Parallels v4, shared folders access seems slower

Parallels v4, shared folders access is slower

My testing today seems to indicate that shared folder access is much slower. I do not have a benchmark yet, as I am still trying to characterize the problem. But jmy gut feeling is that the access speed is half what it used to be. These shared folders have hundreds of files in them in some cases. I've gone back to virtualbox for the remainder of the day as I have some work to do first before I get back to testing this more.

 

Did Parallels Tools install okay for you?

 

It looks as if they did. How can I tell if the install is not completely copasetic?

 

Same here. Was fast with PD3 but after upgrade to PD4 it's very slow and my folder only has a handful of files. I noticed the Parallel Tools in my XP VM is no longer showing in the taskbar so I tried to reinstall it via PD4 menu. Seemed to complete fine but still no icon in the taskbar next to clock.

Maybe that's the issue?? Either way it still works but it's extremely slow! When opening an Excel file from OSX in XP VM it says "Connecting to PSF/..." something or the other for a few seconds before it loads the file eventually.

Any ideas??!

 

This is purely for my own curiosity if you guys care to indulge me. Go to configure and see if Adaptive Hypervisor is turned on or off. I believe you'll have to shut down the VM to change the setting on it.

 

I'm not at my machine with PD4 right now but I know I have it turned on - I turned it on immediately after upgrading since wanted to try out the feature. Also if I remember you can toggle that option while the VM is running.

Should I test with Adaptive Hypervisor off?

 

I have tried both, on and off, no change. Right now I am installing a VM from scratch. I will see if there is any change.

 

That's not even an option for me. It takes forever since I have an original XP (not even SP1) CD so it takes hours to install all the Service Packs and software. I really hope there's a workaround without having to reinstall because that would really reallly piss me off.

 

I am reinstalling to eliminate any "other" reason for the slow down. I'm sure you will not have to re-install to fix this. For me, just having a clean instance allows me to remove all doubt about what might be happening. I still have my original machine instance, this is just a test instance/install.

 

Don't ask me how or why but I just woke up my Macbook from sleep since last night, launched the VM and now there's no lag anymore?!?! WTF? I swear I didn't do anything. It just works perfectly now. Prior to today the resume from suspend was slower too now it's very fast and shared folder access as faster than PD3.

I hope it stays like this. I have no explanation as to why it would just start working without any changes made. I wonder if Parallels have some type of self-healing code in there

 

So I built a new Xp vm from scratch. Applied Service pack 3 and then installed the tools. Shared folders is still slow, network access to shared drives is atrocious, almost unusable. After un-installing the Parallels tools and rebooting, network access to shared drives was very speedy.

ON another note, The tools in v4 are not configurable as far as I can tell, it is all or nothing. Please fix that, allow us to install part of the tools, the mouse, video, network, clip board, AND shared folders should be choices like they used to be. From what I see here, you have a major regression somewhere.

Are there debug flags or other logging options one can use to try and isolate these issues?

 

Same here.

Start of Windows XP incredibly slow, access the folders slow, start of apps slow.
WTF!!

I got a slightly better speed turning number of processors from 2 to 1.

 

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.

 

Yet one more

Add me to the list of VERY unhappy users. I am seeing the same result -- whenever I try to access anything requiring use of \\PSF, my XP OS comes to a screeching halt for about 5 - 7 minutes. I've tried most of the fixes and workarounds on this thread, and have also sent a request for help to the support box.

Parallels guys -- is Parallels treating this as a bug? If so, can you give us some level of assurance that it's at least a P1 (at least in my case, my XP OS is essentially useless, which amounts to a total outage)? And more importantly, can you tell us when a fix will be made available?

 

seegeedubya
Please create ticket in support

 

John -- I did create a ticket. Have heard no response. I submitted a new request last night.

As an aside, I tried again to uninstall and then re-install parallels tools last night. I see a noticeable improvement -- the machine is still dog-slow, and is unusable for anything that has to access a shared network resource, but its at least headed in the right direction. It's definitely an issue with tools and your network handlers.

 

Could you please let me know tickets ID?

 

Had this problem

This had really become an issue for me. I re-installed Parallel Tools, and enabled Adaptive Hypervisor. It's as quick as can be now.