Parallels Desktop 12, MacOS Sierra & Win10

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HarryR2

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Upgraded to Parallels Desktop 12 and installed MacOS Sierra. WOW! Screen redraw in Windows is slower than a herd of snails traveling through peanut butter. Guest was set to DX10. Tried DX9, no discernible change. Tried disabling DirectX and just a crumb better, now really really choppy screen redraws. Notice it the most when moving a window around in the guest OS, or if an app highlights rows on mouse hover, its like slow motion.

Do not upgrade to Desktop 12 and MacOS Sierra until this gets sorted out. Its painfully slow.

Was using Parallels Desktop 11, OS X El Capitan with Windows 10 Enterprise x64 as the guest OS on a Macbook Pro Retina 15 Late 2013. Almost everything worked great (built in iSight camera wasn't available in the guest OS).
 
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Found a good benchmark that demonstrates the problem. I expect the VM to perform a little slower than the host machine, but this is crazy. It is an accurate representation of the performance of the graphics in Parallels Desktop 12. As I said, it was fine in Desktop 11. In Desktop 12 host graphics are now about... 2,000% faster? Is that math correct?

Benchmark: http://oortonline.gl/#run

Native MacOS, in Firefox - took about a minute to run:
Lake 2,480 / Snow 2,500 / Rain 2,500 / Sunset 2,500 / Total: 9,980

Firefox in Win10 x64 under Parallels Desktop 12 - took about 20 minutes to run:
Lake 120 / Snow 110 / Rain 130 / Sunset 120 / Total 480
 
Having the same issue here. When using Retina or External Monitor Windows is pretty much unusable. The only way I can get it to perform well is using 'Scaled'.. which is not pretty, but at least it works like a charm.
When on Retina or External mode, my parallels process is constantly in the 200-300% CPU usage.
As a config, I am on a 2015 MBP 15" Retina, with an external LG HD 4K display over displayport.
 
I have an iMac late 2011 and Microsoft says that it is not compatible with Windows 10. I posted a question on this on the Apple support community and got a reply that using Parallels would allow Windows 10 to work on my iMAc. Does anyone know if this is true? I don't want to buy Windows 10 only to find out this is incorrect.
 
StefanC1 said:
Having the same issue here. When using Retina or External Monitor Windows is pretty much unusable. The only way I can get it to perform well is using 'Scaled'.. which is not pretty, but at least it works like a charm.
When on Retina or External mode, my parallels process is constantly in the 200-300% CPU usage.
As a config, I am on a 2015 MBP 15" Retina, with an external LG HD 4K display over displayport.
Click to expand...

I wound up using "Scaled" as well, but it is still extremely slow with window handling. The above benchmark I posted was run using "Scaled".
 
HarryR2 said:
Upgraded to Parallels Desktop 12 and installed MacOS Sierra. WOW! Screen redraw in Windows is slower than a herd of snails traveling through peanut butter. Guest was set to DX10. Tried DX9, no discernible change. Tried disabling DirectX and just a crumb better, now really really choppy screen redraws. Notice it the most when moving a window around in the guest OS, or if an app highlights rows on mouse hover, its like slow motion.

Do not upgrade to Desktop 12 and MacOS Sierra until this gets sorted out. Its painfully slow.

Was using Parallels Desktop 11, OS X El Capitan with Windows 10 Enterprise x64 as the guest OS on a Macbook Pro Retina 15 Late 2013. Almost everything worked great (built in iSight camera wasn't available in the guest OS).
Click to expand...

Thank god someone else is having the exact problem with Parallel 12. SOOOO LAGGY. Moving windows on Windows 10 screen is extremely laggy. Any scrolling is laggy, mouse right click to bring up menu is laggy, selecting item on menu is laggy. This is painful for a developer o_O. Please fix.

This is the first time ever that I have to DOWNGRADE o_O my Parallels installation. Not happy.

Also, a couple of things missing too
  1. Keystroke of control-option to bring up Parallels menu no longer available. Please bring this back.
  2. in 'Full Screen' mode, it is forces the VM to run in another Mac OS X's Desktop, making it unable to overlay any Mac OS X windows on top of the VM. This is because in Parallels 12, Options, the Full Screen setting is now missing. In previous version like Parallels 11, under Options -> Full Screen, one can chose 'Use OS X Full Screen', or not. This option is no longer available. Please bring back.
Parallels version: ParallelsDesktop-12.0.1-41296.dmg
Mac OS X version: Sierra 10.12
Machine: MBP 15, Mid-2014, i7, 2.5GHz, 16GB RAM
Windows version: Windows 10
 
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Why is Parallels telling people to upgrade to Desktop 12 when they know its broken? I just received an email from Parallels advertising Desktop 12. Before I upgraded, Desktop 11 was advertising Desktop 12 upgrade. People shouldn't pay to beta test software.
 
Having same issue. Performance under Windows 10, w/Sierra with Parallels 12 is HORRIBLE..

Please fix.
 
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I'm having the exact same problem. Windows 10 is completely unusable and I'm going to have to downgrade to Desktop 10 to get my machine back to a usable system, Desktop 12 is a joke :mad:
 
I am having the same problem. Installed update released today. Still using El Capitan. Using on a 5K iMac with 16GB ram. El Capitan works fine if I don't start Parallels.
 
I keep getting pinged to upgrade from Parallels v11 to v12. v11 seems to work just fine with Sierra Windows 10 and so forth. Why would I upgrade if this is the performance I can expect? Does anyone have a solution to this? Not going to upgrade until performance is fixed.
 
