Slow performance using Parallels with Bootcamp image of WinXP

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viksit

Bit poster
Hi all,

I've recently installed WinXP using bootcamp on my Macbook pro, and it runs fine. I then pointed Parallels to it, and was able to install Parallels tools, et al and run that version from within OS X itself. Good stuff.

However, I see that XP takes a long time to load, and the boot sequence has a message about "Parallels tools" being loaded, and that no changes should be made to the VM or any other action taken inside the OS window. I was wondering if this lag in load times is common, and other people face this problem as well?

Given that there isn't an option to suspend a bootcamp image (might that come out at some point? is it achievable, or impossible?), I'm going to have to use two versions of windows, which would be a big pain trying to sync between - unless there's something wrong with my configuration.

Would anyone have pointers or ideas on this issue?

Thanks in advance,
Viksit

PS, I'm using build 3188, XP with SP2, and OS X Tiger on a Macbook pro 2.16G C2D with 2G RAM.
 
I'm having the same problem. I installed an independent parallels without bootcamp and it ran pretty fast. I then deleted, and reinstalled to work on my bootcamp windows, it ran pretty slow. Now you have to wait for windows to load just like booting from a machine, and you have to shut down windows within windows as compared to just clicking the X button.

If it's working as intended, I can live with this since I can use the parallels pause button and always leave windows and osx open relying on sleep when computer not in use. However, would be nice if it worked like it did before; now I have to boot up and shut down two operating systems every time the computer goes on or off.
 
Me too

I'm getting the exact same problem. I'm also on a MacBook Pro - 17" 2.16Ghz, 2Gb ram, OSX 10.4.9.

I'm using bootcamp with a Xindows XP installation on an 8Gb partition formatted as Fat32.

I'm getting the same "Warning: paralells tools initializing is in progress" message upon starting up the VM, (each time) and I've noticed very sluggish performance from OSX while starting up the VM. Windows XP takes a long time to load. I've not had an opportunity to tset performance in either OS when the VM is running, but it is definitely sluggish when the VM is starting and the guest OS is loading.

I was using Paralells with Windows XP in a VM before (no boot camp), but I had to wipe my macbook and reinstall everything. This time I chose to use boot camp. Somewhere along the way while setting up Paralells, I was notified of an update from the beta version I was using. (I think the update was a non-beta build of the version I was using - I only skimmed the message long enough to determine that it was a newer version!) I installed the newer versino of Paralells instead. Since I changed to bootcamp and a new version of paralells at the same time, I don't know if it's boot camp or the new version that is giving me the problems.

Is there something wrong with my installation? Should the bootcamp part be formatted as NTFS? I'm unclear about something I read about installing paralells tools while rebooted to the windows partition in boot camp?

Any help, anyone?
Thanks!
 
I have had nothing but problems since instlling the demo version of Parallels. I connected it to the Boot Camp partition, the Parallels Tools were installed. Initially I gave Windows 512M, which was slow (I have a MBP with 2G RAM.) Running simple things like Internet Explorer would crash the VM, sometimes with an error message from Parallels (Fatal error) and sometimes from Mac OS X (Parallels has closed, but OS X was not affected.) Usually when this happened, attempting to rerun Parallels would give me an error "Cannot find image Boot Camp!" I don't think, in the few days I have been running it, have I ever shut down Parallels normally - it has ALWAYS crashed. (The first few crashes were because I tried to run Coherence; I later found the posting here about the incompatibility with ZoneAlarm.)

Today I bumped the VM RAM up to 1G and started XP. The window was a quarter of the size of the desktop (Windows was set at 1280x1024 but the VM window was maybe 800x600.) I was only able to see the lower left corner of the XP desktop. I clicked the button for Full Screen, thinking maybe that would reset the video. The VM window went away, as did half my OS X desktop. The system ground almost to a halt at this point, taking 10 seconds for anything I clicked to respond. Applications still on the desktop were fine, but anything related to Finder were completely frozen. The Finder bar on the bottom took a long time to pop up, but neither of the Parallels icons (there were two - Windows XP and the orange infinity icon) would respond to anything. The menu bar on the top of the screen disappeared, as did the drive icons on the right side. I finally said **** this and hit the power button.

When my system rebooted, everything seemed okay, but the programs that usually start up did not. I had to manually run my mail, Skype, etc, and re-select "Open at login." I am afraid to run Parallels again.
 
Slow booting of the boot camp partition from Parallels is normal. But it is much slower still if you give Parallels too much RAM. If you have 2 GB of real RAM, don't give Parallels any more than 512M. With 1 GB of real RAM you will have trouble getting good performance. Remember you are running two complete operating systems, plus some extra overhead to let them communicate.

A Parallels person implied that the long process of installing Parallels Tools each time will not be needed in the next major release of Parallels, but who knows when that will come out.
 
I figured there would be a "sweet spot" as far as memory went - you want Windows performance to be decent, but take away RAM from OS X and the rest of your system goes splat. I did not see the post about not going over 512M RAM, so I dropped it back down and was able to go into Windows and go back out again. There is still an issue with the display settings - it started in full screen mode, 1280x1024, but when I hit ALT+RETURN it went back to a window and reset the Windows display back to 640x480.
 
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