Windows is very sluggish

A

AlekseyM2

Member
After the recent updates Windows guest OS became very sluggish. Sometimes I click Windows explorer and the explorer window will freeze for a few seconds. This is extremely annoying. I paid for the latest Parallels update, but it works very slow. Over the year Parallels is becoming less and less reliable. When I started using it in 2016, it worked almost like a native Windows, but now it freezes here and there.
 
Often times when I select a number of files in a folder and try to delete then, the system shows "Unresponsive" message.
 
Welcome to the club...
If you search through the forum (Windows Guest OS) you'll find lots of similar complaints since PD14. Look for "Windows slow" or "hangs". My W10 VM went from 30s boot time to approx. 5 mins. Apparently Parallels has no clue how to solve that, mostly just keeps you busy with "File a report" but nothing changes. I wouldn't spend a nickel on Parallels until there is proof that they can solve it.
 
I am sorry, I do not have time to go over all topics. This problem did not happen before. I suspect that this has something to do with stricter access control on new macOS'es. My guess is that Parallels tries to get access to some data that is not accessible and gets stack in waiting. I wish I could fix this myself.
 
I am not sure if this is a co-incidence, but today Parallels tools updated automatically and it seems to work faster. I am not sure about the tools because apart from that I ran windows updates, restarted the system multiple times and made some adjustments in the virtual machine control panel. I actually changed virtual machine settings back to what it was before.
 
AlekseyM2 said:
I am not sure if this is a co-incidence, but today Parallels tools updated automatically and it seems to work faster. I am not sure about the tools because apart from that I ran windows updates, restarted the system multiple times and made some adjustments in the virtual machine control panel. I actually changed virtual machine settings back to what it was before.
Click to expand...
My W10 VM went from 30s boot time to approx. 5 mins. Apparently Parallels has no clue how to solve that, mostly just keeps you busy with "File a report" but nothing changes. I wouldn't spend a nickel on Parallels until there is proof that they can solve it.
 
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Every disk operation takes 10-15 seconds. Sometimes I right click a file to copy and it take 10-15 seconds for the dropdown menu to appear. What can I try to fix this?
 
Same here. Couldn't find any solution for the last 10-12 months since I upgraded to PD14.
The best solution I now found it to move to vmware Fusion but then I'll need to re-install my VMs (which is less hassle than being totally annoyed whenever I boot or even use PD14). Migrating the Parallels VMs provides the same slow boot times in vmware (about 5 mins), installing new VMs in PD14 doesn't help either since they still have about 5 mins boot time.
With newly installed VMs in vmware Fusion 11.5 I came boot times of about 1 min.
 
Boot time is not a problem for me, because I never shut down the system unless I have a problem with it. I usually put my VM into sleep.
I downloaded Virtual Box, but do not have time to run a complete setup for a new system to compare.
 
The boot times were only one part of the ultra-slow performance of PD. The other part was the reaction times: it took about 2-3 seconds when clicking e.g. on the "Start Menu" until it would open. Same for the performance of the Mac OS itself while you had a PD VM running in the background (doing nothing).
With Fusion the reaction to clicks is pretty normal, i.e. performing.
 
Same here. I use Visual Studio in Parallels since 2016 and it always worked very smoothly as if I was working on a regular PC, but now it's impossible to work. Every time I click a menu it may take a few minutes to appear. Previously it took a few minutes to build our project. Now I get time to drink coffee and when I am back it is still not ready.
 
BTW, it's not just 2-3 seconds. It's more like 20-30 seconds (right 20-30 seconds, no exaggeration). And sometimes it also freezes the entire macOS operating system.
 
I am currently testing the following solution:

1) Reset SMC. Shut down Mac, then press all together Shift+Control+Option then Power button and keep it for at least 10 seconds.
2) Reset PRAM. Shut down Mac, then press Option+Command, then 'P' and 'R' keys. Keep them pressed for at least 10 seconds.
3) Do a safe boot. Shut down Mac, then press Power and keep Shift button until the Mac starts to boot. Login into safe mode, then restart.

Looks like Parallels stopped stumbling, but need to wait a few days to see if the problem went away.
 
Would be interesting to see what the outcome is - for PD and your Mac. Didn't even know about these measures (thought it could be related to FusionDrive/APFS ?! For me it started with the upgrade to PD14 and Mojave).
I would expect that issues with SMC and/or PRAM would then be similar in PD VMs in general but while Win10 is unusable Linux Mint boots in less than a minute and performs normal (leaving aside the strange hangs every once in a while). The Mac is also much more usable when Linux runs in the background while it is very sluggish when Win10 is running in the background.

Anyway, making progress with vmware Fusion. Migration of PD Windows VMs ends up in slow VMs but setting up new VMs works fine. So I assume the issues are in the setup of the Win10 VMs. Too bad, actually liked PD a lot until PD12 - actually one of the few SW products I spent money on (rest is OpenSource). Maybe they should invest more in the product or support than in the annoying constant marketing campaigns asking you to upgrade to the next version. Just my thoughts.
 
I'm using win7 on an iMac Retina 5k with 16GB of memory and a 1TB Fusion Drive with Parallels 13 which has worked fine for me. A couple months ago everything started to run very slowly. Each keystroke takes 1-2 seconds to show on the screen, moving windows is very "unsmooth" and jaggedy. I looked at Task Manager and Resource Monitor, CPU, disk and memory all seem to be within acceptable tolerances. I tried "repairing" windows and the test revealed no problems. Today I created a second, fresh vm and downloaded win10 and am getting the same behavior so I'm convinced it's a Parallels issue. From the thread above, it appears Parallels 14 or 15 have not fixed this problem. Any suggestions? Thanks.
 
Unfortunately no suggestions if you want to continue to use Parallels. I've tried all the tips by other users (and the few standard and pretty useless suggestions by the Parallels support), to no avail. Sending Tech Reports is useless - no feedback. Even sent them the complete and detailed output of my Windows Performance Analyzer showing every second of my 5 min boot process. No feedback.
Same performance for fresh VMs on PD14. Apparently this performance issue is affectting more people than I thought and so it's even more surprising that Parallels isn't doing anything about it. I'm currently moving my VMs to vmware Fusion which works much better (than PD14 or PD15) but have to start from scratch. But this much less annoying than experiencing the PD VMs every day.
 
Thanks nanooq. Guess I'll move to Fusion. No longer have disks for win7 or office, any suggestions on getting? See them on eBay but wonder if verification codes will work.
 
nanooq said:
I'm currently moving my VMs to vmware Fusion which works much better (than PD14 or PD15) but have to start from scratch. But this much less annoying than experiencing the PD VMs every day.
Click to expand...
I tried Virtual Box, but did not like it right away. It's UI is slow and I did not find native MacBook resolution in Screen Settings at all. Maybe I should try using remote desktop instead.
Currently after I reset SMC, PRAM, and did safe boot in Mac OS, I do not see the former problem anymore. I.e. I had UI delays of not just a few seconds, but a few minutes. MY Mac even stopped responding for a while and once I saw it going into hard restart after the Parallales machine stopped responding.
So I will try Fusion. Not sure what version to choose - Pro or regular?
 
I am not certain if this is a co-incidence, but nowadays Parallels tools up to date robotically and it seems to work faster. I am now not positive about the equipment because apart from that I ran home windows updates, restarted the device a couple of times and made some adjustments in the digital computer control panel. I actually modified digital laptop settings returned to what it was once before.
 
I find it is pretty random. Sometimes it feels like it's getting better and even works as fast as before, but then all of a sudden I see it slowing down significantly again.
 
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