Where is Parallels most stable?

[coxcu]

Hi,

I just installed Parallels on Windows 2000. I've only been using it for two days and have had two big stability problems. I'll detail my problems below, but my main question is where does Parallels run best? If it is Windows, then is it Windows 2000 or Windows XP? If it is Linux, then what distribution?

Problem 1:
After being up for several hours, Parallels will start short regular spikes of 100% CPU usage every few seconds that make the entire system slow. This is despite no interation with Parallels and no action taking place in it.

Problem 2:
I made the mistake of inserting a USB thumb drive while Parallels was running. Parallels crashed locking my machine at 100% CPU. I couldn't kill Parallels from the task manager--it kept giving me some message about needing to close the debugger first. I wasn't debugging anything. The only way to kill the process was via the reset switch. System shutdown wouldn't complete.

Parallels is quite usably fast and the user interface is well done. What host is it most stable under?

Thanks,
Curt

[MarkHolbrook]

Curt,

I have not had those issues at all. Here is my setup which is EXTREMELY stable:

Latest Parallels
VM is Windows XP Pro SP2
640MB RAM
20GB Autoexpand disk

I have sound turned off in the VM although it has worked fine for me. I don't use any USB yet in the VM because I've heard it is not quite ready yet.

I do use regular networking rather than shared folders. I simply map to the share I want and it works perfectly.

Inside XP I do not have firewall turned on nor do I have any virus SW running. I have the XP screen saver turned off and I NEVER goto full screen with XP. I keep it in a window. I figure if you really need full screen then use bootcamp. The whole reason in my opinion for Parallels is to run XP in a window so you can still use OS X. I use XP for one primary purpose:

I run the Borland Delphi 7 compiler and Borland starteam so I can check in/out our source and compile it. I also run our programs under XP but not often within parallels.

Just having XP running and doing nothing will cause my CPUs to be around 5% and my CPU temp up around 60C. Compiling or copying files takes one of the cores upto 100% and the fans kick on. But my OS X is still responsive in useable.

With this combination I have left Parallels running for days on my Mac Mini without it crashing.

Mark

[coxcu]

Mark,

You say you haven't seen these issues at all. Have you been running under any OS besides OS X? Right now, I'm unlikely to buy a box capable of running OS X just to run Parallels in. However, I would like to know what vanilla x86 operating system the Parallels team considers best for running it in. My plan is to run several flavors of Linux, Windows, and Solaris under Parallels. I want to know what operating system should ideally be under Parallels.

Thanks,
Curt

[MarkHolbrook]

Curt,

Understand but no... I have no experience outside of OS X. Perhaps some one else can share info.

Mark

[constant]

.
I have an MSI laptop with SuSE 10.0 and XP VM. Also have a customer with an AMD 64 PC running SuSE 10.0 and XP VM. Both run very stable. My customer uses the VM all day, most days, and never reports stability issues. We both use USB printers and I have a USB pen drive that works perfectly. The only problem discovered so far is a Fuji digital camera that works perfectly as a mass storage device in Linux, gets detected as a mass storage device in XP but is not accessible.

I have 896Mb Ram and allocate 468Mb to the VM. My customer has 512Mb Ram with 256Mb allocated to the VM. Neither of us have any significant speed issues in the VM.

With Samba shares setup, a simple icon on the SuSE desktop can establish networking after the VM has started. The XP VM can be setup to automatically connect network drives on startup.

As far as a good solid useable platform in a small business environment, a Parallels VM running in SuSE 10.0 with XP installed is as good as it gets.
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