05-09-2007, 01:11 AM

I have a C2D MBP and have been using Parallels for my virtualization software. I was very happy with it for a long time. A newer version offered an option to run boot camp partitions within Parallels so I switched to that. When I did my system became very slow and I read comments form others saying they had the same experience so I switched back to basic Parallels. When I did this my performance went much higher.
About a month ago for no reason I know of the system became so slow. When I boot up the Parallels Windows partition my computer slows to a crawl and almost locks up but not just that. While I"m running Parallels my entire system is slow. Almost everything runs slow on the Windows side and same on the Mac side. It's not unusable but it requires a lot of patience when switching between programs may freeze my system for around 10-20 seconds. I never had this issue before. I'm convinced something got corrupted or a setting got changed that could be causing this. I have the maximum 2GB in my MBP.
I'd rather find what it is that's slowing this down but if not will just simply wipe out Parallels and start over and hope for a better experience this time. While I'm looking at this though I'm wondering if there are now better alternatives. One thing I don't like is you can't change teh partition size of the virtual drive. I had originally made a 32GB partition but have 20GB free on it so have a lot of wasted drive space. I heard mostly of VMWare. Is this maybe a better option for me to switch to? I'm a ex-windows user and have switched almost everything over to Parallels. I use two programs 95% of the time in Windows and these are Quickbooks Pro and Ebay's Turbo Lister since I'm a Ebay seller. I know there's a version of Quickbooks for the Mac. Unfortunately EBay doesn't offer a mac version but with time I'll have my own web site up and not use Turbo Lister much if any. There are a few other programs such as a coin database I use but rarely and I could even run them if necessary on my Windows desktop.
I like the idea of running Windows and Mac side by side but if I don't find a better solution may just consider Boot Camp since that won't slow down either OS.

05-09-2007, 09:03 AM

VMWare's Fusion product is still in Beta. You can download it if you want to try it, but as with any Beta software you're bound to run into snags.

Back to Parallels: Did you run the Parallels Drive Compressor on your virtual machine? Very often, this will fix performance problems with the Windows environment.

And how much memory do you have allocated to Parallels? Did you try changing that value?

Good luck!

05-09-2007, 11:06 AM

I had 512 allocated to parallels but changed it to 1GB with still little luck. I am thinking of increasing my computer's memory to 3GB if it's a chance that helps. I haven't run Parallels Compressor but will give that a try.