Memory Max. (only 1.5GB)

hello

i've got 4gb of ram and installed latest parallels version. but it only allows me 1.5gb of ram allocation. why not more?

 

i run xp with 512 mb and it is fast.....

I think when you install to much ram in parallels, osx crashes.....

 

1.5 gb is the current limit. I have 3gb and give 1.5 to each side with no problem at all.

 

i use parallels/ windows for pro-production and thus need to be able to allocate more ram. of course i know i could boot via bootcamp and have full native power, but i just like to be in os-x too and it usually works out very well. but now that i have 4gb of ram i wanted to allocate 2gb for parallels.

what about for people who got 8gb of ram and can only allocate 1.5gb?

 

I don't know scratch about Parallels and about to post a "trouble message" of my own. What about the virtual memory option?

-John

 

Virtual memory option? Can you elaborate?

In Vmware Fusion i can go as high as i want with Ram allocation. In parallels it's 1500mb (max) even if you have 8gb of ram installed. Strange, no?

 

I have 6GB ram. The memory max is still 1500MB for VM.

 

You will be able to do so in the next update of Parallels.

 

I replied to this post, hit the wrong key, and the post disappeared. I hope it didn't make it to the board unifinished.

Doesn't VM stand for "virtual memory"?

Doesn't this allocate a portion of the hard drive for Parallels?

I'm running Windows Vista Ultimate via Parallels and it crawls. The Mac OS also crawls when I run Windows. I have memory set to autiomtic allotment plus VM.

Here are the specs for my MacBook Pro:

Model Name: MacBook Pro 17"
Model Identifier: MacBookPro2,1
Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed: 2.33 GHz
Number Of Processors: 1
Total Number Of Cores: 2
L2 Cache (per processor): 4 MB
Memory: 2 GB
Bus Speed: 667 MHz

I thought the specs would show 2 processors, not one. I bought this thinking it had two dual core Intel chips cores.

I saw an ad somewhere for memory boards that would boost this machine's total RAM to 3GB. Is this safe and advisable?

-Dr. John

 

I can confirm that the latest beta, 5120, allows VM's to use up to 2GB of RAM instead of the old restriction of 1.5GB. It also fixes one of the most annoying problems where it tells you that it can't allocate memory and requires you to quit Parallels and run it again, yet it still didn't let you allocate memory. This time it worked. It's also the first time I was able to run more than one VM at the same time without getting a memory error.

I have a Mac Pro with 11GB of RAM and allocated 2GB to each VM (one XP and one Vista).

As a request, how about letting us allocate up to 8GB? And also more than 64MB of VRAM. I have a 30" Cinema Display and a 24" secondary monitor, yet can't run Coherence on two monitors because of the VRAM issue.

 

I have Xp running in 928 Mb ram. Even though I have 4Gb and can slide the slider up to 1.5 the VM will not start reporting it cant allocate enough ram? Any Ideas?

 

Okay, so if you're using 2GB of RAM for Windows on a MacBook Pro like mine, you can't run anything else, much less Mac OS. Then why have Parallels?

-john

 

Why would you give 2gb to parallels?????

I'm having a macbook pro 2.4 and im running xp with 760 mb just fine.

The 2 gb is the max you can accolate to parallels, for example when you have a Mac pro with 4 gb......

 

Increasing the maximum limit for VM/total number of VMs has some technological limitations because of the Mac OS kernel memory mapping engine, but we are looking into this issue for the new improvements.
Generally, please mind that increasing the Windows VM memory too much won't necessarily lead to some drastic performance improvements. For Windows XP I'd recommend setting memory somewhere between 256-512 MB (using 384 MB myself for work) unless you need to run some memory-hungry applications like Adobe Photoshop. So the best Windows performance can be gained by finding the optimal memory amount for it, giving it too much memory is not the best way here.

