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Windows 7 made my machine slow

I

iGOOGLE

macrumors member
Original poster
Mar 5, 2010
53
0
Indianapolis, IN
I've installed Windows 7 for couple of days and made my macbook pro slow with 13" 2.26GHz 2GB RAM 160GB HD

If I want to get Win 7 started, I have to wait about 15 minutes and sometimes 1/2 hour to get started and can't use the mac while 7 is starting up unless it gets started.
There is some thing else which is some times if I minimize the window of Win 7 it takes unusual time.I'm worried about that.

Is anyone suffering from that ?
Do I have to upgrade the RAM to 4GB to have it fine ?
 
Yes, I heard reports of win7 being slow on macs. There is a firmware update I think that adds support for windows 7
 
linuxcooldude said:
Yes, I heard reports of win7 being slow on macs. There is a firmware update I think that adds support for windows 7
Click to expand...

Windows 7 pro 32 bit and 64 bit both run fine on mine in bootcamp. It sounds like he is using a virtual machine though and has some settings incorrect such as memory allocation. I am sure 4 gb of memory would help when running virtual machines but it really sounds like user error.
 
iGOOGLE said:
Do I have to upgrade the RAM to 4GB to have it fine ?
Click to expand...

Yes. 2gb really isn't enough to run virtual machines.

I assume you didn't fill your HD to the brim either, as a HD with no free space also tends to slow down your machine. (Just saying, as I have 160gb myself these days, which relaly sin't enough (for me). :p)
 
Reach said:
Yes. 2gb really isn't enough to run virtual machines.

I assume you didn't fill your HD to the brim either, as a HD with no free space also tends to slow down your machine. (Just saying, as I have 160gb myself these days, which relaly sin't enough (for me). :p)
Click to expand...

2gb of ram should be ok if he is allocating 1 gb to each os. Does not sound like it though .
 
Just a question regarding 64-bit Windows 7, if I install it over 32-bit, does it mean that I won't be able to run ordinary 32-bit apps like Skype etc. and usual games like Call of Duty, Age of Empires III etc. ?

What is the advantage of installing 64-bit Windows 7 ?
 
rumpus said:
Just a question regarding 64-bit Windows 7, if I install it over 32-bit, does it mean that I won't be able to run ordinary 32-bit apps like Skype etc. and usual games like Call of Duty, Age of Empires III etc. ?

What is the advantage of installing 64-bit Windows 7 ?
Click to expand...

32bit apps install fine. The advantage is when 64 bit apps are available.
 
iGOOGLE said:
If I want to get Win 7 started, I have to wait about 15 minutes and sometimes 1/2 hour to get started and can't use the mac while 7 is starting up unless it gets started.
Click to expand...

That's probably caused because you're using a pirated version of windows 7. The methods used to eliminate activation issue, deal with bootloaders and that causes problems in EFI macs.
 
OP doesn't mention if it's bootcamp or VM. Though likely Bootcamp. On my VM, it seems the files do get fragmented over time - which could cause some slow down, but lack of HD, slow HD, lack of memory dedicated and lack of CPU could all cause issues. Then there's 64 vs 32 bit Win 7...
 
t0mat0 said:
OP doesn't mention if it's bootcamp or VM. Though likely Bootcamp. On my VM, it seems the files do get fragmented over time - which could cause some slow down, but lack of HD, slow HD, lack of memory dedicated and lack of CPU could all cause issues. Then there's 64 vs 32 bit Win 7...
Click to expand...

"can't use the mac while 7 is starting up"

Sounds like VM to me :confused:
 
Try allocating less RAM to Windows 7, 1gb at most. Also install the 32 bit version not the 64 bit version. 64 bot OSes tend to run slower in VMs, and if you aren't allocating over 4gb to the VM, there's no point. Turn off visual effects such as Aero as they will only slow it down. Graphics emulation in VMs is still not perfect.

What are you using for virtualization? VMWare, Parallels, VirtualBox, VirtualPC, or something else? Make sure you have the latest version with Windows 7 support.
 
m85476585 said:
Try allocating less RAM to Windows 7, 1gb at most. Also install the 32 bit version not the 64 bit version. 64 bot OSes tend to run slower in VMs, and if you aren't allocating over 4gb to the VM, there's no point. Turn off visual effects such as Aero as they will only slow it down. Graphics emulation in VMs is still not perfect.

What are you using for virtualization? VMWare, Parallels, VirtualBox, VirtualPC, or something else? Make sure you have the latest version with Windows 7 support.
Click to expand...
I ran Windows XP in a VMware virtual machine, both versons 1.x and 2.x, on my MBP for nearly two years. At the time I had a total of only 2 gig of RAM in the MBP. I dedicated 1 gig of the RAM and 1 processor core to Fusion and XP. It ran but it was slow and so unstable that I would routinely have to restart XP if I had previously suspended it when closing Fusion.

Recently, I upgraded my MBP's RAM to 6 gig and got both Windows 7 and Fusion 3.02. I have dedicated 3 gig of my RAM and 1 processor core to Fusion in this configuration. In stark contrast to the days when I was short of memory, my current setup has been outstanding. I even run Fusion in Unity mode so that I can open any Windows application or do almost anything else in Windows from the OS X desktop. I routinely go days at a time without closing Fusion or restarting Windows. Fusion is simply a memory hog and is going to create some problems unless you have plenty of RAM for it, or so my experience has led me to believe.
 
I have 6gb now, and I had no problems running Fusion. When I had 4gb, every so often OS X would run out of memory, start swapping to the disk, and beachball for a minute or so. With 2gb the problem would be even worse, but it can be mitigated by reducing the amount of RAM Fusion can use.

Lately OS X has been leaking RAM for me. The total memory use of my open applications is a few GB (Firefox is using a lot), but I only have ~500Mb out of 6gb free. If I try to run Fusion now it will beachball.
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/868744/

Only letting the VM use one CPU core might help keep OS X a little more responsive.
 
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