Does Parallels 6 run nicely on your MacBookPro 2010 and Snow Leopard

I somehow thought this was all going to go a lot easier and am just now catching my breath after moving a small office over to Mac.

I seem to be getting rather long 'wait times" (the multicolor pinwheel) on a brand new MBP with 4 GB Ram and OSX Snow Leopard with Win7 via Parallels 6.

I upgraded almost immediately to 6 from 5 in the hopes of smoothing things out.

I'm a newbie to Mac (and Parallels) but is this normal for Mac?

Seems awfully slow and "hiccupy"

Is there anything I should be checking? Fixing? Is this Mac, possibly Parallels?

Thanks.

 

Hi,

after struggeling with VMWare Fusion for the last 2.5 years, I converted the VM to PD6 and gave it a try. I can clearly confirm that PD 6 runs both my XP PRO and Win 7 VMs smoothly, MUCH better than before with Fusion and almost at felt native speed.

My WIN 7 VM starts in about 10 seconds to the log-in just to give an idea what's possible.

My machine is a MBP 17" i7 with 8GB RAM (Don't worry, 4 GB is enough for running a VM especially with a 32bit OS. How much RAM is allocated to your VM?).

Note that HDD performance is normally the bottleneck when working with VMs on a laptop. Do you have the 7.200 upm drive at least? I upgraded my HDD to a SSD what accelerated my VMs like mad, but even with a normal HDD you should have a good performance.

Can you describe your VM set-up a little? Did you use the transporter/converter or did you make a brand new VM?

Do you have other virtualization software on your laptop such as Fusion or Virtual Box? Some people ran into problems with side-by-side installations even while using one product at a time only.

Are you sure the Parallels tools are installed properly?

Maybe you should set up one brand new VM with PD 6 just to see the result. If it's not better, there's likely something wrong with your installation of PD 6. If it is, the problem must be caused by the special VM itself and its controls.

Regards

Chris.

 

Hi Chris.

A ton of thanks. To be honest this has all been such a bear of an effort that I am just now simply getting my login passwords for this forum written down in a place where I have easy access to them. Getting all my information ported over (major issues with Finder Copying instead of Moving, ending up in duplication of information, permission errors, Finder crash outs etc, etc). Then I finally started using the Disk Mode eventually to get everything where it needs to be. And then I had to do a couple of - I forget what they call it but it's a maneuver to clean things out just prior to needing to reinstall the OS. There was some name for this.

As I get up to speed can I just ask you the following:

I'm running a BootCamp partition of XP on my MacPro (really it is installed on a single 500 GB HD) and I am /also/ accessing it from another 500 GB HD that has OSX Snow Leopard installed on it. The guys from Parallels technical were kind enough to do this install for me. This way I can access the BootCamp install or boot directly to native XP when I need to do 3D work and the like. and

I am running Win 7 on the new MBP. However, I don't really remember how this eventually got installed other than that I do have a CD Rom and I'm sure the first installation was off of the CD Rom.

Is there other information I can provide? How do I check to make sure Parallels Tools is installed correctly?

Can I ask you if you know of a reason why Finder would use 101.3% (around 100%) of CPU on both of these machines frequently? Does this sound like an issue and if so does it sound like a Parallels issue?

Thanks very much...

 

Hi Inemo.

Many thanks for the response here. It appears to me that I don't get anywhere near 10 second startup and in fact I just tried to check that here and I get a total lockup/hang upon double clicking the Parallels Icon in my dock. It appears to me that I need to do a complete uninstall and reinstall.

I also get extremely frequent (and long) multi-colored pinwheel hangs and vanilla Mac software lockups in things such as Preview or Safari.

I include information related to the two machines below but would like to write down other pertinent troubleshooting info if I am missing anything here.

Do you know how easy it is to completely wipe out an earlier install of 6 and to re-install?

