Latest Update to 5.0.9344 has slowed down windows

Hi

I have just upgraded to the version shown in the subject, and my windws 7 installation is now running at a crawl.

Up until this last update everything was great, and windows was very responsive, now its jerky, slow and lacks response across the whole OS. Applications take an age to start, and when they are running, switching between them is an absolute nightmare, having to wait everytime for the windows to get focus and allow access.

What has happened here, Parallels has really done something bad here.

 

Sounds like a lot of swapping is going on. Restart your Mac and then start the VM anew. If that doesn't help, try reducing the amount of memory you're assigning to all Parallels VMs (in the Parallels settings). I run an 832 MB VM with 3D on and have assigned 1120 MB to Parallels overall (i.e. I am not using the "automatic" memory setting). 832 MB + 128 MB video memory + 160 MB overhead = 1120. (I have arrived at the 160 MB overhead by trial and error.) Your results may, of course, vary.

 

Thanks for that. I have tweaked the setting as suggested and had some improvement, but before I upgraded everything was fine anyway, my concern is why the upgrade had such an effect on performance.

One thing that does confuse me are the two memory settings.

I have the Parallels desktop preferences memory set to 1150MB as you suggest, but the VM Confirguration is set at 2GB, is this correct. I have 4GB in my MacBook Pro.

How is memory balanced between the VM memory settings and the Parallels memory settings.

 

Added line breaks to improve legibility

The PD memory preferences indicate to Parallels how much Mac memory overall to reseverve for all of your virtual machines. Therefore PD memory needs to be at least equal to the sum of the memory that you've assigned to each VM.

Example: You're running a Windows 7 VM with 1,024 MB and a Windows XP VM with 512 MB (let's assume both VM's have 3D on with 128 MB assigned to video memory). In that case, the PD memory preferences should show at least 1204 + 128 + 512 + 128 MB = 1792 MB, plus add some overhead to arrive at 2048 GB. This would allow you to run both VMs simultaneously as long as your Mac has lots more than 2 GB of memory (the Mac OS needs some memory, plus you may want to run Mac programs, too).

I'm assuming you have 3D on and 128 MB assigned to video memory. For your 4 GB machine running a single 2 GB VM, I'd set the PD memory to 2048 + 128 + 160 MB overhead = 2236 MB. If you assign less than that to Parallels, you will definitely experience swapping - after all, your VM is asking for 2048 + 128 = 2176 MB of memory, but you're only assigning 1150 MB to Parallels. Since Parallels needs the memory but you haven't assigned it, Parallels will use the hard drive for swapping. Again, the 160 MB "overhead" are just guesswork, you may need to play with the settings to find the optimum for you.

If you are using another video memory setting (e.g. 256), you need to figure that into above estimate.
You could of course always use the "Automatic" setting for the PD memory. After playing a lot with the settings, however, my personal impression is that the Automatic setting assigs memory to Parallels very generously. This is why I like to use my own setting.

Good luck!

 

Many Thanks