Windows XP Guest OS slow after Parallels Tools installed

[MalF]

I have a MacBook Air with a Windows XP 32-bit guest OS installed. Windows XP runs fine as long as the Parallels Tools are not installed, but after installing the tools, the Windows XP guest OS is too slow to be used. The taskman in Windows XP reports 100% CPU utilization constantly, even though there are no applications running in the Windows XP virtual machinel. (There is nothing but Parallels Desktop running on the Mac OS).

I have adjusted the number of CPUs, I have increased the RAM available to the Windows OS, and nothing seems to make a difference.

I have tried uninstalling the tools and reinstalling them, but the problem comes back after the tools are installed. I uninstalled and re-installed Parallels, and created a fresh XP virtual machine, and the as soon as I installed the tools, the problem returned.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Jus]

Interesting. I am having major performance problems as well. Are the tools needed?

 

[joevt]

Parallels Tools are not needed. It adds integration features that are very useful though:
http://download.parallels.com/desktop/v5/docs/en/Parallels_Desktop_Users_Guide/22272.htm

Does the Windows Task Manager show which process is taking all the CPU? Check the Processes tab and click Show processes from all users, then sort by CPU. At the top should be System Idle Process at something like 70%-99%.

 

[Jus]

Yeah, I've knocked those out. I am getting the lags even when the cpu is mostly idle and most of the memory is free. There's something else going on that I can't quite figure out.

 

[joevt]

I have a Mac Pro with 14 GB of RAM and 8 CPUs. My XP VM's are slow when I log in but speed up when all the startup stuff is done (after all the icons appear in the taskbar). Other OS's seem faster but maybe that's because I don't use them as much.

How much RAM does your Mac have and how much have you allocated in the VM config? You'll want to balance it between the VM and the Mac OS.

 

[Jus]

Quite different. I have a Macbook Air (original version) with HD upgraded to SSD. It's got only 2 MB of RAM, of which I dedicate 768MB to XP and the rest to OSX. However, I don't see the RAM or CPU spiking in XP task manager, even while the lags are happening.

 

[joevt]

2GB is a small amount of RAM but the RAM in the Macbook Air can't be upgraded. Do you see any spikes in the Mac's Activity Monitor? You could check the console log for messages. Parallels has it's own log you can check also.