Parallels 4 slowed Vista down

Discussion in 'Windows Virtual Machine' started by pompair, Nov 24, 2008.

  1. pompair

    pompair Bit poster

    Messages:
    9
    Hello,

    I'm experiencing slowdown of Vista Business edition (SP1) with new Parallels 4.0. (Build 3540). Visual Studio 2008 is totally unusable with Parallels 4.0, while as it was usable with Parallels 3.0. Anyone else experiencing the same thing?
    Does anyone have a clue what could be causing this?

    I've tried switching off the following in the hope of making Vista faster:

    -Vista's Aero UI
    -Kaspersky Virus Detection
    -All Vista's security features

    I'm running Parallels on MacBook Air with 2 GB RAM.
     
  2. estrelnikov

    estrelnikov Parallels Team

    Messages:
    287
    What's about Mac side? Is it slowed down too while running VM? Check in Activity monitor prl_vm_app CPU usage
     
  3. pompair

    pompair Bit poster

    Messages:
    9
    Activity monitor states the following for prl_vm_app:

    CPU 148 (yes, one hundred forty eight)
    Threads 25
    Real Memory 413 MB
    Virtual Memory 2.14 GB
     
  4. estrelnikov

    estrelnikov Parallels Team

    Messages:
    287
    Try this KB article: http://kb.parallels.com/en/5810, if it hangs during the VM uprgade try pressing Ctrl+Cmd+Option+R to interrupt the process, then follow the steps from KB article
     
  5. pompair

    pompair Bit poster

    Messages:
    9
    Hello,

    I tried the KB article even though the CPUs (two of them) seemed to be fine. That didn't help directly.
    But then I did something I have tried many times already without results: turned the VM to run into a Window in stead of full screen. These two actions performed in succession lowered VM CPU usage to 25% - 30% range. I've now tried fullscreen again and CPU stays under 50%. Everything is now more responsive on OS X and Windows sides.
     
  6. pompair

    pompair Bit poster

    Messages:
    9
    I was too happy and too hasty to send the good news. The CPU stayed under 50% only for about 5 minutes. Then it was again peaking 190 %. Both siden OS X and Windows are totally slow and unusable. Running through CPU reinstall procedure is not in my case final solution, only a five minute fix.
     
  7. occammd

    occammd Bit poster

    Messages:
    2
    I knowcked the processors down form 2 to 1, turned on hyperVisor, dropped memory to 512K for teh VM and dropped video memory to 16K (for basic stuff) and all sped up and worked well after that. Before that, like walking through molasses.
     

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