Is it just me?

plugsnpixels · #1 06-04-2011, 11:27 AM

I'm a Mac user and run Windows 7 via VM under Parallels Desktop. Mac users may find my experiences below amusing, Windows users moreso! Don't mind me, just read and enjoy and be thankful it's not you:

So here I am running my Windows updates, which were repeatedly failing on two out of the three Important Updates. After a few tries I seemed to be making progress.

When Windows Update got to the point where it was installing IE9, the dialog just sat there. And sat there. I had forgotten I experienced this before on another machine, and I couldn't believe the solution.

What happens is (and this is Microsoft genius!), the dialog where you have to actually click Install appears UNDER/BEHIND the Windows update window where you can't see it! Now THAT is security!

I only discovered this when getting impatient and dragging the Windows Update window aside for some reason.

Amazing.

Also, the dialog says there are 3 important updates, then proceeded to install 2 out of 2 (??).

PS: The updates failed again (two error codes this time)... Maybe I need to reinstall Windows, ha! All this just to do some Windows-only product screenshots.

plugsnpixels · #2 06-04-2011, 11:32 AM

Oh, and when you do run updates and need to restart, an error screen comes up saying Windows Update still needs to quit before restarting-!! Am I the victim of punking or do people actually tolerate this sort of thing on a daily basis?

plugsnpixels · #3 06-04-2011, 11:46 AM

"Installing update 2 of 2..." "Failed: 3 updates" Is this MS math?? And what happened to update 1? In order to get to 2 it must have installed 1 already, no?

"Get help with this error" (a specific code). I click and get the generic "Troubleshoot problems with installing updates". Since there is a specific error code, I would like to read about that specific problem...

Manually downloading the standalone updater for the Daylight Savings Time issue did not work either.

I give up. I may just have to do without IE9 and security updates after all.

plugsnpixels · #4 06-04-2011, 11:59 AM

Oh I see, when you SHUT DOWN Windows, then it gets in the installing mood! 1 down, 2 to go... No, wait: I had unchecked one of the three while troubleshooting. Still failing for all 3. So what installed when I shut down? Who knows!

Does Microsoft offer therapy-?

plugsnpixels · #5 06-04-2011, 12:43 PM

I discovered the Windows Update troubleshooter. It fixed my Windows Update components. The updates still fail (!).

The Control Panel says, "Find additional information related to the Windows problem.">Search Help and Support. I do (by clicking on the link). 0 results... Thanks MS!

I go to search the MS website for help (by following a link from the Windows Help and Support dialog). The website has a big orange box that says "Internet Explorer 9 is here". You think I could install that? Oh, never mind, it already failed!

I notice the search field on the website is not pre-populated with my inquiry, so I will type one of the update error codes in now... "80070bc9". "No search results found."

AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!

These same updates worked on my other systems, so I know this is technically possible. If I hadn't wasted over an hour of my life today this would be funny.

Maybe MS can use my tagline when they go to promote Windows 8: "It's not an OS, it's a POS"...

Tony W · #6 06-04-2011, 12:59 PM

Well plugsnpixels quite a tale of woe and even a rant maybe

. I can honestly sympathise with your plight, however...........

I am not a Mac user but rather a die hard PC user. I do however recognise that Mac have their dedicated and staunch advocates and it is a fine platform. Unfortunately there does seem to be a tendency to blame MS for any woes that befall us either Mac or PC user. Maybe the blame does fall squarely on MS shoulders but on the other hand.....

I am certainly not one to defend MS or any other company but I think that it must be realised that third party providers for instance VM/Parallels may have their own issues if not following MS recommendations - I have seen this before with updates and other third party Windows applications that did not follow the MS rules.

Maybe worth checking if others are having issues like yours and if it is proved to be MS issue or other
Quote:
Parallels Build 5582. I can get Build 5160 to do Windows Update, but not Build 5582

I also doubt that either Microsoft or Apple will be too interested in trying to solve problems with a competitors system

plugsnpixels · #7 06-04-2011, 01:02 PM

Since the MS website offered, I'll try downloading IE9 manually, why not. I choose to run the file. Another dialog pops up (security warning): "Do you want to run this file?" Did I not already answer that?

