New Parallels, new issues

A

AlbertoA2

Bit poster
Hello,
I have been using Parallels, now, for almost 4 years and if at the beginning the performances were fanstastic over the course of these 4 years they have dropped down DRAMATICALLY.
In particular, after updating to the latest version the booting time of my Windows Machine has gone up to 3+ minutes, WITHOUT ANY REASON.
In addition to that, now the external hard drive goes to sleep after few minutes of no usage and will not wake up; I will have to unplug it and plug it back to save the work.
Parallels have become, at least to me, totally useless.
I am sorry but I will not renew my license.
Alberto
 
Hi Alberto, if you decided to investigate the issue, please let us know which version of MacOS you're using.
Also please execute the sfc /scannow command in command prompt on Windows side and provide us with the results.
 
Hello everyone,
so just to give a small update: I did sfc /scannow in Windows and I did not have any integrity violations.
My system is:
Imac Retina 27" Late 2015 (i5, 8 GB, 2 TB Fusion)
MacOS Version: Mojave 10.14.3
Parallels Version: 14.1.2 (45479)
Windows 10 Version: 1803 (17134.590)
I will follow the suggestion of KorkyPlunger and see what happens.
I will keep you posted.
Thanks.
Alberto
 
Maria,
I already tried that, nothing changes.
I had another VM with W10, very small, 35 GB, almost never used, it took 3+ minutes to give me a usable desktop yesterday.
Embarassing.
When I first used PD, Windows would boot in less than 15 seconds from OFF to USABLE DESKTOP.
Alberto
 
Hello,
Here is my update on the matter.
As per KorkyPlunger suggestion, I cloned the machine and recorded the results.
Here is what I did:

1. I cloned the machine as-it-is, together with all the snapshots (8). Loading timings - from OFF to USABLE desktop were the following:

ORIGINAL MACHINE
0sec - OFF
13secs - Loading dots come to screen
35secs - Windows logo disappear, only loading dots remain, black screen
2m20 secs - Loading dots disappear, only black screen
2m40secs - Desktop with stock wallpaper, no buttons, nothing
2m50secs - Welcome message, loading dots
3m17secs - Desktop
3m30secs - Usable desktop, finished loading

SHUTDOWN: 25secs

CLONED MACHINE
0sec - OFF
6secs - Loading dots come to screen
15secs - Windows logo disappear, only loading dots remain, black screen
56secs - Loading dots disappear, only black screen
1m16secs - Desktop with stock wallpaper, no buttons, nothing
1m20secs - Welcome message, loading dots
1m40secs - Desktop
1m50secs - Usable desktop, finished loading

SHUTDOWN: 20secs

As you can see, the cloned machine has improved dramatically the booting time. However, it is still FAR-FAR AWAY from the 15secs it used to take at the beginning from OFF to USABLE desktop.

2. I eliminated all the snapshots of the original machine and timed it again. Booting time went up to 4m20secs. Shutdown: 8secs
3. I eliminated all the snapshots of the cloned machine. Booting time went down to 22secs. Shutdown 6secs.

Bottom line: cloned machine improved dramatically the loading time, while keeping the shutdown time almost even with the original machine. When snapshots have been eliminated, original machine loading time has dropped significantly while the loading time of the cloned machine has improved dramatically, getting close to the 15secs I used to have at the beginning while using PD.

What are the conclusions you can draw from this?

Thanks,
Alberto
 
Update:

Cloned VM boots now in 39 seconds, so I already lost 17 secs in one day.
I have re-created a new W10 VM using the .iso file I had downloaded from MS - ver 1511.
It boots in 8 seconds.
Please advise.
Thanks
Alberto
 
Hi Maria,
the VM, with all the snapshots, had a size of 250 GB more or less. The new VM had a size of 10 GB. Actually, the cloned machine, with no snapshot, has a size of 127 GB which is the size I have decided for the machine to be. So, I am not currently sure how PD is designed, but I doubt it is designed in a way to constantly load all the image in memory (considering my Imac has a standard 8GB RAM size) ... I was thinking to recover unused space - roughly 96 GB - from the VM, would this create any problem or would this impact the performance of the machine?

