Resume stops at 60% with Windows XP

Discussion in 'Windows Virtual Machine' started by aziom, Oct 21, 2010.

  1. aziom

    aziom Bit poster

    Messages:
    2
    I currently use Parallels Desktop 6.0.11822 but the problem also occurred in version 5.

    When resuming it gets up to 60% very quickly and stops there for a few minutes. While it has stopped, my Mac is VERY slow - with all applications.

    I have an iMac 24 inch, 2.8GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 4GB RAM, with Mac OD X 10.6.4 and Windows XP with all the updates applied.

    I have two guest copies of Windows XP but I don't run them at the same time. Sometimes the first one resumes more quickly but then I suspend it and try to resume the second one and it takes forever to resume. Always getting stuck on 60%.

    Even after quitting Parallels, my Mac continues to run slowly. I have to reboot to fix the problem.

    Can anyone help?

    Thanks
     
  2. kelleysislander

    kelleysislander Bit poster

    Messages:
    1
    I have the exact same problem

    I was wondering if anybody from Parallels looks at these forums for unanswered questions.

    Cheers,

    Bill
     
  3. bvila@umich.edu

    bvila@umich.edu Member

    Messages:
    30
    I seem to be experiencing the same problem, but with XP and Win7. Both get to 60%, then sit there for about 5 minutes. When they finally resume, everything is incredibly slow. I'm hearing the hard drive cranking away a lot, which makes me think I'm out of RAM (3GB iMac). But it can't be a coincidence that we're both hanging at 60%. I didn't experience this at all with the old version of Parallels. Sadly, I haven't found a solution.
     
  4. devx

    devx Bit poster

    Messages:
    8
    To everybody in this thread.

    1. Please start Activity Monitor before Virtual Machine resume.
    2. Find "Swap used" parameter on "System memory" tab.
    3. Start resuming VM.
    4. If you see "Swap used" to be increasing heavily (like hundreds of Mbytes) then you experience memory exhaustion on the host and Parallels have nothing to do with that. See explanation below.
    If "Swap used" has not grown *after* resume and resume time is still very high (>2min), then please contact me or support and demonstrate the issue.

    Explanation of the issue
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

    There are 2 most likely explanations for your problem:

    1. You have assigned more RAM to VM than your host can bare. For 2Gb host 512Mb is recommended (ok, 700Mb max for W7!). For 4Gb host - 1.5Gb is maximum for comfortable work, 1Gb is even recommended.

    2. Some Mac applications leak memory in uncontrollable way. From our experience, in most cases this is Safari or Firefox with *Flash* plugin who are to blame. This is not much visible since memory leaks not that fast and swap out rate is somewhat low enough to affect performance noticeably.

    However, on VM resume a lot of memory is needed by Parallels at once and this leads to heavy and huge swap out. As a result one can hear cranky sounds from hard drive and observe slow resume (minutes). Even MacOS is slow/slugish during VM resume, since it swap outs a lot of apps and libraries even those which are not really guilty. Typically even if you stop Parallels after that, MacOS will behave slow for a long time cause it will swap in its executables/libraries from the disk back (on demand! you click - it loads back the needed data...).

    If after MacOS reboot resume is fast, then this is another prove that you experience this issue #2.

    How to workaround the problem? Close these applications from time to time using Cmd-Q (Quit) command. Just closing application window or Tab in your browser DOESN'T HELP!
     
    Last edited: Mar 3, 2011
  5. gabebearg

    gabebearg Bit poster

    Messages:
    2
    Definitely not RAM exhaustion. I still have 2GB of RAM free when it hangs forever at 60%, and it I have basically the same amount after it FINALLY loads.
     
  6. dev@parallels.com

    dev@parallels.com Parallels Developers

    Messages:
    54
    So, how many RAM is assigned to your VM and how many seconds it takes to resume?
     
  7. gabebearg

    gabebearg Bit poster

    Messages:
    2
    Ram

    I had 3GB of RAM given to the VM(Win7) on my Macbook with 8GB of physical RAM with very little else running with ~2GB RAM free (plus lots of more RAM inactive).
     
  8. dev@parallels.com

    dev@parallels.com Parallels Developers

    Messages:
    54
    Depending on your disk speed I would say that such a VM may resume up to ~60sec (3Gb / 50Mb/sec = 60sec).
    How long it takes in your case? What disk read speed Activity Monitor reports during resume?
     

Share This Page