My PD 4 experience after 10 days

[aa.]

Please help me. I tried to uninstall Parallels and now my Bootcamp Vista partition is fried. It says it is unable to start because it cannot locate prl_pv32.sys. I have reinstalled Parallels, but am getting the same result. Can someone please send me a copy of prl_pv32.sys and tell me where in my Windows system folder to put it so I can access Vista again?

Did you solved the problem?

If not, you cant boot Windows in safe mode. Then you should be able to uninstal Parallels Tools as usual from Windows "Add or Remove programs". Or you can try to uninstall Parallels Paravirtualization Driver from the Device Manager.

 

[Adrian Canoso]

Same upgrade performance problems...

The upgrade is a sham and waste of money & time but luckily Bill (from page two, second post) provides a fix that brings 4 up to speed of 3. It takes a bit of patience and careful following of instructions but it was easy to do, no problems... Things are definitely improved.

I use 3D modeling software - Rhino 3D and there was NO performance boost from v3 to v4 (which was about 30% slower). In-fact Redrawing in Rhino 3D is *MUCH* faster disabling hardware acceleration within the program!

The only reason why I upgraded is because of the claims that 4 was supposed to be so much faster...

Marketing should be proud, they got my $80 and I've waisted a lot of time dealing with this "upgrade"

Overall I regret this upgrade but I do appreciate the feedback and efforts of the support team.

I submitted feedback through "report a problem", ticket #124859

On a note to the development team: use your beta testers to do the beta testing...

 

[aa.]

I use 3D modeling software - Rhino 3D and there was NO performance boost from v3 to v4 (which was about 30% slower). In-fact Redrawing in Rhino 3D is *MUCH* faster disabling hardware acceleration within the program!

The only reason why I upgraded is because of the claims that 4 was supposed to be so much faster...

Adrian, I submitted a bug to developers and we'll try to reproduce it and fix the problem. We really made a lot of improvements in PD4, however it's very hard to check every application on every host etc. Thanks for your report!

 

[Ulrik Schmidt]

I got my MB in March and purchases PD4 at the same time. I haven't experienced the the same severity as many of you, but certainly a high percentage CPU usage. I have experienced to issues:

1. I had installed printers and one installation that did not work had an unprinted document in the outbox. This took up 99,3 % of the CPU and the MB was melting ! I deleted the printjob and it went back to "normal" ! Strange !

2. "Normal" is now CPU % og 15-55 (average 25-30) with NO applivations running. More with a few applications running. Browsing i bit in the net, working in word seems enough to get it to the 60-70 % mark. This still very high compared to that I am used to with my (4 years old) windows machine. Is this fixable ? Or is it just how it is to run PD4 ? Other recommendations (other than throwing the HW + SW out of the window, which I have been very close at doing. I like the MB, but I MUST be able to run windows.

Any comments / ideas ?

BR
Ulrik

 

[aa.]

I got my MB in March and purchases PD4 at the same time. I haven't experienced the the same severity as many of you, but certainly a high percentage CPU usage. I have experienced to issues:

1. I had installed printers and one installation that did not work had an unprinted document in the outbox. This took up 99,3 % of the CPU and the MB was melting ! I deleted the printjob and it went back to "normal" ! Strange !

Hmm, probably it's not PD issue.

2. "Normal" is now CPU % og 15-55 (average 25-30) with NO applivations running. More with a few applications running. Browsing i bit in the net, working in word seems enough to get it to the 60-70 % mark. This still very high compared to that I am used to with my (4 years old) windows machine. Is this fixable ? Or is it just how it is to run PD4 ? Other recommendations (other than throwing the HW + SW out of the window, which I have been very close at doing. I like the MB, but I MUST be able to run windows.

Any comments / ideas ?

BR
Ulrik

Normally, when idle Windows guest virtual machine is running, PD4 should consume 1-3% of CPU power.

1. Do you see this huge CPU usage in host (MacOS) or in guest (Windows) ? Is it clear what application eat CPU?
2. Did you install Parallels Tools inside Windows VM? If so, could you try to uninstall it and check CPU usage w/o tools?
3. Could you please start your Windows VM, left it idle for some minutes, and then generate the Problem Report and tell me the number in private message? This may help to understand what is wrong in your VM.

