Slow parallel 6

Not having one, all I have to go on is Wikipedia which says that it indeed does (here).

vansmith said:

Not having one, all I have to go on is Wikipedia which says that it indeed does (here).

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That could be it then. In effect, it's got 4 cores, just as my 15" has 8.

Check out the memory consumption on the kernel alone:

so maybe the answer to my issue is to add more memory?

cwa107 said:

Simply put, you need more RAM. With the Core i7, your Mac will use about 1.5GB just to boot. So, assuming you're doing nothing on the Mac and you've allocated 2GB to the VM, you've got just a paltry 512MB in reserve. You Mac will start digging into virtual memory, and that's when things start to bog down - both on the VM and on the Mac.

I ran into almost the exact same issue. Added 8GB to my MacBook Pro and now the two run comfortably together.

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smol3404 said:

so maybe the answer to my issue is to add more memory?

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Coulda sworn I remembered writing that back in post #8, first page

I recommend OtherWorldComputing.com (OWC). Good prices, lifetime guaranteed - and seeing as how these machines appear to be extremely picky about RAM (at least from what I've read), it doesn't pay to go with generic.

kernel_task here is only using ~249MB of memory so it could very well be a processor specific issue (I only have two cores both of which are physical). I suppose the logic is "if you have it, use it" but I hope that's not the case. This doesn't compare with Chrome using ~391MB of memory across nine processes. I have more than enough memory but still.

smol, that may help to rectify the issue but only if a lack of memory is actually the cause which it sounds like it is. My suggestion would be to keep AM open for a while and especially as you use and close Parallels to see how much memory is being used. The symptoms you describe do sound like memory issues but you should be able to comfortably run Windows 7 with 4GB of RAM as long as you allocate memory properly (don't allocate 3.5GB to the VM for instance).

Thank you for the help folks, appreciate it, guess i will add more ram and see how that goes.

Thanks again.

When installing Parallels, I'm assuming it asks during setup how much RAM you'd like to use for the VM? If I'm installing Win XP, since it'll only recognize 3GB, is there any reason to give it any more than that? Does the VM itself require RAM?

Phacade said:

When installing Parallels, I'm assuming it asks during setup how much RAM you'd like to use for the VM? If I'm installing Win XP, since it'll only recognize 3GB, is there any reason to give it any more than that? Does the VM itself require RAM?

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Yes - a virtual machine requires a chunk of the host computer's memory to be allocated to it when it's running - and yes, that configuration is done during setup of the vm.

For Windows XP, you can get away with 1GB (actually, the recommended is 512MB, if I remember correctly). Windows 7 is a different beast altogether.

When installing Parallels, do I need to allocate how much hard disk space I want to give Windows, or is that only if I'm setting up Windows in Boot Camp?

Phacade said:

When installing Parallels, do I need to allocate how much hard disk space I want to give Windows, or is that only if I'm setting up Windows in Boot Camp?

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You can change ALL of that after Parallels is installed! Nice feature.

Is there an option in Parallels to prevent/not allow Windows to connect to the internet?

When installing Parallels, do I need to allocate how much hard disk space I want to give Windows, or is that only if I'm setting up Windows in Boot Camp?

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Depends on how you setup the Virtual Machine. If you want it to point to your boot camp partition - then you set up Hard Disk Space in Bootcamp - if you want a pure virtual machine with virtual disks then you set that up in parallels. You can always create more virtual disks as you need them with that setup.

Is there an option in Parallels to prevent/not allow Windows to connect to the internet?

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You can always disable any part of the computer - including networking.

Coolio. I'll give it a whirl tonight.

Phacade said:

Is there an option in Parallels to prevent/not allow Windows to connect to the internet?

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Here you are.

I suggest you take a look at the user manual - it might be helpful.

Thank you. I actually have the manual (at home), but I was at work, and curious, and there was an open topic on the subject; so I asked. I'm quite familiar with finding answers to my own questions though. Next time I'll hold my curiousity and save my question until I get home and look it up myself.

No need to do so - we're here to answer questions.