100% CPU usage (again)

Tried the Spotlight bit too. Didn't help. This has been bitting me since September 2011. It doesn't look like it has nothing to do with the OS (Windows 7) within the VM itself, as the slowness and 104% use goes up as soon as the image is launched, you can still see the POST going through and the whole booting process taking minutes.

The VM image doesn't seem to be the problem either. I've been able to copy it to two other computers and it works there like a charm.

The computer doesn't seem to be the cause (it's the first MacBook Unibody 13" - Aluminum - late 2008, with a 2.4 GHz Core 2 Duo) given that it worked for well over two years and the issue comes and goes.

Other software also seems dubious, because this started happening as I upgraded to an SSD and installed a clean copy of Lion. It has taken me a while to install any other software.

Things like the Spotlight issue mentioned in the previous post are more likely to be it, but so far it hasn't been properly resolved.

Parallels support hasn't been of any help here. There process seems to be to go through the rigmarole of reinstalling everything from scratch through a series of emails that take the life out of one. By the time you've done them all, they simply skip following up and ignore you. It doesn't make it easier that they have the most obtuse support and ticketing system the world has ever seen (Apple-like sure it is not!).

Aside from that, I've tried everything else posted in the forums, to no avail. When it happens, I have to keep the machine open for a few hours up until it is responsive again. After that, I don't close the computer for weeks at a time and all is hanky-dory. If a reboot is needed, problem comes up again, and after a few of these, it always works fine.

I also thought at one point that updates would be the cause, either of Windows, Lion or Parallels, but there hasn't been any reproducible behaviour. I've been able to run the three types of updates since September with and without the issue.

Right now I'm on my second hour waiting for this to be responsive. I've been bitten again :( In the meantime I've tried to see if any new suggestions would help. But no such luck. I hope this post does help anyone in the search for a solution.

Happy New Year!
 
I had similar issue, turned out to be CD drive.

I began experiencing the same symptoms earlier this week. I am running Windows 7 Home Premium Parallels 7 on a 13 MBP. I had upgraded to an SSD, and removed the optical drive to put the HDD in its place. Initially everything seem to run just fine, and was super fast running off the SSD. After a couple of days the VM became *very* slow. The Mac showed parallels using 100% of the 1 CPU I gave it, but Windows was showing 10-20% in task manager and the UI was very laggy.

Through a lot of trial and error, I found it was the CD drive that was now removed, that caused the problem. Once I went into the device configuration and removed it, everything went back to normal. Disconnecting the CD drive did not have any effect, it had to be completely removed.

There is a really odd behaviour when you remove the CD drive. The boot order changes and Parallels inserts the network ahead of the HDD. Once I change the boot order to contain just the HDD, then the VM was fine. Why Parallels adds the network ahead if the disk drive is beyond me and it wasted a lot of my time. I say this because I tried removing the CD drive early on in my troubleshooting but the VM failed to boot. So I went on to try other things.

What also made it difficult to narrow down was that if I copied my backed-up VM on to my machine it would work fine for a while. But once it became slow, it would remain slow forever after. If it would have failed immediately after removing the CD Drive, it would have been obvious what the cause was.
 
Hi,
first of all thanks everyone for your feedback - we do appreciate it.
What we need to deal with the problem is a bit more info from you.
When the situation is reproducing, and dispatcher is consuming CPU, open Terminal and paste the following commands:
1) prlsrvctl problem-report --send
2) sudo spindump -notarget 1 10 -file /tmp/samples.txt

- and give us both report ID and samples.txt file.

Thanks in advance,
Hanna
 
Hello, is anybody there?

I am having my original problem which I complained about a year ago! I thought Parallels would have come up with a fix by now - HELLO -Do they read these blogs?

Has anyone come up with a fix yet? I have tried just about ALL the fixes suggested here, to no avail. Guess we are on our own.
 
udougy said:
I am having my original problem which I complained about a year ago! I thought Parallels would have come up with a fix by now - HELLO -Do they read these blogs?

Has anyone come up with a fix yet? I have tried just about ALL the fixes suggested here, to no avail. Guess we are on our own.
Click to expand...

It's like you didn't even read what juzci said before you...
 
prl-mania

"It's like you didn't even read what juzci said before you... "

I have sent you information before. The problem has been around for years with no fix. How about an update to fix this problem. I am not the only one with this problem.

I will send the information you requested and hope it will do some good in fixing the problem.
 
Problem Info

Hi Hanna,

Here is the information you are looking for. I have attached samples.txt. The submitted report ID is 12263840.

Thanks for looking into this.
 

Attachments

Optical Drive Was Not The Problem

Well, it appears the optical drive was not the problem, as the problem came back. This week I switch back to VMware and ran the week without a problem. However I do like Parallels better than Fusion. I find coherence mode is much better in Parallels.

