Quick tip for Parallels Desktop users: If you have only 1GB of RAM on your Mac, set the Windows XP virtual machine RAM to 256MB, instead of the recommended 640MB.
Parallels used to suffocate my Mac, transforming it into an unresponsive piece of heating plastic. With the new settings, everything cruises smoothly.
2 responses so far ↓
1 jchap // Jul 1, 2008 at 15:46
Thanks a lot for this tip. This really came in helpful for me. I’m running Parallels Desktop on Mac OS X Tiger, and I had made the mistake of allocating gobs of memory to the guest OS machines, thinking that they would run faster. They didn’t at all… when I backed the memory allocation on the guest OS (XP Pro) to 600MB, it really started screaming along! Now my boot time for Win XP Pro from Parallels is 17 seconds to login prompt - unbelievable! Thanks again for your outstanding hint.
2 Gabriel // Jul 1, 2008 at 16:30
Glad I could help :-)
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