I'm using version 6.X and did a "fresh" and "new" installation of Parallels on this machine.

| macpro | 2x2.66 ghz dual core intel xeon 5gb, nvidia geforce 8800gt, OSX 10.6.4 with XP via BootCamp and via Parallels 6

| macbookpro | intel 2.53 ghz core 2 duo 4gb, nvidia geforce 9400m, OSX 10.6.4 with Win7 via Parallels 6

Thanks for the help(!)

 

Hi Jonathan,

aaaah, Bootcamp, that's another story containing many potential problems. I never set up a Bootcamp partition as VM with PD6 but did with VMware's Fusion. And yes, that VM built from the Bootcamp partition was *greatly* slower than a VM originally set up as VM.

I googled around a little bit for this and got the result that Bootcamp VMs generally are not so performant as 'normal' VMs so I had to live with this.

Plus there were some software activation issues concerning both the OS and Microsoft Office (Win) because software like those is activated using a unique key built from some core hardware components such as CPU, GPU, HDD etc.

In the virtual world, there is another set of hardware components present then in Bootcamp where all hardware components are accessed natively so some software want to see another activation.

There is a way to work around this, but I decided to get VM and Bootcamp separated, using only that kind of software in Bootcamp that needs best 'raw' power (like games maybe). Everything else (i.e. the whole business software such as MS Office) I have on my VM which has enough power by far.

Mh, let me read your posts again ... indeed the setup steps you describe sound very much like in the beginning, you had not really a precise idea how to manage a Mac which is a completely new world for the PC user.

Myself I turned from Windows to Mac 2007 when Microsoft unveiled MS Vista. Luckily I had an experienced Mac user beside me whom I could ask every question. Otherwise I would have been lost for the first six months.

Problem is that even with a Mac you are able to bring some harm to the OS when falling around in trial and error. And Bootcamp/Virtualisation is a dimension above that. So in a quick shot - could it be that your OS X installations were 'damaged' somehow in this early stadium? The Finder thing you described leads me to that assumption. By the way, with the finder eating up 100% CPU, you may have found the reason for the slow VM and the spinning beachball announcing tha the system is fully busy at the moment and not be able to process any additional thread.

The 100% cpu finder is a mystery with many faces. The other day someone reported the same to me, we tried Google and found a checkbox 'calculate all folder size' in the list view options to be the reason. After turning it off, the CPU eating was gone.

Maybe you want to re-setup at least one of the machines if not both just to be sure everything is like it should be? I know, an extreme step but easily done depending how much data you have on the Mac OS itself.

Another shot: Since you bought your machines Apple brought OS X 10.6.5 - this is something like the service packs in the Win world; a major OS upgrade bringing potential issues if not applied completely as it should. I never had problems with those upgrades but may people had and have.

You see there is a multitude of possible reasons for your VMs not running as expected and most of them are not caused by PD itself. If I were you with (at least it seems so) limited technical access to it all, I'd try to encircle it by starting all over, setting up the OS again with all recommended updates, than install PD6 clean and start a first VM with the Win you have on the DVD. Maybe you can do this with the laptop at first and just see where you come out.

Regards
Chris.

 

Hi Chris.

First off I can't thank you enough for the expertise and also the clarity with which you present you help. I have printed this out so I can refer to it in the future.

I've turned off "calculate all file sizes". I had a "doh" moment when you mentioned this because I think I did this once before. I think however that I am still seeing issues. Basically - and now I am thinking here - I just saved a txt file and got the multicolor pinwheel delay. In writing this it struck me that this was the same kind of annoyance I remember having when I was trying to use my iDisk while working on files. Try and save and get a hang. Obviously I ended up only using iDisk for "permanent" data and not working off it. That said, I have been getting some annoying aosnotify and some other Safari want to use something or other errors (I have to look them up from where I save these) and I seem to remember one of them was related to accessing an external drive (which I am not really doing when saving a txt). Anyway, I guess I need to look into this.

