Parallels8/Windows7: Slow VM Start-Up Time

R

RCipolla

Bit poster
I suspect the time it takes to go from the initial Mac Dock Icon 'click' to being able to work in Windows7 is taking far too long.
In my case, it is consistently 6 minutes, +/- a few seconds.
Please review - let me know how this compares to your experience, if there are glaring start-up time differences, any possible solutions, and if none - where I might go with this (possible) problem.
Many thanks in advance-
-RC

Hardware Facts:
2009 MacBookPro
2.52GHZ Core Duo 1067 Mhz DDR3
8MB RAM
MacOS 10.8.3
250GB Drive, 30GB Free

Virtual Machine Settings:
4096MB allocated to Windows7
Start-up View: Coherence
Faster VM, Hypervisor Enabled, Tuned for speed
Video: 1GB
HD: 80GB allocated, 44.6GB used
Parallels8, up-to-date

Typical Start-up Timeline (min:sec)
Segment time/Total elapsed time

*click - Parallels Dock Icon*
Time to gray Windows7 'Click to Start' screen - 1:05/1:05

*click - Parallels Start Screen*
Time to appearance of Windows7 black start-up screen with "Microsoft (c)" notice - 0:53/1:58

Time to Windows7 Blue Screen w/ Log-In Icon - 1:02/3:00

*click - Windows7 Log-In (no password)*
Time to appearance of Windows7 desktop - 1:34/4:34

Time to Parallels "Starting Coherence" notice - 1:23/5:57

Time to application usability - 0:05/6:02

(Note: I have run CCleaner registry check/repair on Windows7, Verified/Repaired Permissions on MacOS, no impact apparent).
 
It all depends if you have enough free RAM when you start the VM, if not it will start paging and become slow. Check Activity Monitor before you start the VM, issue a purge command in the terminal.app to free inactive RAm then run this test again to see if it takes teh same time.
 
I often re-launch Parallels after rebooting my MBP once Parallels gets sluggish. That said, I did as suggested, and then relaunched Parallels after rebooting the machine, and checking/purging RAM (made no diff, 1.68GB used before & after purge and at start, CPU 94% idle, no other programs running).
Results:
Somewhat worse:
10 sec faster to gray Win7 Click to start screen :55
Same time to Microsoft copyright notice 1:58
2 sec sooner to Win7 log-in icon 2:58
40 seconds sooner to appearance of Win desktop 3:54 vs 4:34 ... looking better... then...
Total time to Coherence notice took longer 6:17 vs 5:57
Then total time to app usability (point where clicking on double-red Parallels stripe launches Win menu) 6:45 vs prior 6:02
Note: The only programs set to launch at Win startup:
Microsoft Security Client
Parallels Tools 8.0
Thoughts?
Much appreciated.
 
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