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trouble with parallels 6 and win 7

J

jowens43

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jun 13, 2011
8
0
Hi there

I am new to the Mac,am experiencing difficulty adding windows 7 to my IMAc.
Please indulge me with the lengthy account. While attempting to install win 7,get error msg,Windows detected that this computer has 368MB of ram,512MB is required for installation,installation cannot proceed.

Thanking in advance for any assistance received,

J.

Here are my specs;
IMAC Model IMAC Model Id IMAC 7.1
Processor 2.4 Ghz Intel Core2 Duo
Memory 1Gb 667mhz DDR2 SDRAM
L2Cache 4Mb
Bus Speed 800Mhz
Boot Rom Ver IM 71.007A800,upgraded from original OS10 Leopard 5.8
Parallels 6
Windows 7 Home Premium Svc Pack 1
I see also,Volume 319.73Gb 312.84 Available.

Thanks Again
 
Before I start, I have only Parallels 5 with WinXP, but I believe I might have the answer to your question.

I believe that as the error message suggests, you're simply running out of RAM memory for the virtual Windows machine. In the version of Parallels I have, one can adjust the amount of RAM dedicated to the virtual machine (under the Virtual Machine ... Configure menu, and going to the general tab). It sounds like you need to dedicate at least 500 MB of RAM to the virtual machine, but as I recall the default for virtual machine RAM in Parallels is 300-400 MB. Thus, it sounds like simply a matter of increasing the virtual machine's default RAM to the Win7's minimum of 500MB.

Having said that, 1GB is not a lot of memory to run MacOS plus Parallels/Win7 at the same time. On my setup I have 2 GB and running XP in Parallels results in a certain amount of waiting and heavy hard disk use. I believe the disk use is heavy because the Mac is low on free RAM and is reading and writing information from temporary storage on the hard disk. You might find allowing Win7 only 500 MB of memory quite frustrating in this regard, for it also might use the hard disk as temporary memory. If so, then be prepared to wait, for accessing a hard disk is much, much slower than accessing RAM. You can check the amount of free RAM you have by using the Activity Monitor program in the Utilities sub-folder of the Applications folder - simply click on the 'System Memory' button at the bottom.

Frankly if I were in your situation I'd see whether it was possible to install more RAM (2GB would be a good start, but the more the better). I am about to order my next office machine and I hope to kit out my new Mac with as much RAM as possible (16 GB), for I do a lot of computation- and memory-intensive data analysis.

Hope this helps.
 
Thanks Scotland,Long Island NY here.I have had 65 views and one response.Thanks so much for the info, i will follow your lead when i get home in about an hour or so. One other question if i may,everytime i run the win 7 os i get in parallels a different Os,meaning i now get win 7.4 indicating 4 attempts,i have sent to trash, but dont know how to get back to 7.0,thanks again, i will certainly acknowledge your help regardless of success or failure,1a,if upgradeable,which i will find out about,can i add myself. Thanks again
 
Frankly speaking 1 GB is really low to run windows and mac together. Hell, it might be low to run either one of them . Best solution for you is to run windows 7 in bootcamp. I had 2.4 Ghz core 2 duo macbook with 4 gb ram and I found it frustrating to load windows in parallel. So I switched to bootcamp.

If you are a heavy windows user, bootcamp is a better configuration for your iMac.
 
I would highly recommend going out and spending $100 and getting an additional 8GB of ram and putting it in. This way you can have 6Gb for Windows and 6Gb for OS X. That is how I have my I7 set up, and it works great.

Under the virtual machine menu, click on configure and under the general tab is where you assign more ram to your virtual machine.

jowens43 said:
Hi there

I am new to the Mac,am experiencing difficulty adding windows 7 to my IMAc.
Please indulge me with the lengthy account. While attempting to install win 7,get error msg,Windows detected that this computer has 368MB of ram,512MB is required for installation,installation cannot proceed.

Thanking in advance for any assistance received,

J.

Here are my specs;
IMAC Model IMAC Model Id IMAC 7.1
Processor 2.4 Ghz Intel Core2 Duo
Memory 1Gb 667mhz DDR2 SDRAM
L2Cache 4Mb
Bus Speed 800Mhz
Boot Rom Ver IM 71.007A800,upgraded from original OS10 Leopard 5.8
Parallels 6
Windows 7 Home Premium Svc Pack 1
I see also,Volume 319.73Gb 312.84 Available.

Thanks Again
Click to expand...
 
josh1231 said:
I would highly recommend going out and spending $100 and getting an additional 8GB of ram and putting it in. This way you can have 6Gb for Windows and 6Gb for OS X. That is how I have my I7 set up, and it works great.

Under the virtual machine menu, click on configure and under the general tab is where you assign more ram to your virtual machine.
Click to expand...

His mac is a bit older and only has 1GB of 667 RAM to begin with...he can't just put an additional 8 GB in there...
 
caughtintheweb said:
Frankly speaking 1 GB is really low to run windows and mac together. Hell, it might be low to run either one of them . Best solution for you is to run windows 7 in bootcamp. I had 2.4 Ghz core 2 duo macbook with 4 gb ram and I found it frustrating to load windows in parallel. So I switched to bootcamp.

If you are a heavy windows user, bootcamp is a better configuration for your iMac.
Click to expand...

I willl consider Boot Camp if i cant resolve,thanks
 
jowens43 said:
.... One other question if i may,everytime i run the win 7 os i get in parallels a different Os,meaning i now get win 7.4 indicating 4 attempts,i have sent to trash, but dont know how to get back to 7.0,thanks again, i will certainly acknowledge your help regardless of success or failure,1a,if upgradeable,which i will find out about,can i add myself. Thanks again
Click to expand...

I'm not to sure about this, but my first instinct is to check whether you have emptied the trash. It shouldn't be the case, but I have noticed some programs that automatically number files treat files in the Trash as though they haven't been deleted.

Good luck, and again I'd upgrade the RAM to the maximum. Obviously I cannot tell you for sure how your system will work, but at work I use a 2010 MacBook Pro with 4GB at it works with Parallels5/Win 7 quite well.
 
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