High CPU Usage Version 7 and 8

J

James Madison University

Bit poster
ATTENTION Parallels support!!!!

Why can we not get a fix for the ongoing high CPU utilization? I've contacted support - they have had me uninstall and reinstall the product - which works for about 2 days and then back to 100% CPU usage. I would not consider this procedure a 'workable' fix -

From what I've read on the support forum this has been going on for YEARS!! Parallels is a great product - but dealing with 1 hour battery life, whizzing fan, heat is unacceptable.

My Mac config V 10.7.5 2.4 GHz Core i7 8GB 1333 MHX DDR3

Please, please address this issue - it is a common issue at our university, but uninstalling and reinstalling is not a viable option.

A problem report with the ID number 21684691 has been sent to Parallels to help us improve the product. Thank you for your feedback
 
Going on for years? As a user I don't experience this behaviour. Does the high CPU usage also happen inside the virtual machine? What does Task Manager (assuming the Guest is Windows) say, which processes are consuming the CPU?
 
Sample Activity Monitor -
Running 100.2% - all day long.....

860 Parallels VM griff2gj 100.2 54 1.89 GB Intel (64 bit)
416 Safari Web Content griff2gj 3.7 12 419.4 MB Intel (64 bit)
1457 Silverlight (Safari Internet plug-in) griff2gj 2.5 18 56.2 MB Intel
0 kernel_task root 1.7 100 1,000.7 MB Intel (64 bit)
295 Activity Monitor griff2gj 0.7 3 21.3 MB Intel (64 bit)
629 Parallels Desktop griff2gj 0.6 26 210.6 MB Intel (64 bit)
316 activitymonitord root 0.6 1 1.9 MB Intel (64 bit)
111 WindowServer _windowserver 0.6 12 99.5 MB Intel (64 bit)
708 prl_disp_service root 0.6 23 27.8 MB Intel (64 bit)
289 Symantec QuickMenu griff2gj 0.5 5 9.1 MB Intel
141 SymAutoProtect root 0.0 8 443.5 MB Intel
 
I asked about Task Manager in Windows, the processes tab, to be more specific.

The threads that date back to 2007 are not necessarily related.
 
MBP 2011, i7 2,2 (with turbo boost)

Hi! I Have similar issue. I use 4 cores in Parallels config and windows 7. When Windows is iddeling (Task manager shows 0-2% CPU usage then System monitor in Mac Os Shows 22-35 % CPU Usage of Parallels.
Maybe because of that i have overheating when i work in With Parallels and also i have half of my battery life when i work with Parallels. Please resolve this issue because i need to work with Windows 90% of my time!
 

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I have the same issue with Parallels 7 & 8. I'm currently running an i7 4 cores 16GB ram. windows 8 pro. task manager inside windows 8 shows minimal cpu utilization. Activity Monitor shows 40% utilization for Parallels VM. I have to suspend the VM to get Parallels' cup utilization as displayed in Activity Manager to drop to 13%.

from the other responses it appears that although people have been complaining about this for at least two years, you don't believe it is related. How many other people would you need to have posting complaints in order for you to take this seriously? I'm pretty sure I can get a few hundred to respond if that will help? More if i ask a few editors to ask their readers to post.

Tell us: what will it take to get you to take this seriously?
 
I can confirm this problem on my two Macs (Macbook Pro late 2008 with Core2Duo 3GHz and Mac Mini 2012 with i7, both with 8GB RAM, VMs use one core and 3GB RAM). Taskmanager in Windows 7 shows system is idle, Parallels process consumes lots of CPU and during a working day consumes all memory of the host machine so paging starts and slows down the entire system.
 
