I installed Window 98 second edition the other day, it works fine but it uses more than 100% cpu on my 2,16GHz MacBook with Leopard. I googled the problem and it seems that this was a bug in earlier versions but it's supposedly fixed now, but I'm using build 5584. Anybody else have this problem? Is there a workaround? Should I report a bug, and how do I do that?
You are right. I´m having exactly the same problem with Windows 98 SE. It was fixed earlier, but somehow the fix has been broken. As I´m using a desktop, I´m not complaining too much about it, but when I run several applications at the same time as the VM then there is certainly a performance penalty to Leopard in general. Please fix this! It´s a bug.
Hello, thank you for your reports. This is true, we are aware of this bug and we are trying to fix it. Sorry for all the inconveniences caused.
A few more builds has been released with the high CPU usage glitch still present. I can think of two good reasons to fix it again. 1.I might even consider purchasing a license for the laptop I´m using occasionally. Primary reason is faster CPU and more RAM on that machine. 2.A fix for this issue would probably be rather permanent, since the developers of Windows 98 SE are less than likely to release a software update that again would break the patch and force the developers of Parallels Desktop(you) to release another fix.
I suppose that you are using very high resolution, if you lower resolution , CPU usage should be in normal
I´m not using any higher resolution than 800x600. Actually it seemed as if I was using 640x480 when I checked. How I wish I didn´t need Windows at all. There is just one application I need to run and wine in Ubuntu isn´t yet capable of running it...
What leopard update is installed? if 10.5.3 please try to use 5608 build What application are you using, what is showing CPU usage in Windows
With the specification stated in my signature(the most recent build of Parallels), windows 98 SE not running any applications at all, the activity monitor of Mac OS 10.5.3 shows Parallels Desktop uses 100 % CPU. I will try a virus scan to see if the VM is infected.
Do you have Parallels Tools installed? Windows 9x and MS-DOS even when not doing nothing don't let the CPU idle (they don't know how to do nothing, the CPU is in fact processing the wait for input, and they don't know how to send the HLT or similar command to the processor for it to idle), normally VM programs that have their drivers installed in a Windows 9x VM have the ability to idle the CPU when the virtual machine isn't doing anything and the VM program isn't on focus, I suspect Parallels has similar functionality and that's why I ask if you have Parallels Tools installed, I never installed Windows 98 on Parallels so I don't know how it handles idleness.
Yes. Parallels Tools is installed. I´m aware of the fact that the fault of 100% CPU usage really is because of how Windows 98 was written. However, earlier the development team of Parallels successfully created a software patch that made it possible for Windows 98 to leave the CPU idle when possible. The patch reduced the load remarkably well, but later the patch was broken and ever since then... I´ll post again as soon as I have done a virus scan to see if my VM is doing some bad stuff when idle. Perhaps some other Windows 98 SE users can confirm this problem to prove that the problem is with my VM.