I think I have narrowed down the problem specific to how I have shared folders used. The way I use shared folders is to map the root of the system ("/") and only have the one shared folder mapped in the XP session. When I do that then I have terrible performance, if I remove the root shared folder from the configuration and instead have one like say "/Users/username", then map the folder in XP, then things are okay. Seems that version 4 of parallels and shared folders is broken with respect to using the root of the system as a share point.
I've also done other testing.
I setup my mac to have file sharing turned on, then I set a soft link in my public folder to /Volumes
Through the mac/finder I mounted a few network drives from some XP/NT boxes on the network.
Those mounts show up under /Volumes
I then tried three different ways to access the same files
1) mapped a network drive under XP and browsed a few directories with large number of files and sub dirs
2) mapped a network drive under XP that pointed to my own shared folder on my mac, in that folder I have a softlink that points to /Volumes.
3) mapped a parallels shared folder(my shared folder, same folder as in option 2 above)
speed of option 1 and 2 was pretty speedy/snappy
option 3 was noticeably slower, maybe 2 to 3 times slower
It seems the network stack in the parallels shared folders needs some work. I do not have these speed problems with virtualbox or Vmware Fusion, and version 3 of Parallels was much better also.
Last edited: Nov 13, 2008