parallels running super slow

[milligan]

I upgraded my parallels today because it was so slow, and the upgrade was on discount. However if anything its even slower. Its so slow that I will never use it.
Im running it on a macbook pro 2.8 with 4gb, running Mac OS X.

Does anyone know what I'm doing wrong?

Thanks

 

[plinden]

No idea unless you provide more information.

What version of Windows are you running? How much RAM did you assign to your VM? What is slow - applications running, applications launching, UI, just general lagginess, game performance?

Two of the biggest mistakes I've seen is people assigning either too little or too much RAM to their VMs. A good rule of thumb is to assign no more than 1/3 of your Mac's RAM to the VM, but a minimum of 256 for Windows XP and 1GB for Windows 7.

 

[milligan]

Thanks so much for the reply.
I'm now goint to give away how stupid I am, because I dont know how much memory is allocated, and I dont know how to find out, and I dont know how to change it. I am really unfamiliar with windows, and just bought paralleles when I bought the mac powerbook. On start up it says Windows XP... however at the top of the browser it says Windows 7 - Parallels 7. As I remember... I bought XP when I bought parallels in the form of a disc. Then I upgraded to 7 via download. This may have been when the slow problem started. I didnt even try to use it for ages until the parallels upgrade today.
Everything is slow... browsing the internet in windows and also doing anything on the mac, ie checking mail while parallels is running.

I guess the first thing is how I allocate memory?
THANKS!