CrossOver Support - Community Forums

Are there any conflicts using Crossover with Parallels 8 on a Mac when Parallels is NOT running?

I.e. are there any items installed by Crossover that might cause a problem? Parallels 8 and Windows 7 on 10.8.3 is clogging up my CPU even if Crossover is off.

Tracking down the problem
Thanks
Jeff

I haven't had any problems with either of them, or even when I run both at the same time. Parallels VMs are in a separate filesystem (of sorts) and don't have anything to do with a Crossover installation, unless you specifically link to share programs between them. Parallels and Win8 are CPU hogs in and of themselves, and eat up a lot of RAM too. How much RAM did you devote to your Parallels VM? Perhaps you need a bit more.

Running or not, Parallelels and Crossover are two very different technologies. There is no apparent reason why they should interfere with one another.

Crossover is, in simpler terms, merely an interpreter translating Windows instructions to OSX instruction (or Linux instructions). It does require an overhead in resources, but not that much. You are NOT running Windows in any fashion.

Parallels, on the other hand, is a complex technology by which a whole computer has it's hardware recreated in software, allowing a guest operating system to operate "as if" it were on an actual physical machine. Parallels is there to give a fake hard drive, a fake network card, a fake USB controller, a fake video card, etc. All these fake devices must use system resources to be available to the guest operation system. Both OSX and Windows share your CPU and RAM.

This means that once you have booted Windows in parallels, you are running two operating systems at the same time, OSX and Windows, with Parallels itself on top. Running two operating system does require a significant increase in system resources.

In other words, with or without Crossover, the process of virtualization hardware like Parallels does, will always incur a significant cost in system resources. I suspect that your problem lies solely with Parallels/Windows, as that can suck the very life of your system if you are even a little too flush with the base requirements. You might try to reduce the guest OS resources, like less RAM, or less video RAM. If your processor has more than one core, see if you can reduce the number of cores Parallels allows windows to use. That might lighten the load on your computer.

jefferis peterson wrote:

Are there any conflicts using Crossover with Parallels 8 on a Mac
when Parallels is NOT running?

I.e. are there any items installed by Crossover that might cause a
problem? Parallels 8 and Windows 7 on 10.8.3 is clogging up my
CPU even if Crossover is off.

Tracking down the problem
Thanks
Jeff

I don't use Parallels regularly, but I imagine that both Parallels and CrossOver might compete for which would be the default application to handle an attempt to, say, launch a '.exe' file from the Finder.

But, other than things like that, no, they should not conflict.

I have installed a trial version of Crossover to try it with Nota Bene, but the associations of files with Parallels (version 9) is prohibiting me from launching the application either directly or by trying to open a file; everything defaults to Parallels, so I can't even try the Crossover installation. Is there a fix short of uninstalling Parallels, which is inconsistent with a two-week trial?

As a workaround you can always right click on any file and select "Open With..." and then choose the application you want this to open with in the list presented to you. I have gotten into the habit of always opening ambiguous files that way because Murphys Law will assure that they will open with the wrong application if double clicked.

I have had Parallels and CrossOver on my machine for years now and only rarely have I seen a mixup. What could happen from time to time was that applications running with either Parallels and/or CrossOver could save their config/temp files in the same place which could lead to problems if one didn't want that but was/is a plus if one does want it. Both, Parallels and CrossOver create .app files/packages in ~applications but CrossOver creates all of them inside the CrossOver menu folder whereas Parallels leaves them inside ~applications. If at all possible, don't just double click the .exes but use the CrossOver Programs menu or the "Open With..." context menu (right mouse click).

If you want to keep the 2 totally separate don't share any folders in Parallels (preferences). That way no Parallels files will even be visible to the Mac running normally unless you mount the dmg/img files.

Temporarely change your file associations. I'm not a Mac expert, but since Parallels associations are getting in the way, try changing those.

If Crossover doesn't do it for you, you can just set the associations the way they were. At least, that's how I would do it.

That might work for a while but Apple in their eternal wisdom will change them back when they feel like it. I forget how many times I have changed the default app for PDFs already only to find a few months later (generally after a minor upgrade) they revert back to PreView.

Hi Eveline,

Just to say you're not convincing me to go over to Mac. In particular with ArchLinux, I'm the boss of my world. 😋

rofl...good thing I am no missionary in that case :p

Apple changed quite a bit in the last few years. They were best, imnsho, when they were just a small company and needed their customers and devs.

Otoh, one of our servers (we only have Mac servers for everything and this one is a G5 XServe, still running OS X 10.4) developed its 2nd hiccup (a corrupted disk) a few weeks ago in >10 years of running almost uninterruptedly. If you know how to setup a Mac and don't need to change the configuration all the time, it will just run.

Eveline wrote:

If you know how to setup a [UNIX/UNIX-LIKE MACHINE] and don't need
to change the configuration all the time, it will just run.

There, I fixed it for you.

My office used to be all windows, and now there only one Windows machine. Believe me, if I could have afforded it, I would have dumped them all for Macs any day. I kept the machines and I just dumped Windows for Linux, some xubuntu, some Arch. Couldn't be happier. My server is even on Arch and it keeps keepin' on for days and days. Only thing missing is a UPS, but I have and off-site server in a pinch.

The joys of Unix-like machines.

We are totally derailing this thread but I must say, these days it's more a "anything but Windows" for me. We are still running 2 OS 9 machines as servers with scsi disks inside and they are still going strong :)

As for Todays Macs...strip away the nice and glossy surface and there is not much Macintosh left. Anytime I want something a bit out of the ordinary I have to dive into Terminal. When I installed Mountain Lion I spent an afternoon setting up the machine the way I wanted it to be and I am sure Apple would not have approved of the changes...and they are making it more and more difficult to do them. But that is my work and play machine. As far as our servers are concerned they generally just run (always on older OS X versions though) and if/when they stop running it is mostly worn out hardware.

On a lightly different subject: I just installed the trial version of Crossover, and installed Beta 14 of NB10. It boots easily and works fine ... but the graphics are TERRIBLE. Has anyone had the experience? Is there any way, in the Crossover controls, to change the NB resolution so that it better resembles the way it looks when running on full Windows?

CMM