Parallels and the Whining Hard Drive on MacBook Pro

E

enthios

Member
Just recently, my hard drive starts whining loudly when I am running PDM. This did not used to happen before. I have read in the Apple forum that the "whining" sound has been an issue with some of their MacBook Pro's. In my case, it ONLY occurs when I am running PDM. When I close it down, the "whining" sound stops and my computer is completely silent.

So I am wondering what it is, in PDM, that triggers this.

- I am using the MacBookPro 17", which never had any whining issues before.
- The whining sound might not be the hard drive. It might be a cooling fan.
- I've also noticed that when PDM is running, the batter life is cut in half, from 4+ hours to about 2. So something is 'working overtime.'

Any suggestions? I'll post this in the Apple forum as well.
 
So.

First of all grab yourself Menu-Meters from version tracker.

Great little program that allows you to put CPU Usage (both cores individually), network throughput, memory usage and Disk usage in your menu bar.

Now you can see what is going on, I am also assuming you also have CoreDuoTemp so you can see the temperature of your CPU?

I have the same MacBook as you and occasionally it will whine, when it is I have tracked it down to a couple of runaway process's which I cannot track to any particular application.

A reboot normally clears it and the MacBook is then fine.

Only happened 2-3 times.

But the indications where runaway CPU as shown by Menu-Meters driving to an excessively hot CPU.

Cheers.

Robin
 
I had to turn off windows sharing, or the process would eat most of the cpu time and created
a 6GB log in less than a week owning a MB, even though I had no windows machine accessing the MB.
 
riconjh, how do you turn off windows sharing? And by turning it off, exactly what functionality are you giving up?

Thanks...
 
rinconj said:
I had to turn off windows sharing, or the process would eat most of the cpu time and created
a 6GB log in less than a week owning a MB, even though I had no windows machine accessing the MB.
Click to expand...

Damn, your right, I had to turn that off as well.

SIGNIFICANTLY lower CPU usage with this disabled.

Robin
 
Robster said:
Damn, your right, I had to turn that off as well.

SIGNIFICANTLY lower CPU usage with this disabled.

Robin
Click to expand...


This is really interesting that both of you are getting a major difference in CPU use by turning off Samba in the Mac. I tried this myself, and it did not seem to be making any difference for me, so I am wondering about what is the difference between our setups that accounts for this different behaviour?

Are you using bridged or host-only networking (I'm using host-only)?

Also, you say the CPU usage improves after turning off Samba, even if the windows machine never accessed the Mac side. Does that mean the windows side has NEVER accessed the Mac side, or just not since the last time you restarted that machine?

I ask because I have noticed sometimes after accessing the Mac from within windows that I get major slowdowns in my Windows system that persists until I reboot windows (but I had not noticed a change in Parallel's CPU usage), so I'm wondering whether turning off sharing on the Mac after completing my file transfer might improve the situation.

Thanks!
 
It was Windows sharing I turned off, is this Samba?

I am not sure.

I started to use Windows sharing in one of the beta's as I was having problems with Folder sharing.

In a later version this problem went away but I forgot to turn off Windows sharing and the CPU usage just came on at different time and I don't know why, I don't think I accessed it.

Anyway, turning it off means my system usage is significantly lower and everything runs better because of it.

Robin
 
If you unchecked the Windows Sharing in the sharing system preference in Mac OS X, that was samba...

And did it increase CPU usage only when Parallels was running???
 
I am not 100% sure.

But I think it started using excessive CPU while Parallels was running.

It was still doing so after I closed Parallels but I never gve it too much time to see if it settled down.

I rebooted and it went away for a while.

Robin
 
Core processes are shown with the Apple Utility Activity Monitor which I keep loaded in the dock. The pie shape dock icon can be shown there and if that goes red (which mine never has with Bootcamp) then I know I have a problem. Battery life is a problem for another reason in Bootcamp.

The screen save feature is not working, in fact power management is screwy. Could that be your problem as well? I have had the fan turn on occaisionally and my MBP runs way hotter with Bootcamp than OS X.
 
I found the solution:

I had three instances of Internet Explorer open in Parallel. When I closed those down, the whining stopped and the temperature immediately dropped from 180 to 162.

This just confirms why I hate IE.

By the way, I'm running six other applications in the XP window, some of which have high demand on system resources (online trading) but they all run smoothly - now that IE has been closed down.
 
Hey Robster, thanks for your reply. As bobbyt pointed out, "Samba" is the same as "Windows Sharing" in Mac sharing preferences.

I wonder if the slowdown you were noticing was a result of having both Parallel's shared folders and Mac windows sharing going at the same time? If you temporarily turn off the shared folders from the parallel's control panel and then restart the VM, does the switching off and on the Windows Sharing (Samba) make the same difference as before?
 
I must admit I have not tried.

I have had a pretty stable system now for a few weeks and I am loathe to muck around with it. :(

Robin
 
MacBook Whine as Well (Delay in Windows)

Although I am happy so far with PD I still have one complaint. While running Windows XPP with PD, the hard drive starts whining loudly then goes quiet and then starts whining again. This cycle continues as long as Windows is running in PD, even if I have no open programs in Windows. Once Windows is closed the whining stops. Now the problem isn't the whine, its the fact that every time the drive goes from whine to stop and from stop to whine, I get a 3-5 second freeze in windows. Although this is just mildly annoying, I would love to know if anyone can give me a clue as to how to make this stop.

- I am using the MacBook 13", which never had any whining issues before.
- The whining sound could be a cooling fan. (It seems to originate from the top right corner of the MacBook.)


Raymond
:confused:
 
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