Sheharyar Naseer

Ubuntu 13.10 in Parallels - CRTC 80 Error


Last night I spent hours configuring Ubuntu and Installing Dependencies, programs and God-knows-what for a new Hobby Project of mine, Pupil.

It was a clean installation of Ubuntu 13.10 in Parallels 9 on my new Macbook. I had invested too much time installing pupil, only to find that the display drivers or GTK or something had been corrupted. This was the second time I was booting ubuntu and had been slapped in the face by this:

Could not switch the Monitor Configuration
could not set the configuration for CRTC 80

I restarted it, but received the same error. The login screen was perfect, mind you; The error presented it self only after logging in. There was nothing else; No Icons, no Menu bar, no Unity. I googled for hours and tried everything I could; Using xrandr, Editing xorg.conf, Running Parallels Troubleshooter and so much more. In the end, I was somewhat able to restore my installation by reinstalling my Parallels Desktop Tools.

These are the exact steps I followed after logging in:

  1. Press Control + Alt + F1
  2. In the full-screen terminal, login with your credentials
  3. In the Parallels Desktop Menu, select Devices > CD/DVD 1 > Connect Image
  4. In the new Finder dialog, browse to Applications > Parallels Desktop > Contents > Resources > Tools > pri-tools-lin.iso
  5. Now back in your terminal screen, type the following commands:
sudo mkdir /media/cdrom
sudo mount /dev/sr0 /media/cdrom
cd /media/cdrom
sudo ./install

Parallels Tools’ installation will begin. Go through the steps and complete the installation. After that, reboot using: $ sudo reboot

If everything went fine, you would at least be able to see your desktop. In my case, there was no Unity Sidebar or the top Menu Bar; But it’s still something. Maybe installing Gnome would help.

Lesson: Make regular Snapshots of your OSes in Parallels