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Do you find Windows have more stability issues than Mac OS? Is Windows under Parallels stable all the time?

H

hajime

macrumors G3
Original poster
Jul 23, 2007
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Hi, I switched to Windows 10 after Apple moved to Silicon Mac. While most of the time the system is quite good, once in awhile there are stability issues. For example, for the past few months the external screens blinked every day randomly for no reason. Today I upgraded an Nvidia software hoping the issue would disappear. Instead, now there are monitor connectivity issues.

For those who switched from Mac to Windows, do you find that your Windows system have more stability issues than MacOS?

How is the situation with Windows running through Parallels on Silicon Mac? I know they are running Windows 11. Is there stability issue sometimes or it works 99% of the time?
 
Winnows 10 uptime 100% on 6 Intel Macs of different generations (macOS wiped on all of them and is only occasionally used from external drive to update firmware). Zero issues apart from recently discovered memory leak on the Macs with T2 (Apple's fault). Use proper Windows 10 edition to get best stability, i.e. Chinese Government Edition.

Virtual Machine performance cannot be compared to real hardware performance no matter what advertisements tell you. Parallels is and always was inferior to VMware stability wise and performance wise. Don't trust forced Parallels Desktop ad campaign. VMware is the original VM creator, they know best what they are doing.

Boot Camp one love.
 
I haven't had any Windows or MacOS stability issues for a very long time, though I do have monitor flashing problems with my Mac Studio, and before that an M1 MBA, but I wouldn't call that stability problems, more incompatibility. My Windows machine is rock solid with that monitor, and my iMac is also rock solid with its monitor.
 
My experience has been that both operating systems have a level of high stability. Both have a variety of bugs, and questionable behaviors and peculiarities but overall at this stage of macOS and Windows life cycle they're very stable imo.

I give Apple more credit to be visually consistent, and Microsoft for flexibility, and options to customize and change the system to suit your needs better.
 
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sees to me Apple is more forgiving while Windows is more change-able.
On MacBooks one can screw something up like remove an important file
where a drag and drop can ready this while Microsoft needs more steps and procedures.
(I wish I could pinpoint an exact incident, but can't think of one)
 
On supported and known-good hardware, and using stable drivers, Windows by itself is quite stable, in my experience. But at that point, the situation is pretty similar to that of macOS, as far as can be done with different entities providing the OS and the hardware.

No, the main reason for me to stick with macOS is basically the user experience. To be honest I even prefer the software on the modern Linux desktops to Windows nowadays: It may be the result of corporate malware, of course, but I had a feeling anything .Net based just craaaaawled on my Win 10 work computer when I had to use one for a few months last year, and I just don't experience that with native apps on other systems.
 
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Im noticing that  does "hide" things by using grey type instead of black.
case in point is the battery level on High Sierra and time to fully charge is grey,
while all other icon tasks are back, like bluetooth, sound, etc.
and in Ventura the time is grey an hard to se at times.
and there is probably nothin go can do about that.......
see
: Screenshot 2023-03-03 at 7.47.55 AM.png
 
hajime said:
Hi, I switched to Windows 10 after Apple moved to Silicon Mac. While most of the time the system is quite good, once in awhile there are stability issues. For example, for the past few months the external screens blinked every day randomly for no reason. Today I upgraded an Nvidia software hoping the issue would disappear. Instead, now there are monitor connectivity issues.
Click to expand...

Did you update your Nvidia drivers?
 
Sometimes I downloaded free games from Streams. During installations some of them required installations of other software. While the Steam community keeps saying that these software from Streams are completely safe as they have been checked, I still wonder if any of these program has installed anything doggy.
 
Last edited:
hajime said:
Sometimes I downloaded free games from Streams. During installations some of them required installations of other software. While the Streams community keeps saying that these software from Streams are completely safe as they have been checked, I still wonder if any of these program has installed anything doggy.
Click to expand...

What's the GPU?
 
hajime said:
Yes
Click to expand...

Okay so when there's monitor connectivity issues like this where it's flickering occasionally like you say, that's either due to issues with the drivers (which you said you updated them recently so we can rule that out,) a connection issue with the cable, or a failing graphics card.

What is your GPU?
 
Mikael H said:
On supported and known-good hardware, and using stable drivers, Windows by itself is quite stable, in my experience. But at that point, the situation is pretty similar to that of macOS, as far as can be done with different entities providing the OS and the hardware.
Click to expand...

