I am running Outllook 2007 on an Exchange Server in Parallels Build 3224 (2.5 Leopard version) I have a MBP with 3GB of memory and have assigned .5GB for Parallels. When things are going well (about 75% of the time) CPU usage is around 20% and Outlook is pretty quick. When things go unstable for no apparent reason, CPU usage goes up to 90+% and Outlook gets very slow and crashes repeatedly. Outlook is really the only program I use Parallels for. Other programs like Firefox seem ok but also get slow at times. Any ideas why this might be happening would be appreciated or comments that you run Outlook and no problem. Thanks
The first thing I would do to start eliminating problems is: 1/ re-start your Windows if not already done so. 2/ run some windows maintenance and check to see if the disk needs a defrag but don't use the windows utility to do it (see 3). 3/ after backing up (or rather cloning) your VM - run the compressor tool in parallels regardless of 2. 4/ if Outlook is still a problem then it really is Windows and some registry glitch which means re-install Outlook would be my next move.
Thanks Gosh. I restarted and ran windows maintenance, which said defrag not needed. Ran Compressor (wow, that took forever) Outlook seems about the same but the CPU % is averaging between 40-60% then settles down to about 30%. I could reinstall but I have already done this once and no improvement. Are you running Outlook 2007 under Parallels and is it stable and quick? Thanks again.
Update on this problem I switched to Fusion and now my CPU use never exceeds 2%, Outlook is almost always quick and responsive and rarely crashes. Whew! Happy to have that solved.