Oh-oh, "Internet Explorer needs an update before installing. Go online and install the required update..." Oh my.

"Known Issues
You may receive an error message when you try to install Windows Internet Explorer 9. Installation problems can have different causes. For more information about how to solve these problems, visit the following Microsoft website:
2409098 How to solve Internet Explorer 9 installation problems"

So maybe it's not me? Or do I first need MSCE certification? It's possible IE needs other updates first, but I can't install those either.

plugsnpixels · #8 06-04-2011, 01:09 PM

Hi Tony! Thanks for your reply. I actually work in higher ed IT and have seen both sides of the OS equation, but am thankful to be supporting Macs and not PCs. We have some international student assistants who are quite adept at that (they help keep our Windows Server 2003 print revenue systems working, when a reboot doesn't help – I can do that myself ;-) ).

On this machine at home I am using Parallels 5; in the office I have v6 which is just fine. v5 is usually fine too, so I don't suspect these problems are related to it specifically. My office iMac and MacBook Pro run and update Windows 7 (and Ubuntu Linux) with no issues. I don't know what's going on here, but it really shouldn't be this hard...

The nice thing about Parallels is I can easily copy the updated v5 VM from another computer and replace this troublesome copy.

Tony W · #9 06-04-2011, 01:29 PM

Hi PnP, seems we have shared a similar background I have worked in a medical imaging environment with literally hundreds of user over WAN requiring 24/7 365 days access to millions of images - all on a Windows platform. The reason I mention this is to show that I can attest to some of the foibles of both MS and third party vendors. For instance I have seen a couple of ocassions when after an enterprise wide automatic update all users machines refused to function i.e. until a rollback was performed to previous state! This lead the company I worked for to issue instructions that updates should only be applied after they confirmed no issues. I can only assume that the main application was ammended to cope with the updates.

I agree that it 'shouldn't be this hard' but it just seems strange that you have several other systems that do not have the issues!
Wish I could be of help but frankly I do not even know where to begin with this due to lack of experience with your platform

plugsnpixels · #10 06-04-2011, 01:40 PM

That's heavy support, Tony! I've got 4 labs in a local area with a total of 89 27 "iMacs (when I started in '98 there were beige Mac 8500s!). Plus other older iMacs throughout the same building.

I haven't had any major issues that I can recall over the years, and I run OS and app updates over the network pretty quickly. I will however hold off on OSX Lion because 1) it will be brand new this summer and 2) we don't have wireless mice or trackpads, thus rendering the whole "iOS" experience on the desktop moot. Of course *I* will run it on at least one of my own computers to get familiar with it.

And no worries, I am not really seeking technical help with this Windows problem. I just thought it made a good story ;-). And I don't have a blog set up, so I thought I'd share it with my friends here.

plugsnpixels · #11 06-04-2011, 03:57 PM

The plot thickens. I fired up my MacBook Pro, launched W7, checked for updates (it was all up to date), shut W7 down, copied the VM file to an external drive and replaced the one on my desktop with it. Same update issues! Weird... There are no other copies of the VM around. This is a stumper.

Whatever, I don't need to fire up Windows too often anyway. And it's good on my other Macs.

Hope you enjoyed my tale! ;-)

Tareq · #12 06-05-2011, 12:44 AM

Why not use bootcamp and install Windows on another partition of the same Mac harddisk? There is also VMware software to use Windows on Mac, give it a try if you can find/afford it.

Good luck!

plugsnpixels · #13 06-05-2011, 12:58 AM

Hi Tareq, when we used Windows in my labs for one particular app I had Boot Camp set up (you'd be surprised how complicated pressing "Option" while rebooting was for some people!). For myself, I don't like the reboot inconvenience since I often do screenshots and examples in Windows and immediately get them back on the Mac for editing in PS and posting on the web. But maybe I can try that again for my own computer.

I'm happy with Parallels and it edges out VMWare in reviews. V6 is very fast, an improvement over v5 which isn't bad either. I keep downloading the free VirtualBox but haven't tried it yet.

Fun fact: Our university hands out MacBooks that run only Windows for faculty and staff who want them-! Got a good deal on older white models, I guess.