One problem is I don't know if the drivers are stable or not. Whenever Windows or components made from well-known companies notify me about update, I just update. In this respect, is the Mac side better as Apple has more control on its hardware?
 
hajime said:
One problem is I don't know if the drivers are stable or not. Whenever Windows or components made from well-known companies notify me about update, I just update. In this respect, is the Mac side better as Apple has more control on its hardware?
Click to expand...
Yes. Unless you pay for workstation grade hardware and only use approved drivers, which for obvious reasons can be ancient, which in turn is not optimal for gaming.
 
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Even if you updated to the latest drivers...doesn't guarantee that the flickering goes away..There was a recent problem with AMD Adrenalin drivers was not stable in which I had to go back to the previous driver. They have recently just upgraded two more generations and so far I haven't had any problems except for a occasional sleep mode if away for over 30 minutes.
 
hajime said:
Hi, I switched to Windows 10 after Apple moved to Silicon Mac. While most of the time the system is quite good, once in awhile there are stability issues. For example, for the past few months the external screens blinked every day randomly for no reason. Today I upgraded an Nvidia software hoping the issue would disappear. Instead, now there are monitor connectivity issues.

For those who switched from Mac to Windows, do you find that your Windows system have more stability issues than MacOS?

How is the situation with Windows running through Parallels on Silicon Mac? I know they are running Windows 11. Is there stability issue sometimes or it works 99% of the time?
Click to expand...
I have many PCs and Macs. Some of my PCs are Macs that have since been wiped and with Windows 10 being the sole operating system. I've had zero stability issues with Windows 10 and Windows 11. However, that's largely because the hardware I'm running Windows 10 and Windows 11 on is well built. I generally prefer business class machines or systems I build myself. In the case of the former, whether Dell, HP, or Lenovo, I'm able to use a utility that fetches the exact drivers I need and am able to use Windows 10 or 11 without any third party bloatware. The experience is no less smooth and stable as macOS on a Mac.

I've also not really suffered stability issues with macOS. I don't get blue screens of death on PCs nor kernel panics in macOS. I find that macOS has a lot more bugs that I encounter on the regular than Windows does. But I think that's an obvious byproduct of Apple making needless sweeping changes to applications and to macOS itself as part of its annual release cycle without devoting proper testing resources.

Obviously, as is the case with any Mac or any PC, your mileage may vary. Especially when it concerns drivers for generationally specific hardware.

As for Parallels on Apple Silicon Macs, I generally don't like Parallels Desktop and much prefer VMware Fusion. I have not tried Parallels Desktop since Microsoft started supporting it as an option; though, it being the ARM64 version of Windows 11 and not the x64 version, there are caveats. It'll be fine for running a decent portion of the apps that run in the x64 version of Windows 11, but I wouldn't rely on it to substitute having a Windows PC. But, much of that is due to (a) Apple Silicon SoCs not having 32-bit ARM instruction sets and therefore not being able to run a lot of the lingering 32-bit ARM code still in Windows and (b) the fact that Windows 11 for ARM64 is never going to be as optimal for running x86 and x86-64 Windows apps as a proper x86-64 computer.
 
hajime said:
Whenever Windows or components made from well-known companies notify me about update, I just update. In this respect, is the Mac side better as Apple has more control on its hardware?
Click to expand...
Here's my $.02. I usually avoid updating drivers for as long as possible, especially if your system is running optimally. Its like when people update their bios, simply because the manufacturer released a new version. I go by the old adage if ain't broke don't fix it. If your machine is working don't change it.

With that said, Apple is no more immune to releasing buggy updates. I think they've done a great job, but they have released updates that caused problems, and they've pulled updates in the past. You're right, being a single source, means that there is only one variable - apple. Their track record is good, don't get me wrong but bugs happen regardless of the platform

Even on the Mac side, I usually avoid updating the point releases, at least right off the bat. I let other people update and see if there's issues. Other then zero day patches, I see no rush to update, but that's just me.
 
"Windows is more changeable"

Yes, in some regards, but even that is getting worse.

I remove Edge icon from my desktop for example, and Windows puts it back there from time to time. Excuse me, but when I do something, I want it to stay that way until I decide it's time to change things.
 
Make sure you deactivate Edge from your startup sequence or it will pop back up. Settings/apps/startup on far left.
 
I use a combination of O&O Shutup 10 and Chris Titus's Debloat scripts, both handle Edge, One Drive and Bing easily.
 
I have windows 10 on both my 2018 and 2014 mac minis and no problems since it is both dedicated to windows and I wiped out the Mac partitions and added it to my system drive.
 
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