewall, it is redundant if you doinf shared networking.

Nope, it was the entire machine, Mac OS and all (when I had this problem). Virtual PC was windowed (not taking up the whole screen) and the mouse would just stop moving wherever it was) The hard disk would go quiet, and networking would cease. The machine would simply freeze. I understand your suspicion, this is the only case I know of where the entire Mac OS would freeze, but it would do it regularly. And like I said earlier, I only had this problem in Panther.

I tried command-tab, I tried command+alt+esc, I tried the power key to get the shutdown prompt, I tried command+q to quit the application. Nothing worked

Wowwwww...! :eek: Dat's not good.

Celestia had a similar problem
 

Actually, I take that back about being the only case I know of, of an all-out Mac OS X freeze. The current version of the Celestia program causes machines with certain video cards to freeze. They talk about a fix for that here: http://www.macosxhints.com/article.p...query=celestia

Celestia is an odd one. It's the only app I've ever used that pins the CPU all the time. Makes the fan come on almost immediately. Fun program though.

My freezes have come from:
Defective RAM (long since replaced)
Old PC card Compact Flash adapter that freaks out OS X sometimes and works other times

VPC 6 has been running great, though.

Vpc 7.0.2
 

Virtual PC 7.0.2 is now available. See if this fixes your problem.

http://www.apple.com/downloads/macos...lpcupdate.html

Problems installing MS Office 97
 

I bought Virtual PC 7 specifically so that I could install Access 97 (I don't want to buy it again, it's expensive). Install went okay, then I (stupidly) tried to install some more components from the Office 97 CD. That, of course, caused the previously-working Access to stop working, in fact Windows couldn't even see it. When I tried to uninstall it, that made things even worse. Finally, I decided I'd remove Virtual PC and start over, but couldn't find any information for how to do, except a reference in this forum (with almost no detail).

I have dragged the application icon to the trash, along with 2 plist files and several Receipts found in the \Library folder.

Was this the correct way to do? Should I do anything else in addition/instead of?

Thanks for any help offered.

DesInstaller will show you files installed by the installer
 

You can use DesInstaller to find what files a pkg installer puts on your computer. It is supposed to remove them for you, but that feature seems to be broken on Panther and Tiger. You can find it here http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/13955 . Some of the paths it gives you are relative to certain install directories, so you may have to do a search to find exactly where your files are, but this method should give you all of them.

You shouldn't need to remove the VPC application itself should you?

It's the software on the virtual machine that appears to have been messed up.

You can remove and create virtual machines without re-installing VPC itself.

Rob.

Well, you'd think so, wouldn't you? The problem was, I needed to be able to use Access. Access is part of the Office 97 suite. First, the Office 97 suite didn't appear in Start:Programs, although I could invoke each app directly from the MS Office folder; then those apps wouldn't work properly (couldn't find a DLL); then Windows XP Pro couldn't even see Access; then the Remove Programs utility couldn't remove Office 97 because it could no longer see any of it. The point is, I needed to use Access and couldn't remove or reinstall, because the Registry apparently was messed up. And, with Windows, once that happens you can either spend inordinate amounts of time trying to troubleshoot it, or you can start over. I chose the latter.

Yes, so creating a new virtual machine should give you a totally fresh Windows installation. There is no need to re-install VPC to achieve this.

The actual VPC application itself shouldn't be affected by something going awry within a virtual machine.

Thanks, I guess if I'd thought about it, I would have realized the two are mutually-exclusive, sort of.

So, as I type this note, my virtual machine is finishing up the (re)install. I though I got rid of everything to do with Virtual PC, but wouldn't you know it, Microsoft put something some place on my HD so that it knew that this is Microsoft Windows XP Pro [2], that is, my second XP Pro install. They don't miss a trick.

For future reference (because you never know, I could run into problems again this time): how would I go about deleting Windows from the virtual machine?

And, perhaps most important: last time, and again this time, I got an error message during install that said something about "virtual switch networking" not installing, but then there was another message shortly thereafter, saying something like I could still connect to the Internet even without virtual switch networking. Is that something I should be concerned about?

Thanks again for your help.

Another report of the freezing problem
 

I am running Windows 2000 in VPC 7.0.2. The Mac is running OS X 10.3.9. VPC freezes the entire machine frequently for several minutes at a time. When this happens, the mouse pointer does not move, the system will not go to sleep and it will not respond to keyboard input. If I wait long enough, usually 2-4 minutes, it always comes back to life. Sometimes it freezes again within seconds, other times within minutes.

Initially I did not know that the machine would come out of its frozen state, so I would power off to get out of it. Now that I know, I'm able to quit VPC, swear at it a little and go about other non-VPC business.

When I had the problem I never thought to wait on it. This may be the same thing I was experiencing. I'm pretty sure that the upgrade to Tiger is what cured it for me.