Both XP and Mac OSX very slow when running Parallels

Hi,

Not sure how to fix this, but whenever i am running Parallels, both operating systems are very very slow, and close to be unsable. I'm running with the following:

24" iMac Aluminum 2.8GHz Intel Core 2 Extreme
4 gigs of ram
Mac OSX Leopard
Parallels 3.0 with Windows XP


Is there any way to speed things up???

 

I running a MacBook 2.2GHz with 4GB ram. I only have 1GB set for Parallels and am using Vista Home Premium. For my operation, running smallish Excel spreadsheets, Word and surfing the web, Windows runs fine. Since my main activity with my Mac is within the Mac OS, I'm very happy with the setup.

The only big failure with Vista from Parallels is running graphics 3D programs such as the advanced Vista Freecell game. Then, the machine slows way down. Toss the graphics out of the equation and I couldn't be happier.

 

humm so besides the ram allocation setting, is there anything else that would make it go faster, in particular, when starting up and shutting down parallels

 

Hello,

please try to change the memory allocated to Parallels ('Parallels Desktop' -> 'Preferences' -> 'Memory' tab) and to VM ('Edit' -> 'Virtual Machine' -> 'Memory' tab). Please try both to increase the memory and to decrease it in both memory settings.

Macaby,
please right-click on the "Desktop - Personalize - Display Settings - Advanced Settings - Trobleshoot" tab. Put the hardware acceleration level to zero. Will it help?

Best regards,
Stacey

 

Hi stacey,

I have just checked the settings. For Parallels, it is set at automatic, is that good enough?

And for VM, I tried to set it at 1 gig, but there is a pop up that says that is not recommended and VM will not start the max is 604mb which is not a whole lot more than what i have before..

any other ideas?

 

Hello,

please try to set the amount of memory for Parallels manually. Will it help?

Best regards,
Stacey

 

I doubt the problem is with the memory allocation. It seems to be the video that is slow. Redrawing the screen when working in Outlook is slow and thus the whole experience is lacking. It's much better if I boot to Windows. I'd rather work in Parallels because of the advantages with the touchpad and tapping, but it's much faster if I run in boot camp. It's usable in parallels, but not comfortable. Am I expecting too much from Parallels?

 

OK, I run Dreamweaver CS 2 or 3 on my Parallels side, and I get so frustrated with the entire thing. It lags so badly, I'll be working on something, it will hit a "duh" point, and I'll have to go away and do something else until it catches up to me. The same can be said of Office 2007, particularly Outlook, and Adobe Acrobat Pro (9?) when I'm working on combining files, etc. These are virtually the only programs I run on the PC side of my machine. Office 07 was just installed in the last two months, but this was a problem before the upgrade.

I have the memory under preferences to run automatically, which I see from above I should change it to manual, but what is a good range? Under the virtual machine memory, I have it set to 512 MB. What should I bump that up to? Is there a suggested range? Will defragging my Parallels do anything at all for my machine? Is there something similiar on the Mac?

My machine is (currently) 2.4 GHZ intel core 2 duo, 4GB 667 MHz DDR SDRAM running MS OS X 10.5.8. As soon as my major projects are complete, I will be changing to snow leopard, and starting to run Dreamweaver CS4 on the Parallels, and Adobe Suite CS4 on the Mac.

Also, whenever I use Dreamweaver on my Mac side, it is sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo slow. It's literally worse than working in Windows 98 with everything maxed out, in fact it crashes 95% of the time. Is it because of network connections?

Thanks!

Janel

 

Should mention I'm running XP and Parallels 3. Would upgrading to 5 help?

 

I upgraded to Snow Leopard and the machine is unbelievably slow (Macbook pro with 3 GB memory). I tried upgrading the memory. Right now the virtual machine has quit. I basically don't use parallels for anything except running across lite for crosswords.

 

Hello all,

Same problem. I am running Parallels 4.0 build 3848 on a mac 10.5.8. All the windows application for the last 2 months have been running excessively slow to the point of being useless.