 

[Ulrik Schmidt]

1. Windows is around 4-5 % in idle. The only application showing up with a decent number is "active system proces" (translated) eating 80-90 % (of the 4-5 %). Memory usage is 55%. In PD it is the prl_wm_app that eats it all. I am only running 1 processor (it is not possible to choose "2" in configuration).

2. This is my second VM installed. The first one could not install re-install "tools" and after lentghy e-mail conversations with your support staff (#709851) I chose to make a new VM and re-install tools, vista and programs (in that order).

3. Will do

 

[Bob R.J.C]

This Proc Also Works with for Windows 7

...running on OS X 10.6.6 with Parallels 5 Build 5.0.9376 on a Mac 3.06 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo. First my symptoms:

1. Installed the most recent updates from Microsoft on both an iMac and a Macbook Pro. My systems were current but I saw a small collection of updates (important and recommended) that included Service Pack 1 for about 64 MB.
2. In both cases, the download took an unusually long time as did the installation, i.e. 20-30 minutes. On the iMac, I checked the activity monitor during installation where I saw that prl_vm_app was using 100%+ CPU and 1000 MB+ of memory. prl_vm_app would even use 50%+ CPU and huge amounts of memory when Windows was idling! My windows vm is set up with 1 CPU and 1 GB of memory so basically this process was consuming all the CPU and memory available to it.

Not good so I searched to see if anyone else had seen this before and found this thread. I followed the instructions but noted the following differences. (Yes...I made a copy the pvm file before ever trying this.)

1. Did not receive 'hardware did not install properly' messages after changing the chip set value from 1 to 0 and re-booting. Did see that it installed some new hardware (didn't note what) but it was successful in doing so. Did not have to cancel out of any 'new hardware' setup windows.
2. Uninstalled Parallels Tools as per normal but it didn't take any longer than I had reason to expect (less than 2 minutes)
3. On re-boot, again I didn't get any 'hardware did not install properly' messages nor did not have to cancel out of any 'new hardware' setup windows.
4. Deleted prl* files from windows\system32\drivers but found only prl_* files. (The wording seemed to suggest I'd find others that were prl*.)
5. Re-installing Parallels Tools via the menu option, I was prompted for the original Parallels disk. Loaded the disk and Parallels Tools installed normally in about 2 minutes or less.
6. Saw no Service Pack messages.
7. Re-booted as instructed.

Watching the Activity Monitor during that final re-boot, I noticed that prl_vm_app used 50%+ CPU during the boot process but about 40-50% less memory (never saw memory go much above 600 MB). CPU dropped down to single digits when the boot was completed idling though memory seemed to stay up.

Appears to have corrected the problem for me. Thanx.

 

[dich thuatd]

Thanks, Tim. I'm in the camp of happy and successful with PD4, but facing a few (minor) issues.

In my case, the time from turn on to logon prompt for XP SP3 is very slow. During this time, the CPU for prl_vm_app is very high, often close to 200% and sometimes more (??). I'm using the terminal command "top -o cpu" to watch this. This one is a problem for me because one of the reasons I use parallels is for demo purposes and it now takes a lot longer to get into the demo that it used to.

Once I get signed in and the system gets up and running, the business apps perform nicely with what seems to be good performance. I have not noticed the painfully slow office apps that Shaun reports, yet my usage scenario seems similar to his. I have observed an occasional sluggishness to some office apps but it has not been consistent enough to really identify or report. I would have to say that once the system is up I am not seeing a slow system.

When would you like me to "report a problem" to capture the best data? During the slow startup phase? I could do that. Just let me know.

About a month ago, I made some very detailed timings of windows startup/logon, screen to screen navigation of one of our corporate website apps, and startup times for various office apps. At the time, parallels V3 on my powerbook pro was far superior to the other tools tested (VMWare on a comparable laptop running windows XP, Microsoft Virtual PC on a comparable laptop running XP, and Microsoft Virtual PC on a comparable laptop running Vista Business x64). I have those timing, so I can closely compare Parallels V3 to V4. I will make some tests with V4 and let you know the real differences.