So the lowdown is that I am running Leopard on both of these machines with current updates. The MacPro is simply accessing my original BootCamp install from a dedicated 500 GB HD with OSX Leopard. Right now it is in the shop so I don't want to make any decisions on it but can I ask you to elaborate on this part? For instance, when I install software I am now installing it while booted into BootCamp as opposed to being in the VM. I gather there is more to this? Say for software that needs to get an internet validation? I ask because I know I've run into it and I'm also somewhat interested in knowing if you think I could have possible messed up my original BootCamp install by accessing it via Parallels (longer term consideration).

"Plus there were some software activation issues concerning both the OS and Microsoft Office (Win) because software like those is activated using a unique key built from some core hardware components such as CPU, GPU, HDD etc. In the virtual world, there is another set of hardware components present then in Bootcamp where all hardware components are accessed natively so some software want to see another activation."

I think at this point I am going to have Parallels check the laptop machine and see how I make out and then likely do a fresh install of Mac OSX, Windows XP (?) as opposed to Windows 7 (not sure at this point) on the laptop. Win XP on the laptop would give me the same OS as on the desktop and probably simplify my life a lot(!) at this point.

Is there anything I can do other than print out a png of the software in my DOCK and make sure that I have all my CD's and my dowloaded software ready to be reinstalled? I guess I turn off Syncing with iDisk while I am doing the reinstall and then turn it back on when the laptop is back up? Are there other settings? I just reinstall the files from my Time Capsule/Time Machine backup?

Thanks very much for whatever you can add. It would be nice to get to the end of the tunnel with this one in one piece...

 

Hi Jonathan,

as I said, the 100% CPU explorer thing has many faces The one I mentioned may be the 'easiest' to target, but there are more. From time to time I run into the spinning colored beachball situation too. I then go to the actvity monitor, let it show ALL processes (not just mine) and have look which one's the bad guy drawing so much power from my machine that other processes (even a simple file save) won't work or take ages.

You already did this and found the Finder process. The problem is that the Finder is a deeply system-integrated program responsible for much more than we can imagine. That means if there is something else going on deeply in the underground of the OS, people like you and I will unlikely find the 'real' reason for the Finder process amoking.

For example I never had an iDisk, but since this is a cloud space connected to your machine and showing up as something like a network drive, it's absolutely possible that the iDisk causes some pain to the Finder because there are constant delays while the Finder tries to gather the information it wants to display. Must not but can be.

At such a point and given this was my machine and after all I experienced up to now: My way is to save all my data to an external hard drive, insert the OS DVD an start over. Maybe it's a good idea to delete the whole system drive via the HDD utility software during the setup (where the menu bar comes up), and after your OS is set up and all updates through the software update utility are made, you have a fresh, clean system, probably without any problems at all.

At this stage, you can make a full (!) time machine backup as a blueprint for future use if something goes wrong.

The main idea now is to carefully, step by step, set up your desktop, your workspace as you are used to before. After every change, every step, control what happens. That's the way you can find your troublemakers. iDisk is one of those steps. If you ended your personal set up of the OS and still everything is allright, do a second full time machine backup to have a blueprint of this stage.

Then install your software, step by step and control every time if problems arise. If you're lucky you will experience no problems at all because maybe your last installation simply was messed up by trial and error.

But if problems arise, you can see with this method where they come from. This is what I mean with 'encircle'.

Given you were able to find and solve possible problems (or didn't see any at all), the next stage would be to set up a fresh VM with PD6. If you have the choice, try Win 7. XP is reliable but outdated, and Win 7 is the better OS when it comes to virtualisation.

My opinion - we have XP VMs in our company, and they work well, but since Win 7 is the 'modern' OS, all virtualisation software solutions have their emphasis there. Example is the PD6 SATA drivers for the virtual HDD in MS Vista and MS 7 VMs where all you can get in XP is normal IDE. I played around a little bit and found a way to bring SATA to XP VMs and can confirm it definetely was worth the long night it took to find out

Once that VM is finished, start it (Parallels tool normally automatically install) and do a little testing. Is it fast now (MUCH faster than before)? The answer should be 'yes' (if 'no' you need more professional help).

