I'm about to quit and get a $250 PC at WalMart

R

r0bw

Junior Member
I've been using Parallels for a long while now. I have the latest version, I have tools installed. And it sucks. And it has always sucked. The novelty of running windows on my Mac wore off after about a week, and now the ridiculously slow speeds and constant random problems and upgrade crap have me at wits end. I really don't know how anyone can actually use this software on a day-to-day basis in a work environment. When I need Excel, I need Excel. When I need QuickBooks, I need QuickBooks. I don't have 30 minutes to kill every time I want to load up a windows app, but ever time I try to, I inevitably spend this much time closing out the random Mac programs that are frozen because of Parallels, configuring Parallels to connect to my wireless network (again), dealing with crazy windows messages (today I made the mistake of taking Windows' advice of producing more disc space and compressing some files - BAD IDEA). It never gets any better.

PCs cost like $250. My latest paralells update cost me what, $50? And how many hours? Screw this. I keep thinking I must be doing something wrong because I think most of the people here are high end users that wouldn't put up with this crap, but I'm not so sure anymore. I think you're all dealing with it too, but I don't know how you can stand it.

Am I taking crazy pills?
 
r0bw said:
I've been using Parallels for a long while now. I have the latest version, I have tools installed. And it sucks. And it has always sucked. The novelty of running windows on my Mac wore off after about a week, and now the ridiculously slow speeds and constant random problems and upgrade crap have me at wits end. I really don't know how anyone can actually use this software on a day-to-day basis in a work environment. When I need Excel, I need Excel. When I need QuickBooks, I need QuickBooks. I don't have 30 minutes to kill every time I want to load up a windows app, but ever time I try to, I inevitably spend this much time closing out the random Mac programs that are frozen because of Parallels, configuring Parallels to connect to my wireless network (again), dealing with crazy windows messages (today I made the mistake of taking Windows' advice of producing more disc space and compressing some files - BAD IDEA). It never gets any better.
Click to expand...

You probably have too much RAM allocated to the virtual machine, for one thing (or not enough in your Mac, I would recommend having at least 2 GB). The only way for Parallels to slow down Mac applications that much is if you give the virtual machine too much RAM, or something in the virtual machine is causing excessive disk usage. Excessive CPU usage won't usually cause much Mac OS X slowdown because of OS X's multitasking ability and the fact that most Intel Macs are dual core. Also since you are having networking problems, have you tried changing the networking type from "Shared networking" to "Bridged Ethernet"?

r0bw said:
PCs cost like $250. My latest paralells update cost me what, $50? And how many hours? Screw this. I keep thinking I must be doing something wrong because I think most of the people here are high end users that wouldn't put up with this crap, but I'm not so sure anymore. I think you're all dealing with it too, but I don't know how you can stand it.
Click to expand...

You could use Boot Camp if you have too many problems with virtualization programs (after all, you have a $1000+ PC already, why get a $250 one?). Most Parallels users don't have the problems you are describing (my networking through Parallels has always worked just fine, and Parallels doesn't slow down my OS X applications at all).
 
Last edited:
thanks for your detailed response. i'll look into the ram situation.

are your programs within parallels ridiculously slow? and does everything get jacked up if the computer goes to sleep when parallels is running? this happens to me allll the time.

i do have a +$1,000 laptop (intel macbook pro) and it works super f-ing fast all the time...except when dealing with parallels. i need to run excel and quickbooks in windoes to run my business so $250 to be able to do that when i need to with no issues would be worth it. that is about 2x what i've spent on parallels already, and way less than the MS office suite + QuickBooks professional.

from what i have seen parallels is great on paper but sucks for people who are using it on a laptop on the go and need it to be there and be stable.

what do you use it for? how do you have it set up? you seem to be very knowledgeable, which makes me think i have it set up wrong...but from what i can tell it is set up correctly.
 
and i tried boot camp - i can't shut my entire computer down and reboot just to run some stuff into quickbooks. that's at least 20 minutes for each switch.
 
if i just had a crappy PC on my work desk running windows with QB and Excel...maybe even sharing a hard drive with my Mac...then i would be good to go.

i've never used an external hard drive - any idea if this config would work?
 
r0bw said:
thanks for your detailed response. i'll look into the ram situation.

are your programs within parallels ridiculously slow? and does everything get jacked up if the computer goes to sleep when parallels is running? this happens to me allll the time.
Click to expand...

When I run Parallels I don't have any speed issues on the OS X side or the Windows side. Everything runs fast. I don't usually put my computer to sleep while Parallels is running, but the few times that I have I didn't have any problems. Suspending your virtual machine before putting your computer to sleep may help (yes it's an extra step, but it's better than having everything get messed up).

r0bw said:
if i just had a crappy PC on my work desk running windows with QB and Excel...maybe even sharing a hard drive with my Mac...then i would be good to go.

i've never used an external hard drive - any idea if this config would work?
Click to expand...

It could work - or it could just cause you more trouble. Your MacBook Pro is a much, much better computer than any $250 PC. Parallels Desktop should definitely be able to handle those programs though without negative impact on your system performance.

If you'd like to know if RAM is the problem, go to the Apple menu, select "About This Mac" and you will be shown a dialog with information about how much RAM you have. Then while your virtual machine is open in Parallels but not running, go to the "Edit" menu and select "Virtual Machine...". On the left list you can select "Memory" and you will see details about how much memory is assigned to your virtual machine. Post that information here if you're not sure that the memory setting is in fact the problem, and I'll help you determine the exact cause of the poor performance.
 
