I have a verson of XP installed that has survived since before the product release for version 2.0. It is months old and has always worked perfectly and does not exhibit the memory leak problem. That is my baseline version (and so far, only version of XP).
This evening I did an XP install from iso image - the same one that I used for the baseline version. Immediately it began exhibiting the memory leak problem. I suspended the installation several times and restarted it - each time the memory would climb steadily and quickly. At 400meg I suspended it again (repeating several time until the install was completed). Had I not then surely all system memory would have been depleted. I finally arrived at a complete install and then added the Parallels tools. All the while the memory would climb. I was barely able to survive the tools installation as it had just about run the well dry when post-install reboot started. BTW, this is not a bootcamp install.
Running that version will cause memory usage to run away and if I permit it it would doubtlessly crash the system. The other instance continues to run with no change in memory usage or cpu usage changes.
Here is what I know - the earlier install is stable as a rock and always has been. I don't recall the release number of parallels then because I trashed it when the GA product came out. I have incrementally updated it as newer versions have come along and it's always worked perfectly. The fresh install just performed is completely unusable because of the memory problem. I would say that within 10 minutes of starting it, all memory will have been depleted.
Last edited: Jan 13, 2007