Now that you know a smooth VM is possible, copy back your 'old' VM you already have and give that a try too. If it's too much faster than before - very good! If not, you can try to change the VM preferences (e.g. the performance tab) and see if it helps. If not, well, then throw it away and start with the fresh created VM, install the software you want to use inside etc.

By the way, if it's really Leopard (10.5) you have on your machines and not Snow Leopard (10.6) I would consider to buy the upgrade. In Germany it's about 30 Euros, small money, and 10.6. is said to be greately advanced over 10.5 in many meanings, virtualisation being one of them. I'm not quite sure about your situation because you mentioned your machines were quite new - Snow Leopard is distributed on all new Apple machines since End 2009. if I misunderstood, don't bother

A last suggestion concerning Bootcamp - as I mentioned before, if you don't have any special needs like hardware intensive 3D gaming or some special modelling software (Autocad, 3Dsmax etc) that need every little bit of raw power your machines can give, there is (IMHO) no need at all for a Bootcamp partition. As you will see, all 2D software like MS office is perfectly running in a VM near native speed. So if you don't need it, throw it away, and it will save you much time and effort

In my opinion Bootcamp is a very sexy toy Apple developed to make the decision towards a Mac easier. It simply means: 'You can do almost anything you want in the Mac OS, if you need Win software, there's virtualisation, and if you need the ultimate power, well, here's Bootcamp'. But to be honest - is it really charming to leave the Mac OS and restart every time you want Windows?

By the way, if you like to learn something about your Mac OS and have no 24/7 support like I luckily had when I started, there's a very comprehensive book series targeting the user who has the need to know something but doesen't want to read a 500 pages manual. The series is named '... for dummies'. Despite this slightly disrespectful title, these books are made very good. The series has many titles. The one fitting here would be this one. Or the one about Snow Leopard if it's that you have. In my company I recommend these books for the people who need to learn something about their Win OS or MS Office and people are lucky with them.

So far for today - now that you know I'm from Germany you understand my long answering times ... it's simply the different time zones.


Best regards

Chris.

Maybe I can give you a recommendation when you give me some input what your primary software is in the Windows world.

 

Hi Chris.

I'm really grateful for the help.

> ALL processes (not just mine)

thanks

>At such a point and given this was my machine and after all I experienced up to now: My way is to save all my data to an external hard drive, insert the OS DVD an start over. Maybe it's a good idea to delete the whole system drive via the HDD utility software during the setup (where the menu bar comes up), and after your OS is set up and all updates through the software update utility are made, you have a fresh, clean system, probably without any problems at all.

thanks

>At this stage, you can make a full (!) time machine backup as a blueprint for future use if something goes wrong.

Can I just ask you quickly what the method is for running a full backup in TM?

>But if problems arise, you can see with this method where they come from. This is what I mean with 'encircle'.

Understood. Thanks very much I will do this. Can I just ask you - based upon your experience and based upon what I have told you - I really should do a clean install as you suggest? Also, as a for instance do your external hard drives "remount' on the same place on your desktop where they were when you left them? I mean, I have an external iomega hard drive, unmount it - should it remount on the desktop in the same place? I mean, I seem to have weird issues with Finder seeming to jump around when I uncollapse a folder but this one is going to be too much to get into here...

>If you have the choice, try Win 7.

thanks very much

>Now that you know a smooth VM is possible, copy back your 'old' VM you already have and give that a try too. If it's too much faster than before - very good! If not, you can try to change the VM preferences (e.g. the performance tab) and see if it helps. If not, well, then throw it away and start with the fresh created VM, install the software you want to use inside etc.