Thanks again for your detailed responses and from talking me back from the ledge! I would love it if Parallels could handle it, but from what I have seen it can't. My computer has 1 GB of RAM and there is 256 MB assigned to my virtual machine.
 
r0bw said:
Thanks again for your detailed responses and from talking me back from the ledge! I would love it if Parallels could handle it, but from what I have seen it can't. My computer has 1 GB of RAM and there is 256 MB assigned to my virtual machine.
Click to expand...

No problem, and it seems it is likely as I suspected. 1 GB is usually enough for just OS X and up to a few programs, but with Parallels it likely isn't enough. To confirm this, open the programs you use while Parallels is open, then open Activity Monitor (located in Applications > Utilities) and go to the "System Memory" tab. Take down the number of page outs. Open Parallels and start the programs you usually use in Windows. Now go back to Activity Monitor and see what the number of page outs is. If there is a large difference then you need more RAM, and once you get more RAM then Parallels shouldn't slow everything else down.
 
For the record, I don't deal with issues like what you are describing. Haven't had a single issue on my laptop, my server doesn't crash, ever, now, and the workstations run like a charm, etc. etc. Life is good... Until the next issue that appears out of 'nowhere', but anyway.

I second brkirch's idea that the 1 GB of RAM is an issue. Go with 2 GB... It's a LOT better performance. Frankly, 1 GB sucks, and furthermore if you do more than next to nothing on the Mac side it sucks for that too. ;) Not that we all just have money oozing forth from us, but it's less than buying a new PC, not to mention the hassle of getting it set-up, the slow painful experience it would be, and all the other fun things involved.
 
I have a MacBook Pro as well, and I've been running Parallels for quite some time now. I've had a handful of minor issues, the most recent being the bridged network adapter not renewing its IP address when I resume a suspended Win XP OS. Aside from that minor issue I've been running OS X with 2GB of RAM and given Win XP 512 and things run fine. I use Office 2007 and my MMCs and on occasion need to even load up Outlook 2007 in cached mode and that's been decent even with the large mailbox I have. I read so many posts about the random issues people have with Parellels and always think they just did something wrong...

I'll echo people's recommendations on Crucial memory. You can't go wrong with them or Kingston in my opinion. We usually low-ball all the memory in our systems we purchase and then add-on memory from another vendor afterwards.

To the person who said Fusion...love it for our Windows Enterprise, but not all that impressed for Mac. Someday maybe...

If there are a handful of other Windows machines that sit idle at work turn on remote desktop and remote into one with the remote client from the Mac BU for your Windows needs.

http://www.microsoft.com/mac/downlo...download/MISC/RDC2.0_Public_Beta_download.xml

Good luck.
 
Slow response from VM and Mac SOLVED. (This is for future troubleshooters.)

Hello! New to the forum, because, well... Parallels was indeed slowing my whole system way down, worse since the "update". Last night, I tried reducing the VM's memory, but that didn't fix the problem. I also killed a bunch of other apps running and got it tolerable for the task at hand. My system memory monitor/cpu monitor was not showing any stress at all. I peered through all Parallels' preferences and these all looked fine.

After finding this thread today, I dug back through Parallels' preferences. The memory limit was set to Automatic and the grayed slider was maxed at 7156 Mb (of my 8Mb total RAM), with "Enable virtual memory preallocation" checked. I switched to Manual, dropped it back to a reasonable 3000ish, and the problem has vanished. I've now got my VM up to 2048Mb, and Parallels to 4112Mb (in case I want to run 2), and still no problems. And now I know where to adjust things when I'm using more for my OS + apps.

My conclusions: Parallels' memory preference "automatic" is not functioning as expected. Switch over to Manual, take how much memory you have installed, subtract how much you want/need for the Mac + apps (new to Mac/Parallels, but for comparison, Vmware under Windows/Linux wanted 1-2Gb for the host OS), and use the remainder for Parallels' memory preference. Then use less than that amount for the total memory being allocated in all running VMs (in their configurations). The documentation hints at this.

My suggestions to the Parallels dev team:

1 - In the Preferences|Memory dialog, add some little text, like under the Animation preference, that explains "Amount of physical memory (RAM) reserved for all the simultaneously running virtual machines" (suspiciously like the documentation, but useful for us idiots who don't read that). Does this slider also include memory being used for the Parallels app itself (though I suppose for me that's pretty irrelevant)?

2 - Parallels seemed to be tying up the memory, even though the only running VM was configured using much less. Thus "memory limit" vs. "memory usage" needs to be revisited, either a bug in the program or a miscommunication in the documentation/text.

3 - When the VM is turned on, run a check to see if memory is going to start disk swapping and issue a warning with a suggested correction (more RAM for the OS, less for the Parallels configuration, less for the VM, and/or turning off other running apps).

4 - Unrelated, but please-please-please can I use all 8 of my cores? Or maybe 7 of them? It's a lovely new Mac Pro and does amazing video/3D rendering natively, but my UltraFractal is running slower than it did on my old Windows machine.
 
Cattail_Nu,
They are working on multi-core support with Parallels Server.

BTW, you are a bit off-topic. Consider starting a new thread. We were discussing someones issue of things running dog slow because of too little memory. What you just detailed is an issue that many others have had, you had a nice documentary of it too, hate to see it lost at the bottom of a thread that is not directly related.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top