Windows 7 performance tips?

[midlife_crisis]

Hi,

I have a virtual win7 in parallels 6 on my macbook 10.6.4, 2.4Ghz 4GB Ram. While win7 is usable (just), I find I need to shut down most of the mac apps.

I have allocated 1.5GB ram to win7 and tend to run it in Coherence mode, using crystal mode with Aero disabled.

Are there any tips to reduce the memory needed/used with win7 and or parallels settings to things working faster and smoother.

Cheers

 

[xmd]

I've found two things that really work:

RAM (6GB minimum in my Mac, and I give 1GB to the VM)
SSD (I'm using an OCZ Vertex, but newer drives are even faster)

You can tweak and tune windows and get some improvement, but the SSD and plenty of RAM make a *gigantic* difference. Perhaps 5x to 10x faster? It's really shocking the improvement you'll see.