High CPU usage on disk access since update to Mojave 10.14.4 ?

Maybe it's just me but since I've upgraded to Mac OS Mojave 10.14.4 running Parallels Desktop 14.1.3 on a 2018 Mac Mini, any Windows 10 Guest VM will have high CPU usage whenever high read/writes disk operations happen, making the Windows VM slow and unresponsive until the operations are completed. Boot time for the VM increased by a factor of 2 or 3.

On MacOS Task Monitor, CPU load for the VM would be (100% * # Of CPUs allocated, like 400% or 600%) and Windows would go up to 100%. Same behaviour if the VM is stored on an external thunderbolt SSD drive or the internal SSD drive. I didn't notice other slowdown issues with MacOS but I didn't test extensively as I needed to VM to work.

Prior to this MacOS update, everything was fine.

I've restored a Time Machine backup to MacOS 10.14.3 and everything is back to normal with Parallels Desktop 14.1.3.

Not sure if it's related to Parallels Desktop or MacOS but I guess it's always a good idea to wait a few days/weeks before upgrading MacOS, now I've learned my lesson...

Anybody having a similar problem?

 

I have the same problem. Start and shut down times are much longer now. The problem just showed up recently.

 

I have the same problem. The VM is very slow. Start and shut down times are much longer now. (iMac Pro)

 

Hi, please try to clone your VM and test the same behavior with the VM copy. Then provide us with the results.

 

Hi, i have clone the vm. The same behavior. Very high cpu, graphic very slow. It can not be worked. Thanks for your support.

 

Please check this KB article for more info about slow performance issue troubleshooting steps.

 

Hi, the problem is only since I updated the os x to 10.14.4 and the parallels to 14.1.3. I have already checked everything. I'm working on an iMac Pro and the performance was perfect until before the update.

 

I have experienced the exact same problem. Everything was running smoothly until I upgraded to 10.14.4 and now my VM is practically unusable as it's so slow and the CPU is constantly maxing out. Have tried re-installing the combo update and have run the Utility First Aid, but nothing has fixed the issue.

[Update#1] - I abandoned using my VM but left it running in the background for the past few hours and used apps on my iMac to work around the issue. Have gone back to the VM and whilst it is a little slow, it's nowhere as bad. Someone on this thread questioned if some sort of auto-optimization was occurring, and I'm wondering if that was the reason for the slow down and by letting it run it's course, it might just fix itself? Will leave the VM running for another couple of hours before shutting it down to see if that improves things.

[Update#2] - restarted my VM this morning, thought it was ok but no, it was practically unresponsive. Shutdown the VM, switched the hypervisor to Apple and switched off adaptive-hypervisor and for me (iMac 5K 27" i7, Late 2014) it solved the problem. Haven't played around to see if both actions are needed, or just one of them ).

 

Boy do I regret updating to 10.14.4. I'm experiencing the same problem. Had a process that took 15 seconds go to 10 minutes (database). Luckily I had Time Machine going on my iMac Pro, but my MacBook Pro is stuck on 10.14.4 and painfully slow. I tried opting into betas to see if the next release fixes anything yet, to no avail.

If you can downgrade with Time Machine, it's the fix for now. I guess this should teach me once and for all not to upgrade without being extremely careful and Googling around first.

 

In my case the startup until I see the output of the Bios takes now really long.
Also the stopping of the machine after the message "Windows is shutting down" takes very long.

The process prl_disp_service is always close to 100%, even after the machine was stopped. Is there some kind of auto optimation going on?

 

I have the same issue. I can see the windows painting in the VM. It was woking without issues until 10.14.4, and frankly it's not a great response from the support to give blanket statements like the two above replies.

 

I disabled "Adaptive hypervisor" and used the Apple hypervisor and that seems to have helped a lot.

 

In my case turning off "Adaptive hypervisor" did not help. But from time to time the VM starts within seconds as it used to be.
I don't know how to help to find this bug - but right now this is really a terrible situation.

