Is Parallels broken?

I

ICreel

Junior Member
Hi.

I have been using Paralles Desktop for Mac since the day it was launched and have stayed current with updates. I used it sporadically in the beginning and now I am attempting to use it on a daily basis at work with an engineering CAD programme that is Windows only.

Since then I have had quite a lot of trouble with both the CAD application and Windows XP Pro.

Every other time I shut down Windows it says I need to Install Windows updates.

When I use my CAD application the auto-hide task bar will turn on and off intermittenly and the CAD application pull down menus will often not highlight as I drag my noue over them.

Sometimes Windows runs well and is quick but will then promptly slow to a crawl and I will can my Activity Monitor in the OS X dock climb thorugh the roof while doing very simple tasks.

I am thoroughly confused. Is something wrong with Paralles or Windows XP?

I am running OS X 10.4.9 with a 2 GHz Core Duo MacBook and 2GB of RAM. Not the fastest machine out there but definilty no slouch. I have Windows set to use 1.2 GB of RAM. The only thing I can guess is that I am using 7.53 GB of HD space out of the 8GB that I have allocated to Windows and that may be interfering with the performance as the machine juggles data around.

I would set the HD allocation for 10 GB or more but it as I understand it, that would mean wiping everything and repartitioning.

I could really use a hand with any of this as I do not want to give up my Mac!

Any thought are welcome.

Cheers,

Ian
 
Try to allocate less RAM for VM, for example 800M - 1G instead of 1.2G. I suspect that to much memory taken from Mac OS X could be the cause of your problems.
 
Thanks for the reply.

Two things. My Windows CAD programme requires more than 1GB of RAM. Any suggestions based on that?

Also, could using nearly all of the HD space be part of the problem or is this only when Windows OS is your main OS as oppsoed to having it run under OS X?

Cheers,

Ian
 
The best thing to do is to try less memory and see how it goes. If you save your CAD drawings in a shared file in OS X you shouldn't have a problem with disk space. I'm running Rhino 3.0 and 4.0 on my MacBook Pro and with a 12g XP partition I have no trouble at all. I built an expandable partition, though. Once in a while I'll get a popup from the former paperclip saying my virtual memory is low and it takes care of it.

BTW, Rhino is *very* fast on this Mac and I don't use Boot Camp.
 
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