Parallels 4 Slower Than 3 - Tips Welcome!

L

lahaina

Junior Member
I have been running Parallels 3 with XP on an old MacBook Pro 15" with 2GB of memory. I recently bought a new MacBook Pro 17" unibody with 4GB of memory and installed Parallals 4, converting the original VM to the new file format. I have spent lots of time fiddling with configuration parameters for the Parallels 4 VM, trying to replicate and even to optimize them over the older installation on the older, slower machine. So far, using a stopwatch to time various operations I have been unable to find a configuration wherein Parallels 4 is any faster on the new machine than Parallels 3 on the older one. In fact, I find that it is slightly slower on the new machine.

After trying to account for all the variables, caching, drive speeds, etc. I am stumped and giving some thought to actually downgrading. Before doing so, I thought i would ask for some tips here on optimization. If anyone has some ideas or solutions I would be most thankful!

Gary (lahaina)
 
Hello,

Please follow the steps below in regards to the issue:

1. The easiest way to fix the problem and get fast OS boot time again is to leave the VM being idle for 30-60 minutes.OS starts to optimize itself after ~30 minutes of being idle.

2. Run cmd.exe (shell interpreter) and execute the following command:

start /wait Rundll32.exe advapi32.dll,ProcessIdleTasks

This command takes 2-3 minutes to complete after that applications and OS will be optimized out again.

3. Disable Smart Mount. You can disable smart mount by clicking on Virtual Machine -> Configure -> Smart Mount.


If the steps given above do not work then please follow the steps below:

1. Launch Parallels Desktop but do not start Windows.

2. Click on Parallels Desktop tab on top menu bar, select Memory, choose "Automatic" and click OK.

3. Select Configure on virtual machine screen or from virtual machine tab.

4. In Configuration Editor, select Memory, adjust it to 1536MB and click OK. Also try with 2GB of Memory.

5. Open Configuration Editor, select Video, adjust it to the recommended range and click OK.

6. Open Configuration Editor, select Smartmount and disable it and click OK.

7. In Configuration Editor, select Optimization and enable "Adaptive Hypervisor" and click OK. Also check with disabled "Adaptive Hypervisor"

Note: You need to perform above steps one by one, otherwise the changes will not take effect in Configuration Editor if done all at once.
 
Hello,

Please follow these steps in regards to the issue:

Restart MAC, don't start any applications. Uninstall Parallels Desktop using the .dmg file.
Now, please follow these steps :

1. Open Finder.
2. Go to Applications/Utilities/Disk Utilities.
3. Choose MAC HD.
4. Choose repair disk permissions.
After running the repair disk permissions , restart the computer. Install Parallels Desktop.

http://kb.wisc.edu/helpdesk/page.php?id=3810
 
Anupama A,

This procedure resulted in the following:

Uninstall/reinstall procedure was without incident.
Permissions found nothing to correct.
XP booting is now only slightly slower on V4 than with V3.
Application launch speeds are on par with V3.

Thus, I am not going to revert to V3. However, the advertised speed boost is not apparent whatsoever on my machine.

Thanks for your help,
Gary
 
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