After upgrade to v4, XP Pro extremely slow

Probably you can create ticket in support we can check situation deeper

 

Parallels Mac 4.0 newbie HAD very slow (unusable) performance

Hi,

After a LOT of tinkering, Parallels Mac 4.0 is running fast for me, but at a huge cost in integration with my Mac Pro --- I should say NO integration.

I did the following...
Disabled shared folders. One of the bigger performance drains.
Disabled shared profile.
Disabled shared applications.
Disabled services - share clipboard.
Disabled services - enable drag-n-drop.
Disabled services - synchronize time with host computer.
Only run in Window view --- never Coherence view because it's one of the bigger performance drains.
Always keep Windows XP and OS X display resolution and color depth the same.
In Windows XP in the System & Display controls, disable everything that is UI related.
Using 4 processors. I'm assuming "processor" implies "core" because I have 8 cores and Parallels shows 8 processors.
Network Adapter - use Bridged Ethernet. Windows XP gets it's own IP Address that way and looks like another computer on my home network.


I can ALMOST live without the integration. When I need it, I temporarily share a Mac folder, copy the files to my C: drive, and then disabled the shared folder. Real nuisance.

BTW -

I have a Mac Pro...

2 2.8GHz Intel Xeon Quads
18GB RAM (yes, eighteen)
1 360GB drive
3 1TB drives
1 Super CD/DVD
Apple modem
1 Apple NIC
NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT Display Card (2560x1600, 512MB VRAM)
30" Cinema Display

I have the horsepower, so I'm disappointed with Parallel Mac 4.0's performance under normal working conditions for me. I'll wait a few months to see if the next build or path helps before moving to VMWare.

 

The latest build fixed performance for me and my config. Not for you? What I mean to say is, are you using the 30 December 2008 build?

 

Yes, I just purchased Parallels Desktop Mac 4.0 last week.

Parallels Desktop Mac 4.0
Build: 4.0.3810.237520 (December 30, 2008)

 

For Shared folders performance please check
http://kb.parallels.com/en/5963

 

Is there are resolve to this? Or can you offer advice on how to downgrade the VM to 3.0 or VMWare. More specifically, running SolidWorks on 3.0 was very quick. So much so that I convinced some people to get it. Right now I'm regretting that advice though because 4.0 is running SolidWorks at roughly 500% slower.

 

It seems that there is some misconfiguration or some particular incompatibility in your system.
I could not find a ticket created in our queue for your e-mail, so I have created one.
Please, follow up the ticket in order we can sort out the reason of the issue.

 

Thanks to the Parallels engineers! They connected to my computer and changed some settings for me and now I'm back to 3.0 speed. So I'm posting to share the basics of what was done.

My problem was rooted in that SolidWorks was running fairly quick in 3.0. When I moved to 4.0, SW was suddenly very very sluggish. The first thing done was to set my video memory up to 256MB. I had it set to 128MB because that's what my computer has. I didn't know the video memory was virtual so I could allocate the full amount. Next up my Parallels Tools was corrupt so a reinstall fixed that. Uninstalling AVG and preventing unnecessary startup items from appearing was next up. I'm using ClamWin now because it's less computer-intensive. My number of CPUs had to be dropped to 1 (I wish 2 could get going though) and my RAM was set to 2036 (I have 4GB on my computer). Lastly, the Look and Feel was changed to the Best Performance option.

 

Upgrade to V4 from V3 XP Extremely Slow

The upgrade process seems to be where the root of the problem hides.

Those who did fresh install of V4 have no trouble.

I Created a new VM (V4 on same host I upgraded from V3) for Win 7 and it is at least at V3 speed if not much faster.
(don't know how much of speed increase is V4 vs Win 7, it is good!)

I would recommend as others have said to create a NEW VM with XP and all will be good. (I have not tried it YET
but I think it will work considering my Win 7 experience)

I have resisted this but I think it would be better and easier (hard to believe) than going
back to V3

I have been working (complaining to forum and making trouble reports) since V4 came out.
I have tried all the fixes and none will fix the V3 to V4 XP VM upgrade. Parallels still has not
found/reported anything that works since V4 released.

Steve

 

Same issue here. I reported this since P4 beta. All works well with freshly installed VMs, but not with my converted XP Pro. Maybe some kind of cleanup script which removes all traces of the P4 and P3 Tools will help ?

I still run P3 on my production machine, which holds 8 VMs which should be converted when I migrate to P4. Reinstalling them from scratch won't be an option for me. Same situations for all my customers.

I cannot recommend an upgrade until this is solved ....

 

Hope this will provide some clue why new install is OK
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/...ndows-performance-appear-to-degrade-over-time
http://discuss.fogcreek.com/joelonsoftware/default.asp?cmd=show&ixPost=153877
http://ezinearticles.com/?Windows-XP-Performance-Degradation&id=1170432

 

The issue is not a loss of performance of Windows, but > 30% CPU usage of Parallels on the Mac's side.


-- Harald

 

What is showing in Task Manager on Windows side?

 

1-4% only. Whole story + ticket no. here:
http://forum.parallels.com/showthread.php?t=32613


Thank you very much,
Harald

 

Permission For Page

Says I don't have permission to view previous page (html link)
I have others What do I/you need to do to view?

Steve Baker

 

It's a link to a non public beta forum. It just shows Windows task manager with 4% CPU while the prl_vm_app process leeches 29% on the Mac's side.


-- Harald

 

Ok, let us check it more closer in ticket
Please create one in http://www.parallels.com/support/desktop/request/

 

See ticket #672075.


Thank you very much,
Harald

 

Thank you, hschneider,

an engineer replied in the ticket.

 

Reinstalling Parallels Tools did the trick

Guys, It would take 10-20 seconds for a mouse click to register with the system in the VM and it was blazing fast in Parallels 3. I changed the cpu and video memory with no effect.

However I clicked the reinstall option and for a few seconds before the reboot I had super fast access, probably even faster than Parallels 3. Anyway after the reboot required by the reinstall it is still a little slow. Definitely some optimization needs to be done with the Parallels Tools code in version 4.

Please donʻt do the same thing when you release Parallels 5. If you say it will be faster Iʻll be ready to put a turtle shell on my computer after installation.