Parallels Performance Preferences

I recently upgraded from 4gb to 8GB of RAM, and I'm trying to get Windows 7 to run well in Parallels Desktop. XP was fine with 2Gb devoted RAM, but, oddly, does better with the same 2GB now that the Mac OS has more leftover to work with.

(I know I've typed GB, gb and Gb for gigabyte. I don't know what it's actually supposed to be, and I'm too busy and important to GOoGle it.)

1] 1 CPU or 2?

It seems to mess things up more using 2 in Windows 7. It's not always slower, but it seems to faceplant more often.

2] How much RAM?

Shockingly, the recommended range seems to be right on. It recommends up to 4gB devoted to the virtual machine. It was slow, so I tried 5, and everything got stupid. Even though the Mac OS still has 3 Gb to work with, it's like it makes everyone stop and watch whenever it wants to do something.

UPDATE: It's tested and confirmed: 4 Gb of RAM with 1 processor is faster than 5 Gb with 2 processors.

3] Libraries and Networked Drives?

I don't have this figured out. Occasionally Windows Explorer or other programs (NVivo) will lose the networked drives (i.e. my entire expledited harddrive), sometimes in the middle of an operation. Once this broke Windows, but usually it just breaks whatever program has the problem.

I'm sure it's not worth it to copy everything to the Windows drive (or "index it" as Windows calls it), but it's still annoying. I'm hoping a Parallels update will fix it.