Windows 7 impossibly slow

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Parallels User

I've been using Windows 7 sporadically under Parallels, but only sporadically, because it's often been so painfully slow and balky as to be useless. I just upgraded to Parallels 7.0 hoping that it would smooth out the performance, but if anything, it seems even worse. Apps take forever to load and stall frequently for long periods of time, even right after boot and when nothing else is running. Sometimes applications seem to completely suspend unless one actually clicks on the Desktop to get its attention again.

In addition (and possibly unrelated), while various Macs and other Windows machines in my household are able to see and use a shared printer hanging off one of the Windows boxes, I haven't been able to successfully connect to that same printer from the VM, even though network connectivity otherwise seems OK.

I'm running this on a MacBook with 2.13 GHz Intel Core Duo, 4 GB of RAM, Mac OS X 10.6. I'm allocating 1 CPU and 1 GB of RAM to the VM. I'm aware that memory might well be an issue, but I'm hoping there's a solution before I give up and use a physical Windows machine for the one important application I have that requires Windows.

The performance monitor indicates that about 800 MB of the 1 GB is being used, CPU usage is very low, yet still things run slowly.

Please let me know if there's anything I should still try. Frankly, I'm kinda sorry I just spent the $60 on the Parallels upgrade, since there's no perceptible improvement in anything over version 6.
 
I suggest you to giv it a try and increase RAM assigned to VM (from 1GB to 1,5-2GB). 1GB is necessary for Win7 itself just to run, so it can be not enough. I have 4GB Ram Mac myself ind Win 7 can be lil bit slow sometimes as well - so i personally prefer Win XP for my configuration. This OS requires less memory itself and usually flys.
As for printer issue - go to VM's configuration > hardware > Print > disable Mac's printer sharing, download Apple Bonjour and set up network printer - it is very easy and fast solution.
 
Thanks. I've upped the memory from 1GB to 1.5GB as suggested, and it MAY have made a difference (need more time to really check this out). I like the idea of falling back from Windows 7 to Windows XP; unfortunately, it looks like this would require me to purchase a new copy of XP and "waste" the copy of Windows 7 that I already have.

I will also see whether it's possible to increase the total RAM in my MacBook beyond 4 MB -- I seem to remember that it may be possible to go up to 8 MB.

Grant
 
My problem seems to have started after I updated Parallels desktop 7 to the latest version and to Mountain Lion. I also got a IRQL_Not_Less_Or_Equal error on windows 7. I have little clue what to do.
 
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