Performance problems in Windows 10 after upgrade to v14

DellW said:
Hi y'all

I've upgraded to Parallels 14 and ensured that Parallels Tools has updated in my Windows 10 guest VM. Ever since the upgrade, I'm experiencing severe performance problems in my windows 10 VM such that it is essentially unusable. The CPU usage is spiking to 100%, but by the time I'm able to bring up the Task Manager, it goes back to normal. However, almost nothing in IE is useable. Is there anything I can do to diagnose this problem?

Thanks
Dell
Madison, AL
Click to expand...
 
I've been experiencing the same slow down/performance issues with my Windows 10 after upgrading to Parallels 14 - (multiple apps affected!!). Several times over the past 2 weeks, I have had to either reboot or abandon the use of the Parallels VM altogether. VM freezes, spinning ball. Definitely a step down from Parallels 13 in terms of functionality. This is frustrating I too am considering whether or not Parallels is worth the cost $$$ (esp. now with the annual renewal). I understand that there are always certain bugs to be worked out in a beta/pre-release. But I feel that I already want a $$$ refund - wish I had not enthusiastically embraced the 14 upgrades. Hope this is remedied soon!!

Loyal Parallels User. (Thankful for the good that Parallels Team has done!)
MBP Late 2012
Windows 10 Pro
macOS High Sierra 10.13.6
 
OliverS9 said:
Hello all,

same here, but even scarier... it slows down and after a couple of minutes crashes my whole Mac and I get a black screen of death. Now that I downgraded to v13 everything is fine again.

Best regards,
Oliver
Click to expand...

I've found that the system seems to work fine after initial boot. However after an interval, it seems to stop responding to things. Gets slower and slower to actually do anything. Just clicked on a drive to get a directory listing, and a minute has passed without displaying this. Usually end up having to restart the virtual machine, but sometimes this won't work and it just stops. No pattern to when it happens except perhaps longer use. Does seem to be a real pain. :(
 
I've just used the Parallels toolbox option to disable sleep on the computer, and it has worked perfectly for the whole day. Now I have sleep in the Mac settings, set to only switch off the screen, and nothing else, yet if I don't use the computer for a while the problems start to appear....
 
I reported in another thread but never saw a response, I am on a MacBook Pro 2018, Parallels 14, and I have times where there is non response from mouse/keyboard, and the symptom is System is using the disk pegged at 100%. It goes away in about 5-10 seconds depending on the instance.
 
I haven't even read this thread yet but I am running into the same problem. Performance is horrible and I have a maxed out 32 gig 6 core 2018 machine. the vm is basically unusable and continues to crash. I've uninstalled the tools and reinstalled and still a problem. I even ran their interrupt tool and it didn't show anything out of the ordinary. This is a reoccurring theme the last couple of years, I really wish they would focus on keeping things performant.
 
I downgraded to Parallels 13 too, and so far so good for me. I hope they can fix this, I don't want to be on ver. 13 forever. But the performance lags were extremely annoying.
 
The downgrade fixed a symptom. With 14 the chrome gpu process with a single web page open was taking 300-600 megs of memory. With 13, opening the same web page, chrome's gpu process only take 16 megs which is back to normal. The machine is better but still overall sluggish. Basically performance is pathetic and in reality it has been like this for 2 years. They say their drivers can run the vm at 5k resolutions but it can't. Only when the vm is booted on the laptop screen with a lower resolution does the vm remotely usable. Kind of sad, because light weight performance hypervisors have been solved for quite a while
 
Yes, it behaves as if 'something' is happening, but no clue really as to 'what'. Just sits with things responding really slowly. I've had task manager apparently hang, and refuse to close, and when in this state, the system won't even shutdown. It accepts the shutdown command, and then just sits. A real pain, since V14, fixes an issue I had with a particular software package, which makes me want to keep it.
I had interesting behaviour yesterday. I used Parallels toolbox, to set the system to 'Do not sleep'. With this selected, I went all day without an issue. Now my system was set to only sleep the video, and Windows itself set to not sleep, yet turning this off seems to have affected the problem, though I was seeing issues, when the system should not have gone to sleep at all. Possibly helps to show what is actually going wrong....
 
I played around with the VM config a bit, and it's weird but I don't have any problems (on 14) when using 4GB of memory for the VM (physically I have 16GB total in my MBP). Problems come back when increasing e.g. to 8GB. Really strange ...
 
I believe/hope that I've finally solved it, at least for my Windows 10 VM. After months of ever growing frustration, various reinstalls of W10, downgrades to Parallels 13 and a tremendous loss of productivity I today unchecked the 'expanding disk' setting (see configuration --> hardware --> hard disk --> advanced settings --> properties). And since having done so Parallels 14 runs smoothly again, no lags, I can hardly believe it. Other optimisations/settings that I (still) have implemented, but that individually did not solve the lags were: disabling superfetch and windows search, mirror displays (OSX setting as I use an external display). Unchecking the 'expanding disk setting' will cost some disk space (about 35GB in my case), but that's just a minor inconvenience when compared to having a non-functioning lagging system. Hope this works for others as well.
 
Last edited:
These "fixes" (standby delay, expanding disk) are not fixes, but workarounds - their greatest value is hopefully pointing @parallels to the true problem(s) with lag and disk so this can be fixed for everyone for once and for all.
 
bab5139 said:
my mac was already set to mode 0 and i still experience the performance issues.
Click to expand...
It is not Mode 0. It is setting the standbydelay to 0. This actually prevents the machine entering hibernation. Mode 0, just means 'normal hibernate', which hibernates into RAM. It does still hibernate though...

As the later poster says, this is just a 'bodge round', but it does seem to work!...
 
RogerH6 said:
It is not Mode 0. It is setting the standbydelay to 0. This actually prevents the machine entering hibernation. Mode 0, just means 'normal hibernate', which hibernates into RAM. It does still hibernate though...

As the later poster says, this is just a 'bodge round', but it does seem to work!...
Click to expand...

Yea i see. Though it doesn't make any sense why that value would have any affect and I'm not changing that value just for parallels.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top