So, last night I tried creating a new VM from scratch using the Windows 7 install DVD. Interestingly, the install process had the same problem right away. CPU usage was 100% and the UI was very unresponsive. I did an uninstall of Parallels from the dmg, rebooted and tried creating the VM from scratch again. Same thing. I let it go on.... After about 2 hours the CPU usage dropped, and the UI became responsive again. So far today the VM is running fine. Given past experience, I am going to want to see several days without problems before I declare it is working.
 
Can repro at will now

Hi juzci,

I can now reproduce at will.
1. Boot Mac
2. Start VPN (openVPN, tunnelBlick or Viscocity, both cause problem)
3. Start VM

VM will be slow to boot, use 100% CPU, UI slow and jerky. Windows will show minimal CPU usage, mac will show prl_vm_app at 100%.

I can also make it go away. All I have to do is put my mac to sleep, and wake it up. CPU usage will drop, UI becomes responsive, and I have VPN and networking connections functioning properly.

Changing my network configuration from shared to bridged (Airport) did not seem to have an effect.

Some sort of race condition going on with networking? I only started having this problem once I installed the SSD which has made boot and launch times so much faster. Someone else in this thread with a similar complaint also had an SSD

If I take the VM and import it into Fusion, it works just fine.

Hopefully you and your team can figure this one out. I really like Parallels better than Fusion. Coherence mode has Fusion's unity beat.

Putting my mac to sleep and waking it back up, is kludgy, but I can live with it for now.
 
mrutter said:
Hello everybody.
I'm experiencing the famous issue about the high CPU usage from Parallels processes.

My scenario:
- I was running PD 6 on Mac OS X 10.6.8 with Windows 7 Ultimate 32 bit as guest OS.
- Never had any problem
- Yesterday, I upgraded from PD6 to PD7 (build 14920)
- Now, after a few minutes I started Windows, the Windows process prl_cc goes near to 100% of the CPU usage and on the Mac side, the process prl_vm_app has the same behavior.

So I read many thread and finally I applied the KB here http://kb.parallels.com/en/111541.
But the issue still remains :(

At the moment, the only way to avoid this problem is to uncheck the "Share Windows applications with Mac" (as some other user already noticed). But with this configuration I cannot use the Coherence mode ...

Any idea?

Regards,
Marcello
Click to expand...

Please, try updating Parallels Tools. It should help.
 
Any Fix for this issue yet?????

Seriously.

Just installed VMWare Fusion trial and will be switching permanently if this is not fixed by the end of the 30 day trial. I even paid for to upgrade to Parallels 7 and still have this issue. My VMs, Windows 7- 64 and Centos used to be very fast, then one day everything became dead slow and and I could see that my CPU was being consumed at 100%+. "This can't be right. This man has 104% body fat!"

What happened and when will this be fixed?
 
Last edited:
I had this problem with Windows 7 as a guest OS, and checked my Windows 7 Task Manager and found nothing at first. But then I clicked the "Resource Monitor" button and found that a process called mscorswv.exe was continually being started and taking up 100% of the Windows CPU. A quick check on Google found a description of mscorswv.exe which mentions that "mscorsvw.exe is precompiling .NET assemblies in the background. Once it's done, it will go away." Sure enough, it went away after a while and CPU usage returned to normal. So that is one thing to check, see if your Windows Task Manager and the Resource Monitor report any Windows processes taking up 100% CPU.
 
Hi MattiJA,

I still have the issue, and an SSD. I will try the sleep/wake trick next time and see if that helps. I will also try to replicate with your suggestion and reply back within the next few days.

I haven't revisited the forum for a while and just yesterday I was bitten again by this problem. The only solution that effectively works for me (before trying the sleep/wake - and everything else I have tried, including the CD/DVD suggestion) is to let it run for hours. Eventually the prl_vm_app process goes down to 1.4 to 1.7% and then the VM works like a charm. Of course using it bring the %CPU up, but to manageable levels (20-40% most of the time).

I'm also glad to hear that parallels are looking into this and I will report as soon as the issue flares up again following Hanna's (juzci) details. To note, Hanna's last message is from Jan 25th, we are on April 2nd, an update was issued a few weeks ago and the problem is still there (I have both Parallels and Lion up to date), so for whatever is worth, the issue is still unresolved. Thanks for looking into it, though.
 
MattiJA said:
I can also make it go away. All I have to do is put my mac to sleep, and wake it up. CPU usage will drop, UI becomes responsive, and I have VPN and networking connections functioning properly.
Click to expand...

Oh, WOW!!! Finally!!!! I just got bit by this bug again and I tried the sleep/wake suggestion and it worked! Sweeeeeeeet!!! The issue is still there, Parallels still needs to fix this, but now I seem to be able to get rid of it :D YAY!

Thanks a million MattiJA!
 
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