Slow response of some Windows applications

I am seeing a frustrating problem where clicking on certain menu options within an application is remarkably slow to react before the requested window panel appears. In fact it can take anything up to 20 seconds before it opens. The strange part is that once opened if you close it and open it again the response is instant until the next time the application is started and then the whole process starts all over again.

I am running Windows 7 Ultimate (64bit) on an 8 Core Mac Pro with 32 Gigs of Ram through Lion and the latest version of Parallels. I have given Windows 4 Cores and 8 Gigs of Ram but had the same problem before when I tried with 2 Cores and 4 gigs of ram.

I went through all the settings in Windows to verify everything is correct and the feedback I have been given suggests it cannot be the connection between Windows and OS X as the software has all the data before any panels are opened. According to a developer the only process carried out is the reading of data from memory to fill any grids on the screen, so all he can think of is the read/write from the virtual disk is some how slowing the process down.

I have gone through all sorts of options inside the Parallels configuration and can't see what could be causing this. No matter what I have tried this problem persists so I wondered if anybody knows how to solve this?

I've tried isolating Windows from the Mac, turning off the Windows firewall and antivirus but none if this is having any affect on the slow performance. The baffling part is that on the whole Windows is flying with this configuration and runs rings around Toshiba laptop I have but in certain cases I see these long delays.

 

I have to say I have not been happy with Parallels 6 on my Macbook Air 2010. Not sure what the problem is? When I was running Snow Leopard and Parallels 5 with Windows 7 I had pretty good results and little slow down even with only 2GB RAM. But when I upgraded to Lion OS X and then upgraded to Parallels 6 because 5 did not support Lion. I felt like things really slowed down. In fact sometimes I thought the system had locked up in Parallels because nothing happened at times. That when I started watching by way of OS X Activity Monitor. I really think Lion and Parallels together don't mix well and they both are fighting for resources. I felt disappointed with Parallels more then Lion. Because Lion by itself actually runs very well. I finally went back to Boot Camp to run Windows 7 because it runs better and faster and although its a little more inconvenient its running speed and response is much improved over Parallels. Maybe Parallels just has some glitches to overcome with Lion?

 

Two gigs of Ram isn't a lot to run OS X these days let alone if you are trying to run Windows as well. My guess is that my old iMac from 2007 with 4 gigs of Ram would have struggled as well but I don't doubt what you are saying about Parallels and Lion not being perfectly matched at this stage. I am seeing this with several Mac apps under Lion and it's early days while they are still working out some bugs.

This is a new computer that I've only had for just over a month and the difference in speed compared to my old iMac is like night and day, but then again so was the cost. I actually installed Parallels the first time under Snow Leopard with Windows 7 Home Premium and had the slow opening windows there as well. Following the upgrade to Lion I did a fresh install but this time with Windows 7 Ultimate and the problem remains consistently across all these variations.

I've just looked at the Activity Monitor with Parallels running and at the moment with both Windows and OS X performing low stress tasks like having a web browser open and checking for email I have over 99% of my CPU capacity still unused, while total Ram usage for Parallels is about 500MB. There is around 24 gigs of Ram sitting unused and I guess it would have been more if I hadn't allocated 8 gigs to Windows. I have zero page outs or swap in use, so the real question is why on earth would I be seeing 20 second delays in accessing these menu items?

It would be good if somebody from Parallels can offer some input here because the computer isn't even breaking a sweat and yet I am seeing crazy slow response times.