Just checking before I /bug it

Anyone seeing this?

Parallels 5 will kernel panic my machine whenever CoH is running. Launching PD5 is OK, but the moment I start XP it will take a dump. I tried turning off the 3D acceleration but that didn't change it.

Before I started trying to fiddle with different VMs and settings I was wondering if anyone else had run across this yet.

There are two possibilities here: Either both Paralles and Cider tamper with the default processor settings (I know for sure that Parallels does) and the settings disagree sufficiently to cause a panic, or Parallels is doing something it shouldn't - most likely as a hack or workaround - and Cider is particularly sensitive to it.

I'm going to test this myself, but in case I don't get it to panic, post the top half of your panic.log (you should be able to access it from the Console).

EDIT: I ran Parallels 5 at the same time as CoH and there was no panic. I added Safari and Mail, still no panic. So it's up to your panic.log. I don't have "Application Sharing" turned on in Parallels, though, and I have it set to use both processors.

don't use OSX, but I can tell you that I can run Cedega and Virtual Box atop both AMD and Intel platforms using the VT-x and AMD-V hook-ins and OpenGL / DX pass through with Virtual Box and experience no problems booting NT5 or NT6 .VDI images.

As a side note, I only have done this against systems running with the 2.6.27 kernel, rather than a more modern underlying base operating system.

I believe VMWare has a feature where it can import VM's from Parallels. If you can (and have the disk space) make a copy of the panicky XP VM and import it into VMWare. That way we'll be able to see if the bug is in Parallels.

I copied both apps and the VM to my iMac and it didn't crash so I started digging into it further to find what the configuration differences were between the iMac and the Mac Pro (2008).

After pruning out my extensions folder and reapplying a combo update I still couldn't boot both without panicing, so I started toying with some configuration changes.

I had pulled the RAM and also changed the boot drive from my RAID (to my backup) to test whether it was flakey hardware but nothing had improved.

Turns out that I can reliably boot both now only when I set my boot kernel to 32-bit mode. If I use 64 bit mode booting I can replicate my kernel panic on the Mac Pro. I couldn't verify this with my iMac, as it is the 2007 model which doesn't support 64 bit EFI booting.

So I guess it is a 3-way interaction between Parallels 5, City of Heroes, and Apple. I suppose I can chuck in transgaming as another third party.

Note that in 64-bit kernel mode I can run both CoH and PD5 XP fine separately but not together at the same time.

Some people may not see a big difference in speed but in certain apps there is indeed a measurable difference.

If anyone has the ability to verify my findings, I'll submit the bug reports to Parallels and to Ghost Falcon and Apple.

You're going to have to bug that with the Parallels folks, since CoH runs in 32-bit mode all the time (it doesn't support 64-bit natively yet) it's unlikely to be causing the crashes.

If I had to guess, I'd say the Parallels network drivers are set up improperly for 64-bit mode, which normally doesn't cause a problem - but Cider checks all the active network interfaces, so that might trigger a crash.