 

Layers of Problems

I wasn't clear in my post. Windows Vista runs as slow as mud on my MBP. In an earlier post, I asked youi guys if you could confirm if I indeed have four processors under the hood of this MBP, or if I have two processors paired together as one unit. So, how many chips I got? I'm pretty sure those specs tell me I have four chips, two units of two, but I want someone to verify this.

Windows XP ran with snap. Someone talked me into UG to Windows Vista Ultimate for the sake of networking at the offices I might visit. This OS is sloooow. It reminds me of Virtual PC on my old PowerMac 8500/120 in 1996. I thought, "Hey! If I only had three GB of RAM on the MBP, everyhing would be lovely in the garden!" This is the sort of thing sohoisticated end-users think. (HA! See how I spell "sophisticated"!)

Okay, so that's where the 3GB of memory comes in.

So, folks, was Windows Vista Ultimate a mistake?

Also, I have three LaCie 250GB backups. The local Apple Temple would only sell the 250's because of problems with other backup HD's. Now they eat crow b/c the 250's are breaking down and they have to rescue data from these external drives. They've pulled the LaCie's. Everyone gets a full refund plus free data recovery to prevent lawsuits. When these things decide to wake up and spin up, everything stops. Might or might not be slowing things, but I don't think this is it.

Vista had found my HP AIO InkJet 7410 by WiFi Bonjour. Found the LaserJet 1300n too. When I try to add the latter, it suddenly disappears and says that the LaserJet can't be found. I burned an installation disk and installed software, but this didn't help.

The HP AIO 7400 InkJet software comes with PhotoSmart scanning software. Vista can find the printer, but it can't find the scanner. Windows XP did with no problem.

Vista also yells at me that a package is missing. I hear about it every time I boot the VM and every time I try to open a program. Maybe I've saved the most likely culprit for last. Here is what I see all the time in Parallels with Windows Vista.

Thanks a lot folks.

-John

 

Windows Vista is still a new OS to the market and has some problems even on the real PCs. Many people consider it to be more resource-consuming OS than XP and on the same hardware configuration Vista performance may be lower than XPs, including the Virtual Machine. We did our best to optimize Windows XP performance inside the VM as for the most of our users XP is still the most common Guest OS, but we can't discard the fact that Vista becomes more and more common because of the Microsoft's upgrade policy. Generally Vista may feel slower inside the Virtual Machine compared to XP and it is something we are working on and going to improve Vista's performance with future updates.
To solve your particular problems: try re-installing Parallels Tools from the Mac OS "Actions" menubar when you have Vista VM running to get rid of the error message.
As for the printing, I'd recommend trying Apple Bonjour Windows client to setup printing in VM - http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/bonjour/

 

A MBP (MacBook Pro) runs a C2D (Core 2 Duo) Processor. The exact chip inside depends upon the model, but all C2Ds have two cores. MBPs only have one processor. 2 Processors are only in the XServe and the Mac Pro for Apple's line-up.

 

Hi,

so what is the hype about the memory ... ?

I am trying to understand the difference between the allocated ram and vertual Memory.

I have 9 GB of ram. When I set my ram to 1,5 GB I get the follwoing message:

Parallels Desktop failed to allocate the specified amount of memory.
Please restart Parallels Desktop and try again.
To avoid this problem in the future choose from the menu: Parallels Desktop > Preferences. On the Memory tab select the "Enable virtual memory preallocation" option. I did enable the memory preallocation but to no avail.

I never realy understood what this slider is for if it will give you messages like these even if you have 9 GB of ram. I definitely need more ram2 GB min. for my pro applications!

But surprisingly the applications do not run much slower when I allocate less ram than 1.5 GB.

So could anyone explain how this memory thing realy works! Because increasing physical ram will not do anything. BTW can OSX address more than 4 GB of ram?

I can get this message also when I run eyeTV. I then need to turn off eyeTV. Parallels will start. Then I can start eyeTV and everything goes smoothly.

 

It's because Windows XP will rarely really use more than 400-600 MB of RAM.

 

Well when I get the lot I go up to 1,2 GB

Mawa_73537