Any idea why it takes my VM 3 minutes to boot Win XP?

Time to boot XP in Parallels? Mine is 2 minutes+. Is this normal?

I have a Parallels VM on a Macbook 2.16G with 2G ram and a 120G 5400RPM hd, and it takes 2 minutes or more to boot the Win XP VM. That's way too long and I can't figure out why.

How long does it take you from clicking in the "Select a Virtual Machine" panel to ready-to-work in Win XP?

Also, sometimes the CD/DVD (Superdrive) is "Not Connected" on boot, so it can't read any disk. The fix is easy (click on the icon and click on Connect CD/DVD) but isn't there somewhere I can specify that the CD/DD is always supposed to be connected?

I think this VM was converted from a VMWare VM, so I'm wondering if that could be the problem?

Thanks--

 

as a metric, it takes my 2.33 C2D MBP.....

about 30-secs to boot up.

FWIW

LJ

 

I could live with 30 sec, but mine is just silly. Sometimes it's literally 3 minutes. crazy.

 

I used to have a very slow boot up as well, reinstalling the VM and OS fixed it...

 

Hello,

fbx, it's hard to tell without more details but it seems that you're right and the problem with your long XP boot occurs because of converted VM.
And for the drive connection, in your VM settings you can enable a "connect at start-up" feature for your CD/DVD drive.

Best Regards,
Alicia.

 

thanks, but i ended up killing the converted VM and building a new one. Easy enough, but won't be easy if I'm using the Parallels VM as my mail Win machine and I've got important stuff on it.

I'm thinking about using a Parallels VM INSTEAD OF a Bootcamp Win install. Any advice on the viability of this, esp with regard security etc?

 

fbx,

please elaborate, do you want to just use Parallels-created VM or you would rather use your existing Bootcamp in VM? Advantages of new (non-bootcamp VM) are abilities to use Snapshots and Shared Profile.

Best Regards,
Alicia.

 

housekeeping

clean up your windows installation with the tools provided by Microsoft

"Check your PC health for free

Welcome to the Windows Live OneCare safety scanner. It’s a free service designed to help ensure the health of your PC.


Check for and remove viruses and spyware
Improve your PC's performance
Get rid of junk on your hard disk
Use the full service scan to check everything or customize your scan to meet your specific needs."

http://onecare.live.com/

I go in from the windows live toolbar
MS says once a month

I do it each weekend
then make a clean clone to an external hard disk FW800 La Cie and run the WinXP sp2 installation from there

please let us know how you get on

Hugh W

 

As stated up the thread, I dumped the VM and built a new one from scratch. Thanks, though.