I have a Windows programm that I need to use a few times eacht day. Since loading takes quite some time and also disturbs (system 'locks up' a short time during loading) other apps I let it active all day and put in hidden. What troubles me is that the VM really does nothing (windows shows a 0% activity) yet it takes about 20% of my cpu capacity. So mu question is: is there a way to put Parallels to sleep so that it only takes a minimum of cpu capacity? Thx.
If you use Windows several times each day you mighty consider "pausing" the program. According to Parallels, and their Windows guide, pausing the guest OS takes the CPU out of the process. I would imagine that would free up your CPU for the host.
This isn't really a convienent answer, but it appears to be the only one... Back in the day, VirtualPC had an option to pause the VM (it just darkend & froze the screen instead of saving the status & closing the VM)... It was nice becasue it freed up some of the CPU occupied by the VM, but also allowed for an instant resume (so you didn't have to wait the 20 seconds to re-load the VM)...
The 20 seconds (I have the feeling it is much longer) does not bother me too much. What bothers me is that during saving/loading there is each time twice a point here all other apps stall meaning it looks like the system is frozen.
If you look under the "VM" menu on Parallels, you'll see a "Pause" item... that is what you're looking for, I think. It does what the current "Suspend" used to do in Beta 1/2/3 or so, before the "Pause" became suspend. It is available still, you just have to go to the menu to get to it...
You are quite right, I'm not sure how I missed that... It appears to cut the CPU usage to arround 5% - 7%...
