Massive Virtual Memory Consumption

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dtrimble

Bit poster
I'm running Parallels 3.0 (5582) on Leopard, with Vista Ultimate as the guest OS. I have a 160GB hard drive, but about 2.8 GB are left. My MacBook Pro has a total of 3GB of memory, the max the machine will support.

Whenever I start Parallels, it loads Vista just fine. However, it then runs out of virtual/disk memory before I can even do anything. With no applications running at all, and having done nothing within Vista, Parallels announces that I only have 300MB of disk space left, and need at least 512 to continue running the virtual machine. Checking my disk space in Leopard, it is correct--there's only 300MB left. As soon as I shut down the virtual machine and close Parallels, Leopard shows that my free disk space is back up to 2.8GB.

?!?! This is puzzling to me...even Vista isn't so inefficient as to demand that much memory. Why is it consuming so much disk space, and what can I do to adjust this?

The virtual machine is configured as follows:
Vista Ultimate
1416MB of Memory (recommended is 512 to 1416)
16MB Video Memory (recommended up to 16)

Parallels Preferences for Memory
Adjust memory limit: manually, set to 1516 MB
allows for range of 96 MB to 2548 MB
Enable virtual memory preallocation is NOT set



Dan
 
come back when...

Hi Dan...

If you really have a 160 GB drive and only 2.8 GBs of free space, you shouldn't be running OS X, much less Parallels.

You've got less than 2% free space on your drive.

You need to have at least 5 GBs of space for the system to play with, and that's not really enough. And that's just for OS X.

If you have an external drive, or a second computer or a friend with either, you might try freeing up 1/2 of your drive, then trying Parallels, just to make sure there isn't some other problem, but you absolutely need to make some breathing room available to your Mac.

Tom
 
I understand it is not ideal, but frankly OS X has absolutely no problem whatsoever running efficiently. I mean none -- it works great.

The question I'm asking is why Parallels would be using over 2 GB of disk space just to keep Vista humming along -- no apps running or anything.
 
To work smootly you'll need to have about 10% of free space (16 gb).

Why not make a backup with timemachine and clean up your harddrive?

Tip :
Latest version of parallels is 5584..
 
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Maybe OS X appears to run smooth, but as others said, you want at least 10% of free space. My guess is that parallels swapping in broken blocks and OS X swapping in broken blocks is breaking the proverbial camel's back. The others have it down, you should follow their advice, get more free-space.
 
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