Start up CPU Usage and lauching from Dock

M

MarkH

Junior Member
Hi,

I think this is my first post, but I have been using Parallels since 2006 running Windows XP. I have two questions about Parallels 4.

When I upgraded to Parallels 4, I decided to try out the dual CPU option, and it does seem to make MS Money (the only app I really use regularly) a bit more responsive. However, during bootup, Parallels uses 200% CPU and then continues to use a very high CPU percentage for 5 - 10 mins after Windows boots. Obviously if I am on a battery, I can lose a lot juice, just for booting up Windows for 15 mins. I didn't notice this issue in Parallels 3. Is there anyway of capping CPU usage on the virtual machine. There is no way XP should ever need all of my CPU.

The other question is that I seem to have lost the ability to launch XP applications from OS X. This happened when I temporarily delete Parallels and the virtual machine from my HDD to make some room, and then later restored it from Time Machine.

If I mount the XP HDD, then try and launch an app, I get the error that HDD1 is locked and cannot be accessed, and Windows doesn't boot.

Is there ay way of restoring explorer in OS X so I can peg MS Money to the dock again, without reinstalling the whole VM.

Thanks in advance.
 
Mark, try removing Windows Applications folder from inside the .pvm bundle (by default /Documents/Parallels/<VM name>.pvm, right-click the .pvm file and choose Show package contents, delete Windows Applications folder). Then reassign the applications and see if it works
 
MarkH said:
Hi,

I think this is my first post, but I have been using Parallels since 2006 running Windows XP. I have two questions about Parallels 4.

When I upgraded to Parallels 4, I decided to try out the dual CPU option, and it does seem to make MS Money (the only app I really use regularly) a bit more responsive. However, during bootup, Parallels uses 200% CPU and then continues to use a very high CPU percentage for 5 - 10 mins after Windows boots. Obviously if I am on a battery, I can lose a lot juice, just for booting up Windows for 15 mins. I didn't notice this issue in Parallels 3. Is there anyway of capping CPU usage on the virtual machine. There is no way XP should ever need all of my CPU.

Thanks in advance.
Click to expand...

Please make sure that you have the latest build, this issue is fixed in 3844:
 
I checked my build number and it was 3810. Running auto update didn't find a later version, so I downloaded it manually from the link you provided, thanks for that. Do you know why it wouldn't be keeping em up to date automatically?

Anyway, the new update seems to have done the trick. I still get 200% CPU use for about 10 seconds just as the machine is starting, but it soon goes down to about 15%.

Also, I managed to find a shortcut to MS Money and pin it to the dock after your suggestion.
 
MarkH said:
I checked my build number and it was 3810. Running auto update didn't find a later version, so I downloaded it manually from the link you provided, thanks for that. Do you know why it wouldn't be keeping em up to date automatically?
Click to expand...

Hard to say, probably some connection problems...

Anyway, the new update seems to have done the trick. I still get 200% CPU use for about 10 seconds just as the machine is starting, but it soon goes down to about 15%.

Also, I managed to find a shortcut to MS Money and pin it to the dock after your suggestion.
Click to expand...

Glad that it helped.
 
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