Tareq · #14 06-05-2011, 03:00 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by plugsnpixels

Hi Tareq, when we used Windows in my labs for one particular app I had Boot Camp set up (you'd be surprised how complicated pressing "Option" while rebooting was for some people!). For myself, I don't like the reboot inconvenience since I often do screenshots and examples in Windows and immediately get them back on the Mac for editing in PS and posting on the web. But maybe I can try that again for my own computer.

I'm happy with Parallels and it edges out VMWare in reviews. V6 is very fast, an improvement over v5 which isn't bad either. I keep downloading the free VirtualBox but haven't tried it yet.

Fun fact: Our university hands out MacBooks that run only Windows for faculty and staff who want them-! Got a good deal on older white models, I guess.

I see, well, i will see if i should go with Parallel then.
Thanks!

plugsnpixels · #15 06-05-2011, 03:11 PM

My own Parallels screenshots here. It's fun and easy running several VMs (usually-! ;-) ).

Kraellin · #16 06-05-2011, 11:01 PM

plugs,

i'd be very suspicious at this point of a hardware failure, most likely a drive going bad or at least sectors gone bad. i'd be backing everything on that drive up right now! i dont know what kind of error messages you were getting on the updates, but i do know that when a drive starts going bad you can get all sorts of very weird things going on, including writing to the drive with verification that you have written to the drive and there will be nothing written to the drive in actuality.

if you have any diagnostic tools for checking your drive(s), i'd utilize them now. such a program may or may not reveal anything, but if you've got a large number of bad sectors, your drive is running slowly or it shows it being nearly full when you know it's not, or nearly empty when you know it's not, those would be some things to look for. however, it could be something completely not seen by a diagnostic also. the most common problem with harddrives is the motors. these are generally warranted for 10,000 hours. thus, if you're a heavy user and have had your drive for 2 to 3 years already, it could be going bad.

one fairly good way to tell if the drive is going bad is that more and more errors and weird things will start happening to your system. it can start very small and just keep getting worse and worse. if you start to see that sort of thing then you've either got a drive going bad, a motherboard going bad (much less common) or a possible virus.

and that last one is starting to show up on macs more and more now. it's still not very prevalent, but i'd start looking for a bit of protection on a mac system these days.

if you're copying one vm module over from another system and it's working fine on that other system but shows problems on the new one, you've either got a conflict going somewhere (software usually), you're short of space and the module is dropping things out on you, or you've got a hardware failure starting somewhere and that's usually a harddrive. it could also be a resource management issue, like not enough ram to properly run parallels in its current configuration, but i suspect not from what you've described.

anyways, hope you figure it out

plugsnpixels · #17 06-05-2011, 11:56 PM

Thanks Craig, interesting points! My VM is merely a single 19.29 gig file in a folder on my iMac's internal HD; this drive is Verified as of this moment by SMARTReporter. I'm having some other weirdness with Parallels in that I can't seem to get Shared Folders between OS's working.

Since I deleted and rewrote the entire VM from another source, it probably didn't end up in the same place on the HD so I don't suspect bad sectors. And the computer is only from late 2009, and wasn't used immediately.

Windows is not critical on this Mac but merely a convenience, and except for the update issue it is working fine (I can still install and run other Windows apps, etc.). It's just really weird that copying the VM didn't work; it usually does.

I'll have to see if I can upgrade Parallels or perhaps try another alternative.

plugsnpixels · #18 06-12-2011, 06:31 PM

Update: Today I decided to try the free VirtualBox and all went well! I started with XP SP2, didn't run updates and went immediately to the Windows 7 (32-bit) update DVD. Installs went very quickly.

I had minor issues with wireless networking and screen resolution but Google brought me joy. Updates all installed, no errors (but I did get fooled yet again by the IE9 dialog-behind-the-dialog trick where you have to move the main updates window out of the way to see where you need to click Install – that is so stupid!).

I wasn't able to install the Windows 7 64-bit upgrade DVD over the 32-bit one, though I must have done that successfully in Parallels, whether from within XP or W7 32-bit I don't recall. The Setup exe wouldn't run in a 32-bit environment. Ideas? I didn't try booting directly from the update DVD; how do you do that?