Virtual machine starts or resumes for several minutes or more

Symptoms

• My virtual machine (VM) takes 3-10 minutes to start or resume.
• VM is not starting or resuming, stuck with a spinning wheel and does nothing. Waiting for it to start could take hours.

Cause

Avira Free Antivirus scanner is working on the Mac side, locking the .pvm file and the associated processes.

Resolution

To avoid this situation add the virtual machines folder to the Avira exceptions list. If your virtual machine(s) are stored in the default locations, please do the following:

1. Execute the following commands (two) in Terminal.app:

   sudo su
   

   NOTE: you will be prompted to enter Mac administrator password after executing the command above. Enter the password and press 'Return' button.

   echo "ExcludePattern ^/Users/[^.]*/Parallels/" >> /Applications/Avira.app/Contents/config/avguard.conf
   

2. Restart your Mac.

Now your virtual machines folder is added to the list of exceptions for Avira.

NOTE: If your virtual machine is stored in different location, add the file path to the exceptions list manually using the instructions below. The file paths could be obtained by right-clicking on the virtual machine name in Control Center > Show in Finder.

Manual instructions are available here: adding exceptions to Avira Antivirus

Additional information

To completely uninstall Avira use the application at /Applications/Utilities/Avira-Uninstall.app (a restart would be required afterwards).

The procedure is described in Avira KB article.