I'm thinking of just trashing the existing VM is there a reason against that other than I have to reload MS software (which is not all that much)?

>By the way, if it's really Leopard (10.5)

AOK, yes I have 10.6

>A last suggestion concerning Bootcamp - as I mentioned before, if you don't have any special needs like hardware intensive 3D gaming or some special modelling software (Autocad, 3Dsmax etc) that need every little bit of raw power your machines can give, there is (IMHO) no need at all for a Bootcamp partition.

Yeah, so this is an interesting issue. I am running 3D modeling software and 2D CAD and a number of other things that need the native install. This is the reason for the original BootCamp on the MacPro and also the reason for accessing the MacPro from OSX using Parallels. That said I am still concerned a little bit about software needing to "register" online when I access it from Parallels and I am also a little concerned to make sure that I install /all/ software from teh BootCamp install and to not mess with Win settings from the VM (if I have that right. Not sure if there is more here to think about).

This MacPro is actually in the shop with a dead power source and it gets a little complicated in the sense that the Firmware for this particular build of this particular computer on this particular year is "crippled" and won't run Windows 7. There's a total lack of information about this but I won't complain at the moment. The point is that even if I wanted to install Win 7 to match the Laptop install of Win 7 - I can't.

On the laptop I think the point is to install Win 7 and access my files as I need to but with the understanding that i will do the "heavy" work on the desktop.

Big thanks again...

Do I get the sense you're in engineering or architecture or rendering or am I off on that....?

Cheers,

Jonathan

 

Hi Jonathan,

a full time machine backup ... aah, yes: When you connect an external hard drive to your Mac for the first time and time machine is active, it asks if you want this external drive as the time machine backup drive. It then marks the drive accordingly and places some folders/files on it and starts the first backup. If the drive was not used for time machine in past, this first backup will be a full backup. Every backup to the same drive from now on (done by time machine automatically) will be an incremental backup, handling only the files that were changed.

So - there is no way as far as i know to trigger a full manual backup. The easiest solution to this is just another external hdd which was not used with time machine before or was reformatted and therefore empty.

The external hdd re-mounting question: Normally they do remount where they were when you left them. But there are exeptions. Iomega for example (like many other manufacturers), they don't just produce an external HDD but one with built-in special functions. These functions oftenly require special drivers on the machine where they are connected to.

In our company we found the Mac drivers Iomega provides *extremely* buggy. For example we couldn't copy a file onto it an delete it afterwards. An error message came up telling us we had no sufficient rights for this operation. That was really a mess!

I've heard from similiar annoyances with other 'media drive' products. I personally would recommend a simple 'dumb' HDD with no added specialities and format it to HFS+ (journaled), the Apple format.

FAT is another option, but since FAT can only hold files up to 4GB size, it's non usable for time machine backups where most operations happen to a single ever-growing file. I don't use time machine, I don't know if time machine even lets you pick a drive formatted with FAT as a backup drive.

In short I wanted to say: Yes, the annoying behavior of your Iomega HDD can be due to some specialities/driver issues. Try something simple or reformat your drive to the Mac file system, and I'm quite sure the problems will be gone by then.

How to backup your system 'right' is depending on how much activity there was on the Mac side (as opposed to the VMs and Bootcamp). If up to now your Mac was simply a launch platform for Windows VMs or Bootcamp, there probably are no valuable files on your Mac side to be backed up. If you started to use Apple mail for example you will have to find the folders where the info about your profiles and received and sent mails is stored etc. It really depends on your activity.

Same with your VM - if there is no valuable data in there, just thrash it. PD 6 builds a new one in under 30 min.

All right, so you really have advantages using Bootcamp, I see. But how about a compromise: Only install and use those hardware intensive software titles in Bootcamp. Don't install any other software there. Set up a VM and install all other software there that is not hardware hungry.

This way you don't use software in the VM *and* Bootcamp and there will be no activation issues except the OS itself.