I wish I'd read these comments before upgrading. I have the same experience: MacOS Sierra with Win 10 on Parallels 12 is really slow. Windows dragging now has a very irritating lag. If we don't see a fix very soon, I'll shift my Windows programs onto a remote server (e.g. Amazon AWS) and just drop Parallels altogether.
 
Full ACK to posts #1 and #7!
Please fix fast!
Have not jet examined if the problem is specific to a multi-monitor-installation. I use a Late2014-5K-iMac with two external monitors, 2560x1600 Pixel connected via DisplayPort to Thunderbolt2 and 3840x2160@30Hz connected via HDMI and a Belkin Thunderbolt-2-Dock. I use three virtual machines with Windows 7, 8.1 and 10 simultaneously. They all worked fine with Parallels 11 and went laggy with exactly the symptoms described in post #1 as soon as I updated to Parallels 12.

"Scaled" graphic mode is the only one that works. In "Retina"- and "optimized for external monitor"-mode there is a mismatch between physical and logical mouse-cursor position or the screen simply is black and shows nothing at all. Using different scalings (200% on the retina-screen and 100% on the two others) does not work, too. Although it is described as a new feature of P12.

Switching between VMs and / or OSX sometimes has long delay before the VM is responding again or leeds to a malfunctioning keyboard, which believes to be in a "selection"-mode and selects all items you move the mouse-cursor over. None of these ever happened with P11 !

I am very disappointed! What is the easiest way to downgrade to P11 again without losing anything?

Suggestions anyone? Thank you in advance!

DannyZ1 said:
Thank god someone else is having the exact problem with Parallel 12. SOOOO LAGGY. Moving windows on Windows 10 screen is extremely laggy. Any scrolling is laggy, mouse right click to bring up menu is laggy, selecting item on menu is laggy. This is painful for a developer o_O. Please fix.
...
Also, a couple of things missing too
1. Keystroke of control-option to bring up Parallels menu no longer available. Please bring this back.
2. in 'Full Screen' mode, it is forces the VM to run in another Mac OS X's Desktop, making it unable to overlay any Mac OS X windows on top of the VM. This is because in Parallels 12, Options, the Full Screen setting is now missing. In previous version like Parallels 11, under Options -> Full Screen, one can chose 'Use OS X Full Screen', or not. This option is no longer available. Please bring back.
Click to expand...
 
BurkhardP said:
Full ACK to posts #1 and #7!
Please fix fast!
Have not jet examined if the problem is specific to a multi-monitor-installation. I use a Late2014-5K-iMac with two external monitors, 2560x1600 Pixel connected via DisplayPort to Thunderbolt2 and 3840x2160@30Hz connected via HDMI and a Belkin Thunderbolt-2-Dock. I use three virtual machines with Windows 7, 8.1 and 10 simultaneously. They all worked fine with Parallels 11 and went laggy with exactly the symptoms described in post #1 as soon as I updated to Parallels 12.

"Scaled" graphic mode is the only one that works. In "Retina"- and "optimized for external monitor"-mode there is a mismatch between physical and logical mouse-cursor position or the screen simply is black and shows nothing at all. Using different scalings (200% on the retina-screen and 100% on the two others) does not work, too. Although it is described as a new feature of P12.

Switching between VMs and / or OSX sometimes has long delay before the VM is responding again or leeds to a malfunctioning keyboard, which believes to be in a "selection"-mode and selects all items you move the mouse-cursor over. None of these ever happened with P11 !

I am very disappointed! What is the easiest way to downgrade to P11 again without losing anything?

Suggestions anyone? Thank you in advance!
Click to expand...

Personally, I simply went to Applications folder in my Mac, delete "Parallels Desktop.app".
Download the older version of Parallels Desktop 11 (http://www.parallels.com/directdownload/pd11/)
Install, and then Parallels will sort itself out by re-installing Parallels Tools on your Windows VM once VM started.
NOTE: Please shutdown all your VMs properly before proceeding. And alway back them up as a precaution.
Hope this helps.
 
Perhaps I have found a solution / a workaround:

I simply changed my mouse! Since many years I use a Logitech G500 Mouse. It is a wired USB mouse connected to my mac via a seven-port usb-hub. I simply stopped using it. It is still connected to my iMac but now I use the original Apple-bluetooth-mouse or the Apple-bluetooth-touchpad and moving windows or scrolling in menus is fast again.

My settings for keyboard and mouse are:
- no game optimization for mouse
- no sticky mouse cursor
- no smooth scrolling
- yes game optimization for keyboard (without this, pressing "shift-1" often produces a "1" instead of a "!")

All my software is up to date (OSX, Parallels, Windows) with the latest available patches.

Can anyone confirm my finding?

@parallels-support-team: Any idea what happened to the mouse-driver /-routines between P11 and P12?

Addition: Connecting the Logitech G500 mouse directly to an iMac-USB-Port makes no difference.
 
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Another work around for the window dragging lag, without replacing your mouse is:
Configure the VM
Hardware tab
Boot Order
Advanced Settings
Boot flags: devices.usb.mouse=0

That will get rid of the window dragging lag. It does nothing for the poor video rendering performance however.
 
HarryR2 said:
Another work around for the window dragging lag, without replacing your mouse is:
Configure the VM
Hardware tab
Boot Order
Advanced Settings
Boot flags: devices.usb.mouse=0

That will get rid of the window dragging lag. It does nothing for the poor video rendering performance however.
Click to expand...

Yes, it works with my G500-mouse. Thank you! As an explanation for this boot flag I found "disables virtual mouse" (http://apple.stackexchange.com/ques...flags-available-for-parallels-desktop-for-mac). Are there known side-effects? Is there some further information about these parameters?
 
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