Parallels Ridiculously Slow... Please Assist

Hello all,

Can someone please assist?

Here's my long story in short format: I've been a Parallels user since the beginning. I used to sing their praises to everyone I knew. Now I no longer do it thanks to ridiculously sloppy software for installation and virtually no support of any kind.

When I finally got things working in my 2.0 version of it years ago, my computer ran INCREDIBLY well both on the Mac and Windows side. In fact, at one point in time, Windows actually ran better using Parallels 2.0 on my Mac than it did on my brand new Dell desktop.

I installed 4.0 and it was a nightmare to set up with such "amazing" software telling me that it was successfully installed and then the next window telling me that it wasn't installed. Once I FINALLY got it running, it worked great. I was using the same MacBook and the same version of Windows (XP) both on the old 2.0 and the new 4.0 platforms. Then, by doing NOTHING on my end, the Windows side slowly but surely started slowing down. It now takes me HOURS to open a Word Document or to open Outlook. When Parallels runs, my Mac side is virtually unusable. Once I finally close Parallels, which literally takes forever, my Mac side runs perfect. I actually dread hitting the icon to launch Parallels more than a trip to my dentist now.

Mac OS Version: 10.5.8
Parallels Build #4.0.3846
MacBookPro - 2GB RAM - 150GB HD - 667 MHz Bus - 2.33 GHz Processor


So basically, this is my last ditch effort of hoping to get help with this product so I can continue to use it in the future. I'm almost ready to pull the plug and give Sun's VirtualBox a chance as I have nothing to lose by doing so, but figured that I would try here one more time as Parallels is a nice product IF you can miraculously get it working right and IF you can actually get support.

So if anyone can could shed some light on how to try and tackle this issue, it would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers!

 

How much RAM does your VM have? The more RAM you've assigned to it, the less the Mac has for its own use which means it will start swapping some memory to the hard drive. With PD 4 on a 2 GB machine, I guess you're running Windows XP? Try giving it 768 MB Ram or even less (512), that should seriously improve speed.

 

I completely understand your frustration and I'm glad to see that my souring opinion is not alone (afraid I was being unreasonable). Shaddam's response to my inquiries in this thread where quite helpful: http://forum.parallels.com/showthread.php?t=101524

Best of luck!

 

I am having the same issue, p5, vm= vista 32, Mac Book pro, , I cannot believe how slow my system is running.
My p5 vm is almost not usable. and i cant get any support. I have been using parallels for several years starting with v3 but I cant use the product, and i cant get technical support. interestingly it worked well but over time has degraded to the point of absurdity.
I have not done anything different except to use the system .
Totally useless , just going to throw Parallels in the garbage. It seems to me that customer support is needed long after the purchase if it is going to get bogged down after a period of usage

Thoughts


Peter

 

Agree completely

Can not agree more. running a 27 inch iMac, 4 GB RAM, have run v3-4 with no problem on much slower machines. Trying to run PD5 on this machine is unusable. 10-20 mins to boot XP running from the bootcamp partition. Runs fine in bootcamp but not in PD5. No support at all. I have thrown it away and will not spend anymore time nor money on it.

 

pd5 is slower than pd4

I noticed the same problem: pd5 runs much slower than pd4.
I went back to v4.

 

I have not yet upgraded to Parallels Desktop 5 (may do so this week to take advantage of the sale price) but had slow performance initially with every version of Parallels I have used (from 1.0 through 4). In every case a little tuning made a big difference.

The most important single parameter to choose is how much memory you give to the Parallels VM. With my old Macbook I got best performance using 512M for Parallels running XP Home. You would think more for Windows would be better, but Parallels also uses a lot of RAM on the Mac side. Give Windows too much (for example 1G out of 2G physical) and it slows to a crawl because the Mac side is starved. I now give 1G on a 4G Macbook Pro to Parallels 4 and it is quite good.

With recent updates to windows (especially Service Pack 3) it became harder to find the sweet spot, because Windows itself and most antivirus programs have grown in their need for base memory. It is no longer sensible to try to run Windows XP in 512M on a real Windows box; you need at least 768M and preferably 1G. You are stuck between a rock and a hard place if your Mac is limited to 2G of physical RAM. I'd try giving Windows varying amounts around 768M and see what works best.

Your choice of antivirus program for Windows can also make a big difference. I've used nearly all the well known ones at one time or another. Norton/Symantec has become very large and slow. McAfee used to be better but also causes slowdowns now. I suggest that you check out AVG, Avira, and especially Microsoft Security Essentials. All are available in free versions and pretty reasonable in their use of computer resources. I really liked Avira until the free version became so popular that it started taking over an hour to download the daily update (and half the time the update failed). Check out current reviews to help you select a good package. If you are buying a physical package, watch for sales; sometimes they are as much as 70% off list. (I always used to buy a physical CD for antivirus, so that I could boot from the CD in case of a bad infection. But lately some brands, McAfee for example, just give you an installer on the CD that downloads the real software over the internet. No security advantage from buying the CD.)

And don't forget the configuration parameter that lets you give scheduling preference to the Windows side or the Mac side. If you typically don't run much on the Mac side while running programs in Parallels, push it all the way over to Windows.

 

Only since last Windows updates

I am having the same problem, although Parllels opens pretty much normally, but trying to run any program takes as has been said "hours". Everything was working fine until the last Windows series of monthly security updates, so I am guessing it is something that has run amuck with Parallels.
NOTE: This problem only occurs when making a wireless VPN connection. When I connect with via Ethernet, there seems to be no problem. (at work - no problem, at home - problem)

Running XP with OSX 10.6.3, 320 Gb disk, 2.8 Ghz, 8 Gb Ram, 2GB allocated to Windows

Dave