Parallels and Memory Usage

[One-Resolution]

Hello,

I recently bought a brand new macbook pro with 4 gbs of ram loaded. I installed parallels 7 and windows 7 for my cs5 applications. However, when I'm working in fireworks or photoshop for example, I keep running out of memory or get a message to free space up and/or close programs. Or when I try to open a large file it says I cannot. Granted they are large files around 50 to 70 mbs, but shouldn't this be able to handle that no problem?

I have nothing else big running and when I check the activity monitor it doesn't show anything drastic at all. Says I still have over 3.5gbs free of ram. I'm brand new to macs and as a pc guy my whole career am loving the switch, but this is killing me. What am I missing? Is there ram setup or controlled somewhere specific to the windows side of things on my machine? I'm just really surprised that it would bog down like this when I ordered what I thought was a Ferrari. Any suggestions or ideas on how to make this machine perform better when using parallels?

Many thanks.

 

[Dweez]

How much memory did you allocate to the VM?

 

[One-Resolution]

I'm not sure. where and how do I manage that?

thanks,

 

[Ccrew]

4gbs of ram is about enough for Lion. Parallels or Fusion on top of it is just going to be plain painful. Bump the machine to 8gb, and call us in the morning

 

[D.T.]

Click in the “wrench” icon at the bottom of the VM window or get to the VM Machine List from the main Parallels Windows Menu, right-click on the machine from the list and choose configure.

The main memory allocation is on the General tab.

I’m running a Parallels (v6) with Win7 for several development tools, with 8GB RAM total, 4GB allocated to the VM. 4GB is a touch tight, depending on what you’re doing on the Windows side. FWIW, also running a 2.3GHz quad i7.

It’s been working out great for me!

[edit]

Meant to mention, if you're running in Coherence, you can also option/alt click the Coherence icon in the OSX menu bar and you’ll get the extended menu where you can select config, machine list, etc.

 

[ndpuckhead]

I have a 4GB Mac Book, I'm using parallels with XP and it works flawlessly, does Windows 7 take up that much more room? I'm not running many programs in Windows, either, just mainly an accounting program I can't get for MAC.

 

[153098]

I have a 4GB Mac Book, I'm using parallels with XP and it works flawlessly, does Windows 7 take up that much more room? I'm not running many programs in Windows, either, just mainly an accounting program I can't get for MAC.

No it's not really Windows 7 running in parallels but running parallels on Lion that takes up a lot of memory.

 

[dusk007]

Why should Parallels require that much memory? It shouldn't need much more than what the VM needs for its OS.
I found Windows 7 works quite well with 1GB. If you use Photoshop make it 2GB but it really doesn't require 4GB as everybody claims. If you really use the VM to such an extent that you'd need 4GB you are probably better of to just launch Windows natively instead of wasting all that speed on VM overhead.

Lion is probably bad once you run it only 2GB left as many people reported. I am still running Snow Leopard and I have no intention of changing that. They'd have to pay me 30 bucks to take that battery life hit and Mission Control.