Variable performance w/XP?

iduff

iduff

Hunter
MBP Core Duo, 2.33GHz, 2GB, Parallels 3188, XP SP2, all the common OS X and XP performance tricks applied.

So here's the issue: performance of XP is sometimes lightning fast, other times dog slow. Nothing going on with the MBP can make this predictable. CPU in Activity Monitor is always reasonable, Run the XP VM right after a cold boot so nothing else could be leaking, and still it's invredibly variable. Frustrating. This was a bad day to stop sniffing glue.

Any ideas where I might look, or what I might look for?
 
performance issues with dock ?

Try the following which worked well for me : I have seen that disabling the function "show applications in Dock" slows down (stops with mac spinning wheel) for about 3 seconds for EVERY window that closes in XP. Enabling back the function has restored performance. This with Full Screen view, running build 3188.
J.
 
Julien, "Show apps in Dock" closed slows down performance while XP is not doing anything? The variable performance I find is in every aspect from starting an app (Parallels/XP, an app in XP, or a native OS X app). sometimes its fine, other times everything is SLOOOWWWW.

It sounds like you might mean that closing XP apps is slow if the apps are not showing in the dock, or it might mean that for every XP app you have closed, a performance hit of about 3 seconds can be expected, even after the XP app has been closed for a while. I must not have had enough coffee, as your post is unclear to me. Sorry.
 
So, I've run all the tools in OnyX, started in Safe mode then back into normal mode, removed almost all the OS X desktop icons, removed almost all the widgets, deleted most of the unused apps, booted off a DVD and run iDefrag, and in XP i've run all the usual spyware and virus scanners and run the IOBit defrag tool and the sysinternals page defrag tool.

XP in Parallels right now is competing only with Firefox and Mail.app for OS X resources, apart from the stuff that loads at boot, and the technical term for how XP is performing right now is CRAPPY.

Actually, that raises in interesting point. Back in the day on DOS or early Windoze, TSRs were a major PITA. How well does OS X deal with these load-at-boot run-in-the-system-bar apps? Activity Monitor does not show them using much memory or CPU, might they still be an issue? Most are useful, needed almost, so I'm loathe to part with them (Groupcal, MissingSync, Shimo, Growl, OSXPlanet, ClamXav, SMARTreporter, iCyclone, PGP).

Parallels is donsuming in the 15-30% CPU range right now, according to Activity Monitor, which seems fine, but it is Wicked Slow. I mean Really Slow. In case I wasn't clear, Unusably Slow. Would you like to know how I really feel?

Thoughts? Hints? Places to look? Bueller?
 
Have you tried just making a basic install of new VM to see how it runs?

Also, what kind of load are you putting on Mail.app? Lotsa of disk writes perhaps? What kind of HD are you using?
 
Good thoughts, I'll check and report back.

On that track, can you recommend any performance monitoring tools for OS X that offer logging, and offer tracking performance of individual processes (CPU, disk, memory, etc)? Activity Monitor is nice eye candy, but not much more.
 
Oops, sorry, the HD is what came with my 15" MBP. System Profiler reports it's an Hitachi HTS721010G9SA00, a quick Google search says it's a 7200RPM, 100GB, Serial ATA drive with an 8MB cache. No slouch, but not the fastest kid on the block. It's just been defragged, too, with iDefrag from a boot DVD.

Given that disk is frequently the performance bottleneck in other situations, and I can sure hear it cranking away, I bet you're on the right track. However, performance is weird even without Mail.app running. So, if that's the case, it sounds to me like there's some paging going on. My MBP is maxed out at 2GB RAM, so whatever I do, it has to involve some tuning and optimization, not adding more memory.
 
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