bob.ritter@greshamsavage.
Junior Member
I've been watching the threads about memory limitations in windows, and specifically about those who were once able to allocate a full 2048 MB of RAM to a WIndows VM, but suddenly began receiving "Parallels Desktop failed to allocate the specified amount of memory..." error messages. The only "fix" was to bring the allocated memory down to 1024 MB or less.
Most of the messages seemed to blame the problem on one or more of the recent OS X updates. Although I had regularly applied all of the posted OS X updates, I had not experienced the problem, and was quite happily running WinXP VMs with 2048 MB of RAM on both my MacPro and my MacBookPro.
Until, that is, I replaced my system disks with larger drives.
The MacPro was first. I replaced a 750G system disk with a 1T disk by first cloning the old drive to the new. The first time I attempted to run a WinXP VM I received the dreaded error message. Booting from the old disk eliminated the error message and allowed running at the full 2048 MB memory allocation. The only difference was the size of the disk.
Since my use of Windows on the MacPro was really limited to fairly low intensity stuff, I didn't sweat it. I did upgrade to build 5600, thinking that was going to solve the problem, but found no difference.
A few weeks later, however, I discovered the availability of a 500G drive that would work in my MacBookPro. Of course, I had to have it. When I installed the new drive (same process - clone the old 250G drive to the new 500G drive, then replace the drive), the same result occurred. The 2048 MB WinXP VM that had been happily running on the laptop also failed with "the failed to allocate" error message unless the memory allocation was reduced to 1024 MB. Here, too, booting from the old drive, identical except for size, allowed allocation of the full 2048 MB, but not the larger HD.
In each case nothing changed except for the increased size of the HD.
I have difficulty believing that this is coincidence.
My next step will be to clone the large drive to the small one and make sure that the larger memory allocation still works, but that won't be for a few days when I have more time.
Any thoughts???
thanks...Bob
Most of the messages seemed to blame the problem on one or more of the recent OS X updates. Although I had regularly applied all of the posted OS X updates, I had not experienced the problem, and was quite happily running WinXP VMs with 2048 MB of RAM on both my MacPro and my MacBookPro.
Until, that is, I replaced my system disks with larger drives.
The MacPro was first. I replaced a 750G system disk with a 1T disk by first cloning the old drive to the new. The first time I attempted to run a WinXP VM I received the dreaded error message. Booting from the old disk eliminated the error message and allowed running at the full 2048 MB memory allocation. The only difference was the size of the disk.
Since my use of Windows on the MacPro was really limited to fairly low intensity stuff, I didn't sweat it. I did upgrade to build 5600, thinking that was going to solve the problem, but found no difference.
A few weeks later, however, I discovered the availability of a 500G drive that would work in my MacBookPro. Of course, I had to have it. When I installed the new drive (same process - clone the old 250G drive to the new 500G drive, then replace the drive), the same result occurred. The 2048 MB WinXP VM that had been happily running on the laptop also failed with "the failed to allocate" error message unless the memory allocation was reduced to 1024 MB. Here, too, booting from the old drive, identical except for size, allowed allocation of the full 2048 MB, but not the larger HD.
In each case nothing changed except for the increased size of the HD.
I have difficulty believing that this is coincidence.
My next step will be to clone the large drive to the small one and make sure that the larger memory allocation still works, but that won't be for a few days when I have more time.
Any thoughts???
thanks...Bob