BTW: loading time is increasing again, the hard drive works a lot, is it fragmentation coming into play here?

In addition: the VM has stopped asking what to do when an external hard drive is connected. Now, my external hard drive connects automatically with the Imac and there is no way to connect it to the VM.

Thanks,
Alberto
 
Last edited:
@AlbertoA2, Parallels Desktop latest update 14.1.3has been released yesterday, please update and check the issue with performance.
Also you can find your external drive in Devices-> External devices menu.
 
Hi Maria,

I have updated PD to the latest version but nothing has changed. The cloned VM has reached a loading time from OFF to USABLE DESKTOP of 2m45sec. U-N-B-E-L-I-E-V-A-B-L-E. After cloning, it would load in 22 seconds. It has increased its loading time by almost 8x in few days, with no change at all in the VM. It might be a problem of defragmentation? I have also reduced the size of the VM, freeing up the unused space. Nothing changed. I am really and desperately DISAPPOINTED. TOTALLY.
Alberto
 
Hi Alberto,
you're not alone with this, quite a new number of people report exactly the same issues with the new PD14, me as well. You can find several reports, e.g. Performance problems in Windows 10 after upgrade to v14 . I tried all the suggested changes, to no avail. Didn't try the cloning yet but after your experience it seems to be a waste of time. Unfortunately, the Parallels Team is not able to come up with a solution. I more than regret having moved to PD14 and lost faith in PD.
Time to move to other solutions like vmware etc.
Cheers,
Nanook
 
Hi Nanook,
I get the feeling. It is totally frustrating, considering that PD is a *commercial* software, that we PAY, and not free software. I have the feeling that PD is having fragmentation issues. In fact, while the VM is loading, I hear the hard drive crunch a lot. It did not use to do that before the issue started to pop up. Cloning serves to no purposes, at least it did not serve to me. Immediately after cloning, the machine was loading in 22 seconds. After few days, in almost 3 minutes. Why? Perhaps, PD was not allocating the .pvm file in the most efficient way, fragmenting it too much? I have eliminated all my VMs and installed a new one from scratch (Windows 1809): this VM, now, boots in 11 seconds and shuts down in 5. Size is 18.26 GB. I'll keep you posted if things change.
Anyway, a bit of help from PD team would be appreciated.
Regards,
Alberto
 
Hi,
tried the cloning, despite Alberto's experience and maybe just to try ANYTHING that makes PD usable again. For me it didn't even bring any real benefit in the first boot process of the VM, or the second. A usable desktop (the moment when a mouse click on the Start button doesn't take 5 secs or more anymore to bring up any reaction) is available after ca. 3:35 mins. Login picture after ca. 2:10 mins. Far from PD12.
I can't say anything about hearing disk usage as I have a FusionDrive in my iMac, i.e. combined SSD and HDD, nothing to hear...just waiting, waiting, waiting.
BTW, no reaction on my Technical Report from weeks ago. I'm afraid they have no clue what they did with PD14.
Before I completely set up my VMs again from scratch, I rather use the time to try vmware or VirtualBox. I don't think it can be worse or slower than PD14.
 
The same here since the update to Parallels 14 - iMac, MacOS Sierra, 3.1 GHz, 16 GB RAM, Fusion Drive.
Windows 10 lasts between 6 and 9 minutes.
Windows user interface very very slow

Hello ArtistW, this issue has already escalated to the Tier 2 team and our development team is still investigating this issue internally.

That is now 6 months ago and until today no solution
 
For what it's worth, in the two months since I reported that cloning fixed my issue, my 375GB VM has degraded in performance to the point where I got frustrated enough to clone it again. After cloning, works perfectly and performance is back to normal.

So that's 2 out of 2 successes with cloning for me. Granted this is on the fastest 2018 MBP you can buy, using SSDs and not spinning disks. But at least the issue and the solution appear to be reproducible.
 
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