You may wish to try "CpuLimiter" see:
https://sites.google.com/site/gakhokidzeproject/Home/

I use Cpu percentage of 100% this seems to mean 50% for each CPU in my CoreDuo machine. Anything lower than 100% reduces performance of the VM too much for me, on my, late2008 MacBook Pro, OSX Mountain Lion 10.8.2, parallels v7 Build 7.0.15107
(Revision 796624; September 3, 2012),


If you are unsure of running apps that take control of the machine at such a basic level it is perhaps best to leave things as they are.
There would be no support that I know of, should anything go wrong, trying such an app means at a minimum that you are on your own for backup and recovery.
My only endorsement is that the app works for me in reducing the CPU usage when running Parallels.

For any other information please contact the author of the app, I have no connection with him.

Good luck.
 
I am having the very same issue. I constantly see Parallels hog my system CPU pushing it ?above? 100% in the activity monitor. I have complained about it without receiving any support that would address the problem. My phone calls with those support guys (obviously located in India) were useless. He asked me a lot of questions and then had me issue a support code which received no response. His suggestion to 'reinstall Parallels' did of course not address the problem.

This is a very common issue which I have seen pop up for years - to claim that past complaints were unrelated is specious (that goes out to you Specimen). It continues to affect a lot of people and is probably ruining a lot of hardware over the long term due to overheating issues.
 
garymerinstein said:
from the other responses it appears that although people have been complaining about this for at least two years, you don't believe it is related. How many other people would you need to have posting complaints in order for you to take this seriously? I'm pretty sure I can get a few hundred to respond if that will help? More if i ask a few editors to ask their readers to post.

Tell us: what will it take to get you to take this seriously?
Click to expand...

I think they are aware of the problem but do not know how to fix it. Must be some memory leak issue and they are probably attempting to address it with a future release - if at all. A lot of folks out there are probably not complaining as they are ignorant to the fact that constant overheating will reduce the lifetime of your CPU. Given that I plunked down $4000 for my top of the line MacBook Pro donning 16GB of RAM this is simply unacceptable.
 
Same issue here, 16GB i7 MacBook Pro, VM takes up 35% with Task Manager showing 0%CPU

Same issue here, 16GB i7 MacBook Pro, VM takes up 35% with Task Manager showing 0% CPU

Confirmed.
 
Same issue here, see attached screenshot. It's a pain, as it drains the battery in about 1,5 hour without doing anything..
Screen Shot 2013-05-14 at 11.01.18.jpg
 
Also happening to me with a small single CPU/512MB WinXP image. On WinXP, System Idle is 99% so there's nothing taxing the guest.

I am really noticing lag when using Expose, even more-so with external monitor connected (MBPr, 8GB RAM).

It is irritating that Parallels doesn't browse these boards at all. And I wonder now if I made a mistake switching from VMWare. Overall while Parallels might boot and resume guest systems faster, I've had this and other issues that I didn't have to deal with before.
 
I have the exactly same issue, version 8 on mac osx mountain lion 10.8.4 with task manager showing over 500% cpu.
 
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Could it be, that the guest (windows) is telling to use the GPU, and then the host (Mac) is using the CPU instead of the GPU?
 
hmm, ok. But what else could it be? Here I have some things I tried:
Case 1: Guest: Windows 7, 1 CPU
- After windows started: Windows CPU 0%, Mac CPU 5%
- After some time browsing: Windows CPU 0%, Mac CPU 40%
Case 2: Guest: Windows 7, 4 CPU's
- After windows started: Windows CPU 0%, Mac CPU 20%
- After some time browsing: Windows CPU 0%, Mac CPU 80%

What could it be? Can I help investigating? Trying something else? Let me know, I really want to help you to solve this issue..
 
TomFra said:
hmm, ok. But what else could it be? Here I have some things I tried:
Click to expand...

I see the same problem: The more I add cores to the VM, the more the CPU heats up even with the guest more or less idling. But even with one core, the "idle" cpu usage on host is around 30%. Four or the eight cores on my MBPRetina seem to working all the time: Screen Shot 2013-08-09 at 9.22.13 AM.png, even though I told Parallels to allocate just two to VM, and the guest does basically nothing: Screen Shot 2013-08-09 at 9.25.34 AM.png
 
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