Windows Cannot Run Smoothly

S

sundevil67

Bit poster
I am wondering if there is anyone out there running Parallels and Windows XP successfully on a Macbook Pro with a 2ghZ processor and 2GB of RAM. It will only allow me to allocate just under 1GB of RAM to Windows XP, but that does not seem to be nearly enough memory to run the operating system. I can launch Windows, but it is too slow to even use. If I try to bump up the memory any more, I receive an error message from Parallels. So far it seems to me that I am going to have to return to straight Bootcamp, and that Parallels just is not an option for me, since I am already using the maximum amount of RAM. Anyone know another way?

Thanks.

sundevil67
 
I am running the same specs, a 2.16GHz Core Duo 17" MBP with 2GB RAM.

I am running windows XP via Parallels 3.0, and I have allocated 512MB of RAM to Windows. It seems to run just fine for pretty much anything I want to do, including running Outlook 2007, Half-Life 2, etc. System response time is fine for most things, and I am not patient.

An important note: I'm running XP via a virtual disk image.

It sounds like you are running XP via a BootCamp install - is this the case?

I was previously running XP in Parallels via my BootCamp install, and on a 5400RPM hard disk.
What I found is that the hard disk is definitely the bottleneck - you can add RAM to it to the maximum limit but it won't help. If you are running a BootCamp install via Parallels, you are going to have performance issues. Since XP is installed on its own physical partition in this case, XP and OSX will be fighting over disk access since you have 2 operating systems vying for the same resource.

If you have a 5400RPM drive this turns out to be unworkable in most cases. I would recommend running Parallels via a virtual disk, or getting a 7200RPM hard drive, or both for optimum performance of the virtual machine.
 
I agree with Koolaidman. With memory for the XP VM, less is more. Try your VM with 512MB or less, and your performance will likely be much better.

This is because Parallels relies on OSX for many of its functions, so you don't want to have OSX starved for memory and swapping out to disk.
 
Parallels via Boot Camp

Thanks for your replies. Actually, since I posted this message, I've been having all sorts of strange problems. I couldn't load Windows through Boot Camp like I used to, and then had some odd error messages. Suddenly now I can load it again, but I think your suggestions make sense. My drive is 7200 RPM; but my question is...can I create a Virtual Machine as recommended, but still hold on to my standard Boot Camp installation allowing me to boot into Windows alone in the future if necessary for whatever reason?

Thanks.

- sundevil67
 
If you create a virtual machine with 512MB, your "real" bootcamp windows machine will always have access to your full 2GB. Us that what you were asking?
 
sundevil67 - Yes, you can have it both ways - you just have enough disk space for your BootCamp partition, OSX, and your virtual machine (which, if you choose expanding virtual disk, will generally stay around 5-10GB unless you're storing a ton of data in it).

However, to 'legally' have XP installed in both BootCamp and a virtual disk, you need 2 XP licenses, or a volume license.
 
Boot Camp

So in other words, now that I've "activated" my copy of XP in Parallels, it probably won't work when I go back to Boot Camp :mad:

My original question...which I think you unintentionally answered anyway...was whether or not I can create the virtual machine without blowing away my original capability of restarting into Windows only through Boot Camp. This is what I am going to have to learn how to do.

Any tips or warnings? It is very weird; last night, it performed MUCH better under the same circumstances. There doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to the slowdown...

Thanks.

sundevil67
 
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