Hello, I'm having a very strange situation on my Windows XP VM after using it for a while. Suddenly every program I start uses 100 % CPU and is very slow. When the CPU goes down to normal. It just goes way back up 1o 100 % every time I switch between running programs on my desktop. All this starts like half an hour into starting up XP. I see no other Process taking up CPU then SYSTEM and System Idle. Any idea what's going wrong ? Thanks, Frank
For now, I may suggest only general troubleshooting. i.e. if you see some processes consuming 100% of CPU usage due to no apparent reason - check the Windiws with an antivirus. Also, it is not clear which version of Parallels this is but I would assume it is 4.0. If you the issue occurs when you switch from Mac to Windows and vice versa, try to minimise the interaction between them by disabling shared folders and applications and reducing the memory usage. And if the slow down is only on the Windows side and no specific process is taking up CPU except the system one, then, apart from the viruses, it still might be some kind of application affecting it. In both cases, it might be a good idea to try changing the settings for CPU's in Parallels configuration. I would say to try setting it to 1 but there are some people for whom 2 worked better.
Thanks for the GREAT and FAST response ! I'm using the trial version of 4.0. an currently only Windows XP VM. But I'm also looking to add some Linux flavor OS. I forgot to mention that I just upgraded my MacBook's memory to 4 gigs. So I slapped some 2600 an something Meg to my memory setup when running Parallels. I changed it to 1024 and now it seems to work fine ! Is 1024 about the limit ? Should I try in blocks of 512 increments ? Because if 1024 is the limit, that is doable, but a bit low to run 3D packages I want to develop plugins for. I still have 6 days on my trial ... please let me know as soon as possible to make a decision. I would like to use Parallels instead of Boot Camp because I'm interested in cross platform development. As a side question ... is it possible to run a revision control server on the mac and have all virtual machines be able to connect to the Mac server to check out source code? Thanks for all the great feedback, Frank