I’ve been running Windows Vista Beta 1 under Parallels on my Mac. Works great, and I was planning to buy Vista when it came out. But today, Vista B1 suddenly stopped working. I can boot in non-network Safe Mode, but not in Normal Mode and not in Safe Mode if networking is enabled.

I don’t want to jump to conclusions, but is it merely a coincidence that this happened on the day Vista (retail) was officially released? Could the system be hanging during a phone-home event, and without notice? (The boot screen just freezes at about the point the splash screen would normally appear.) Would Microsoft disable beta copies without notice and with no diagnostic messages on the day the final version shipped (ie, with no grace period)? I find it hard to believe they’d do something like that, but then what else explains this problem?

Update: 24 hours later, Vista now boots and runs under Parallels as before.