Parallels slowing OS X to a crawl on startup - problem solved
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Loading ...I use a MacBook Pro at work, but of course there are always one or two Windows applications that I need to run too. Consequently, I recently installed Parallels to allow me to run these both in the office and at home. I knew that others were using this method to run these apps, so I wasn’t too worried about getting it to work.
When I fired up Parallels for the first time though, the CPU usage shot right up and the whole OS X interface became incredibly sluggish for several minutes. The strange thing was that this was just starting Parallels itself, not booting the virtual machine. Once the application was started, sanity was restored. The offending process was “WindowServer”, so it seemed to have something to do with the graphics processing. There were reports of other folks having similar problems on the Parallels forum, but none of the solutions seemed to be definitive.
Then I tried starting Parallels while I was away from my desk. It came straight up with no problem at all. What was different? It turned out to be a Good Way USB Display Adapter I am using to allow me to run 2 external monitors from my laptop. Once this was disconnected the problem went away. So now if I’m at my desk, I unplug the USB cable, start Parallels, then reconnect. I don’t understand what is going on here, but at least I have a workaround.
June 23rd, 2008 at 12:10 pm
Hi Chris,
We have recently upgraded all of our PCs in the office to iMacs. The short version to this long story is that our SEO visited the Mac Store in Regent Street in London and spoke to the representative about running Parallels so that our staff members could run Windows as well as Mac. The representative explained the analogy of doing so which was “you wouldn’t want a car with two engines, one Diesel and one Petrol working against each other/at the same time causing conflict would you– why not have the ability to switch between diesel or petrol e.g. Bootcamp” . I have seen Parallels in action and it doesn’t provided any real benefit as far as I have seen “if you want to switch from Mac to Windows in Bootcamp, simply restart your system and viola”
Regards,
Lauren Nash
www.sososher.com
June 23rd, 2008 at 1:11 pm
Lauren,
Thanks for your comment. I’m afraid I don’t really follow your argument. I don’t particularly want to run Windows, I just need access to a couple of applications over what is available in OS X. Parallels gives me exactly that. Suppose someone sends me an email and I need to use the information in a Windows app. With Parallels I can just cut and paste. How would I do that with Bootcamp?
Chris