Tuning Vista & Parallels

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ehamburg

Member
I think I have found a "sweet spot" for my usage of Vista Business under Parallels (currently 3188). I am running on a MBP 2.0 CoreDuo with 2 GB memory.

A while back I gained some improvement by setting Vista preferences to "adjust for best performance" (keeping "Use visual styles on windows and buttons" checked so it doesn't look like Windows 2000), but that still didn't quite do it. After reading some threads here I've now changed the amount of memory (in Parallels Preferences) that is allocated to Parallels from "Automatic" to "Manual" and fixed the allocation down to 920 MB. I am running the Vista VM with 512 MB memory allocated. With this configuration I have experienced a significant improvement in Vista's response.

(It would be nice if ReadyBoost in Vista worked under Parallels to help with paging, but as far as I can tell the driver support is not yet there.)

I hear all you folks out there saying "why run Vista when XP is just fine", and to some degree you have a point. I've found however that Vista and Parallels can be tuned to run quite adequately, at least for my needs. I still live about 95% of the time in OS X, but when I have client work that demands that I use Windows apps, this combination works for me.
 
Auto updates for Vista

Do you use the automatic update feature of Vista? I've turned it off because I'm afraid an update will come through that will cause a fatal error of Vista/parallels.
 
HFranks said:
Do you use the automatic update feature of Vista? I've turned it off because I'm afraid an update will come through that will cause a fatal error of Vista/parallels.
Click to expand...

I have not turned auto update off.
 
ehamburg said:
I think I have found a "sweet spot" for my usage of Vista Business under Parallels (currently 3188). I am running on a MBP 2.0 CoreDuo with 2 GB memory.

A while back I gained some improvement by setting Vista preferences to "adjust for best performance" (keeping "Use visual styles on windows and buttons" checked so it doesn't look like Windows 2000), but that still didn't quite do it. After reading some threads here I've now changed the amount of memory (in Parallels Preferences) that is allocated to Parallels from "Automatic" to "Manual" and fixed the allocation down to 920 MB. I am running the Vista VM with 512 MB memory allocated. With this configuration I have experienced a significant improvement in Vista's response.

(It would be nice if ReadyBoost in Vista worked under Parallels to help with paging, but as far as I can tell the driver support is not yet there.)

I hear all you folks out there saying "why run Vista when XP is just fine", and to some degree you have a point. I've found however that Vista and Parallels can be tuned to run quite adequately, at least for my needs. I still live about 95% of the time in OS X, but when I have client work that demands that I use Windows apps, this combination works for me.
Click to expand...
I have done the same, adjusted for best performance as you have. The vm is currently configured for 640 MB RAM.

Everything is OK, but I see so much hard-disk activity and I think it is what is ultimately slowing down Vista and OS X as well.

I wonder if some services can be stopped or disable do save more RAM and processing? There are so many, it's hard to say which are necessary and which are not

D
 
darreln said:
I have done the same, adjusted for best performance as you have. The vm is currently configured for 640 MB RAM.

Everything is OK, but I see so much hard-disk activity and I think it is what is ultimately slowing down Vista and OS X as well.

I wonder if some services can be stopped or disable do save more RAM and processing? There are so many, it's hard to say which are necessary and which are not

D
Click to expand...

Visit "blackviper.com" for more info than you'd ever want on "windows xp services". I have gained noticable speed improvements by following his guidelines.
 
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