 

Did you use the "Apple" hypervisor as well?

 

Yes, I used "Apple". What I noticed: After reboot of the MAC the VM starts (usually) reasonable fast.
Rebooting the VM with the menu item from Windows-START menu is as fast as usual.
The problem occurs when shutting down the VM. The parallels process gets really busy, even after the VM was completely closed. It is then not possible to shut down the parallels program an/or OSX for minutes.
What is parallels doing before the guest OS ist started, and what is it doing after it was shut down and the VB is about to be closed?

Another problem I have now: the drives connects really bad to the VM. I don't know if this connected, if parallels is waiting for something or OSX is doing something (like checking HD integrity for minutes).

 

When I select "Suspend" from the parallels menu, this also takes several minutes, likewise waking it up. The VM uses 8GB ram.

 

Add me to the list of users experiencing this. For me, it started with hearing my iMac's fans spinning up excessively. Normally, they might do this 1-2 a month and it's usually because of some process that I initiated. Now, Activity Monitor shows "Windows 10" as the culprit. It's currently showing 102.x% CPU and HOURS of CPU time (15+, while the next highest process has used 20-25 minutes.

Saw the reference to the hypervisor and changed it to the Apple one. Didn't make a difference. In my case, "Adaptive hypervisor" was not enabled/checked so nothing to disable there.

 

Same problem here -- started a thread on this as well. In my case I'm running a 2018 fully loaded macbook pro. My windows VM ran great with Mojave 10.14.3. After upgrade to 10.14.4 the VM was unusable - 100% CPU on windows side and 430 ++ CPU on mac side. I've got 4 cores, so there you go. I received a support ticket response saying I should go into power on the mac and switch from Parallels to standard Mac power management, but I never got that far -- fortunately I had a recent 10.14.3 time machine backup so I did a full restore and I'm back in business. I'm sticking with this OS version til the issue gets patched somehow.

 

Oh. my. goodness. I do Windows development using Visual Studio on Parallels on my MacBook Pro and now I'm completely stuck. I don't have a time machine to roll back to. What are my options? The Activity monitor shows Windows 10 Pro at 400%

OK. I waited a couple of hours and let the machine fan whir and spin and now it looks like it's returned to normal. I didn't need to change any settings or anything. If I had to guess, it seems like there was a process doing some kind of disk optimization or conversion and when it got done, it's fine.

I'm crossing my fingers that it's going to work ok in the upcoming hours, days, etc.

 

In my case, my Macbook Pro late 2018 was updated also to 10.14.4 to continue with headaches caused by Parallels.
I do have a case opened with support since long time ago where my Mac was getting frozen and then restarted by itself (full system crash) while using my Windows 10 VM in Parallels. I followed directions from Support indicating to uninstall Parallels, then run Disk First Aid in recovery mode, then reboot and reinstall Parallels. I've tried with several versions of Parallels, even an older version provided by Support rep, with the same results. As you may guess, nothing worked and that case is still being reviewed by Support.
Apple hardware diagnostics does not show any hardware related problem as well.
With the latest version of Parallels, I switched to Apple hypervisor instead of Parallels and since that configuration change, my Windows 10 VM is stable and there is no more crashes since yesterday. However, I need to say the VM performance is indeed a little bit reduced. I don't think is necessary to remove the check mark to use Adaptive Hypervisor, just to switch to Apple hypervisor instead Parallels.
The most frustrating is that Parallels documentation states that Parallels hypervisor is better that Apple's, but since I bought Parallels last year, Parallels has only given me headaches and hours of work lost by full system crashes. I wonder if Parallels is even trying to resolve all of these issues, as on every communication in the case, the culprit is always from something else according to Support (antivirus, ad blockers, system corruption, you can mention whatever comes to your mind, that is something Parallels will use as an argument). They doesn't seem to understand that while Parallels is not used, everything works smooth and fine. If a VM is used, then boom! Your best bet is to only get a VM crash... while a full system crash is more often.
This is really motivating me to switch to competition's hypervisors.