Recently bought macbook (2.0 Ghz, 1 G RAM). Installed parallels (build 1970) with XP Pro SP 2. allowed default of 8 G virtual HD. Current memory set at 604 MB. Finder seems to show actual HD file size at 4.7 G. The only things I have loaded on XP are Turbo Tax, Quicken, and Antivirus (Trend Micro). My problems begin when I try to run Entourage at the same time Parallels/XP is running. My laptop has an 80 G HD and it says that about 1/2 is currently available. What do I need to know that I don't? I have done some searches that suggest spending a couple hundred $$$ on 2 G of RAM would probably solve my problem. Any other solutions? :} Thanks in advance. Mac newbie.
I think that 8GB for your Windows HD is pretty small and that may be playing some role here as well but certainly the shift to 2GB of RAM would help.
With only one GB RAM, assigning more than 256 MB to the VM is going to slow OSX down which will reflect poor performance in your VM. If you reduce VM RAM, reduce total Parallels allocation to 356 (100 more than the VM). IMHO, 1.5 gig is the minimum RAM you should install to run Parallels, and two gig is better. Several third party vendors sell RAM lots cheaper than Apple. RAM is still cheaper than a second PC.
Modifying VM memory and Parallels memory did the trick. Probably could be faster, but at least I'm now functional. Thanks for the help.