But since you can't use Win 7 as Bootcamp OS for your Mac Pro, you could stick to XP there (as long as your software runs ok under XP) and set up the VMs with Win7. I heard of some older machines with no Bootcamp drivers for Win 7 such as my old MacBookPro 2006, but it should be possible on almost every mac pro according to this document.

Or is it a Win 7 64bit version? Then according to this document it should run on all mac pros from 2008 and later.

Hihi, no, I'm a financial advisor since 17 years but been always very interested in everything of PC, hardware, network etc. Now I'm the kind of nerd who built his PC by himself (with water cooling), we have a video beamer at home instead of a TV and so on. Just call me an interested amateur


regards

Chris.

 

Hi Chris.

This has really been a ton of help and I can't thank you enough.

I am going to have Parallels uninstall and reinstall Parallels on the MacBookPro and see if things improve. I know you said you can get to login in ten seconds (very helpful) which is definitely not something I am seeing. Last time I was on the phone with Level One Tech at Parallels they seem to indicate 20 or 30 seconds was OK for this but this seemed a bit much to me. Sometimes I just get a full hang on this.

If I don't see login times that make sense at that point I will do a clean install of OSX per your suggestions above.

Assuming I do see Parallels performing in an appropriate manner, can I ask you how often you experience "hangs" (multicolored pinwheel) and how many times you experience mac software crashes? I seem to have software such as Postbox, Preview, Pages, Safari etc hang (or crash) more often than I would expect. I mean, d most users rarely see pinwheel hangs? Crashes?

As I ask this it makes me think that I should just wait until I get the MacPro back and do a full clean install on the MacBookPro...

Anyway, you've gotten me moving with this machine which is something I have very much wanted to do for quite awhile here. Thanks for the technical expertise as well as the empathy(!).

Cheers,

Jonathan

 

Hi Jonathan,

the 10 seconds are for firing up an Win 7 32bit with few software installed inside (MS Office and two or three more), but with all current updates. I recently changed from automatic login to 'ask password', so there is a small delay that wasn't before, but I could record a screencast if you need an aim.

The 'spinning beachball of death', that's the nickname of the multicolored pinwheel, appears not often under normal circumstances. I think it depends a bit on the software you use. On my 2010 MBP i7 it's very, very rare. Not at all with the standard software, Finder, Safari, Mail, Firefox ... Even extremely rare with Final Cut Express or Aperture or something 'heavy' like this. Maybe once a week? For a short moment? But there's software far mor demanding than these that I don't use.

And then, my machine has 8 GB RAM, the biggest CPU available in spring, and a OCZ Vertex 2 SSD with monstrous transfer rates as an afterburner - I simply don't expect trouble with such a machine. I know colleagues with more low-level MacBooks seeing the beachball more frequently, but also not often, and also not at all with standard software.

Remember, the beachball is not the Windows hourglas equation on the Mac. There is no equation to the hourglas systemwide, even few software using something like an hourglas internally. No, the beachball is a system warning: 'All hardware ressources are burned at the moment. There is no additional process possible for the moment'. This includes even a keystroke.

My impression is there are two reasons for the beachball frequently appearing: A certain software causes it like it was the case with Aperture 3 when it came out. This is easy to determine because the beachball only appears when you actively do something with that special software. Could be due to the manufacturer, or a bad installation.

And a damaged system is the second reason. This seems to be your picture since you experience the beachball 'always and everywhere'.

If it was my machine I'd do what I described in my last post. Even with an Apple, a re-setup can work miracles from time to time. With my Windows box I did that every quarter. At this point I already noticed my system getting slower and slower. It was a two long night's work to restore everything.

And now with the Mac, I just did it last week, when the 10.6.5 update came out. This was the first time it did it since I bought the machine (February I think). Didn't notice any slowdown at this point, and experienced no acceleration afterwards.

And it was the work of less then one evening even with manual backup and restore. Times are golden


Cheers

Chris.