Per previous post by Parallels employee, I have tried changing the memory settings in Parralels/preferences: from automatic to manually full right (maximum) and also tried the Vitual Machine/configuration/memory to no avail: the setting is greyed out (unseable)

Still no success, this makes the Parallels desktop application unsuable after only 4 months of use.

Regards

Marc

 

I start by using version 3 which was running quite well, I must say. Then I migrate to V4 which was slower and the final slowest is version 5. It's really painfull.
I'm running on a MacBook Pro 2.16 Ghz Core Duo with 2Go of RAM. I allocate 1Go for each OS X, and Win XP VM.

 

tboufflet, memory is not the only parameter affecting VM's speed. Can you please specify - is Parallels Desktop 5 slow or virtual machine in Parallels Desktop?

 

Hi I-che, sorry for this lack of information. The VM is starting terribly slowly. When the black screen appear while XP booting process, the incremental white before the XP color image takes about 1 minute to achieve.
When I was using V3 it was almost invisible.

Thierry

 

Thierry, can you please send problem report after XP is loaded? To do it, go to Help > Report a problem. Post displayed ID here.
And once XP is loaded, how is the performance of virtual machine?

 

I-Che, my problem report ID is 1438935.

When XP is loaded, it's difficult de verify the global performances because I don't have V3 ou V4 anymore. But the startup process is definitly slower.

 

Reinstall parallels tools

I was amazed at the speed increase and smoothness of operation.

I wonder what was going wrong before?

 

Same problem but reinstalling Parallels tools did not help

I am running Desktop 5 on a 2GHz Macbook with 2GB ram. Guest OS is Windows XP SP3 in Boot Camp. When running XP using Boot Camp, the OS is fast and responsive so the Windows XP installation is fine. When using Parallels Desktop, both the guest and host OS are slow and unresponsive with frequent pauses where the computer becomes completely unresponsive (I have also had a few kernel panics when running Parallels but never when not using Parallels).

I tried removing Parallels tools but still the same problem-- perhaps the host OS is a bit less slow but Windows is extremely slow. When I open Control Panels, the flashlight swings and it takes a full minute to populate the windows with the different icons-- ie painfully slow.

I thought that perhaps this was life with a VM but then I tried someone else's computer using VirtualBox and Windows XP. It was very responsive with no lag whatsoever. I then tried installing VirtualBox (using 640 MB for XP) on my computer and the speed improvement was astonishing-- it was almost like using the computer booted into Windows XP.

If it unfortunate that a free product is working better for me than software that I purchased. I would like to continue using Parallels because it is able to use my Boot Camp volume but the unresponsiveness is giving me pause. I am a loyal customer-- I started at Parallels 3, upgraded to 4 and 5 but I certainly will not be purchasing further upgrades at this rate.

Like I said, removing Parallels Tools had no effect on speed. I tried increasing the memory for the guest OS to 768 MB and the Parallels app to 1024 GB but still slow. Any further suggestions?

 

Hi pjkim,
please check if this KB is applicable to your situation:
http://kb.parallels.com/6783
Please also try to disable Spotlight indexing to check how performance changes.

 

Resolved!

I don't have Google Search Box installed so that is not the issue. I have however fixed the problem. On a lark, I went through another cycle of remove/install Parallels Tools. During the remove, there was an error along the lines of a previous uninstall being incomplete-- I am sorry but I can't recall the exact wording of the error message. Regardless, after a reboot and reinstalling Parallels Tools, the speed issue has resolved.

To confirm that this is in fact the fix rather than the memory issues, I dropped the Windows XP memory to 512MB and put the Parallels app memory back to automatic. Still very usable.

A corrupted or incompletely removed install of Parallels Tools might be a common cause of serious performance issues. Perhaps this should be moved up toward the top of the list in troubleshooting performance problems before adjusting memory settings.