I transported a VMware Windows XP VM from my Mac Mini (running 10.5.6) to Parallels 4 on my MacBook Pro (running 10.5.7). The transfer went fine but the startup of XP on Parallels is very slow after I login to Windows. On my VMware XP VM the load of user settings takes less than a second, but on the Parallels XP VM it seems to take about 30 seconds or more. Any ideas of why this might be so slow on Parallels?
Hello, Please follow the steps below in regards to the issue: 1. The easiest way to fix the problem and get fast OS boot time again is to leave the VM being idle for 30-60 minutes.OS starts to optimize itself after ~30 minutes of being idle. 2. Run cmd.exe (shell interpreter) and execute the following command: start /wait Rundll32.exe advapi32.dll,ProcessIdleTasks This command takes 2-3 minutes to complete after that applications and OS will be optimized out again. 3. Disable Smart Mount. You can disable smart mount by clicking on Virtual Machine -> Configure -> Smart Mount. Thanks, -- Anupama Technical Support Engineer Parallels
thanks for the suggestion I input the command to cmd.exe exactly as described in your post, but the command completed in 2 seconds rather than 2 minutes as you indicated. I then disabled Smart Mount I then shut down the vm and restarted. I did not see any change in startup time of the vm - it took about 55 seconds to login. I retried the procedure and got the same results as above, so the problem is still not corrected. Do you have any other things for me to try? Thanks.
Hello, Please try uninstalling Parallels Tools and installing back. You can install parallels tools in two ways. First, start the virtual machine->click on install parallels tools. Second, you can install manually. Please follow the steps that are written below and you will be able to solve your issue with installing Parallel Tools manually. 1) Go to MAC HD/ Library/Parallels/Tools/Prl-tools-win.iso 2) Double click on that file 3) You will have a file as Setup.exe 4) Copy the file and paste it in Windows Desktop (you can also use a pen/flash drive for this purpose) 5) Then run the setup.exe in Windows 6) you will be able to install Parallel Tools Perfectly. Also, turn off the firewall and disable the antivirus. Thank You. ________ Anupama Parallels Team
I followed the instructions by removing Parallels tools and turning off firewall and virus protection. Then I restarted the vm and reinstalled Parallels tools. I restarted the vm again, but the slow login problem remains. I noticed in the Windows control panel used to add/delete programs that VMware Tools was still installed - so I tried to remove it, but it wouldn't work. I was wondering if there is some other way to uninstall VMware tools or do I have to uninstall VMware tools before I use the Transporter to bring the VMware VM into Parallels? Any other ideas?
Got it working Okay, here's what I did. I deleted the Parallels XP vm that I had created previously. I went back to my machine with VMware and created a clone of the XP vm. I did this by duplicating the file containing the vm. Then I started the cloned machine with VMware. VMware noticed that something had happened and asked if I had copied or moved the vm. I told it that I had copied it and then it did its magic to make the vm work. Then I started the cloned XP vm and removed VMware Tools using the XP Control Panel - Add/Delete Apps. Then I shut down the cloned vm. Next I went back to Parallels to use the Transporter to convert the cloned XP vm (without VMware Tools) into a Parallels vm. This took a little while, but when the process was done the machine startup and login times are back to normal. I don't know why getting to this point was so painful. There should have been some warning in Parallels that when using Transporter with a VMware vm, the VMware Tools should be removed first. I hope this information is of some use to others.
My solution... I have a MacBook 2.2 GHz with 4GB RAM running windows XP. Windows was very slow in general and when resuming from suspended state even slower still to recover (and sometimes never). This was a phenomena that occurred after my upgrade to Parallels 4 from 3, where I had no similar issues. I did two things that seems to have solved the problem foe me: 1. Under the control panel Systems -> Advanced Tab -> Performance Settings Button -> Performance Options Advanced Tab - Virtual Memory Button -> ensure "System Managed Size" was selected. For some reason "Custom size" had been selected (I do not remember ever setting this). In any event, under "Total paging file size" now indicates a range of 2 MB to 766MB with 767 MB currently allocated. 2. Under Parallels Desktop -> Preferences -> Memory -> selected Manually button and set to 1006MB. It had been set much lower MB-wise or Automatically before. Not sure if a somewhat lower manual setting than 1006MB won't work just as well. 3. For completeness here only (i.e., I made no changes to this setting, mostly because it does not appear that I can)... Under the Menu "Virtual Machine" -> Hardware-Memory reads Main Memory as being 512 MB. I do not understand the difference between this setting and the one under paragraph 2 above, but it made no difference since I cannot adjust it anyway. Best of luck. Jim M.
