Parallels 2.1 is fast but not stable

I'm evealuating Parallels Workstation 2.1 on my laptop (Intel dual core). As a developer, I got VPC as part of my MSDN subscription and have used it for very long time. I have to say Parallels is much faster than VPC2004. But it seems not that stable. My main test is running Win 2000 server as guest OS (addigned 1G RAM), on XP SP2 host with 2G RAM. The application crashed itself a few times. For once, it brought down the whole system when I tried to suspend the guest system. Then the guest system complained corrupt system file when rebooting. Now I'm very careful to back up the guest system after every major new software installation. This is really a pain. I would appreciate any tips which can help me run the application more stably.

Bob

 

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Make your host OS one of the Linux ones. Seriously.
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This certainly is not an option for me. I use Visual Studio heavily.

 

I don't use all of visual studio that heavily, but I do use a Linux host running many copies of Windoze including XP, 2000, and Win2000 Server running IIS and SQL Server. Besides the much better stability of the underlying OS being Linux, you can do most of your internet access under Linux and avoid the time consuming mess dealing with Windoze security problems. An XP guest can run VS, and just as easily look at a Win2000 Server guest.