How to Keep the Emulator From Lagging on My Mac
Using an emulator software package is one way of running Windows programs on your Mac without having to buy a Windows computer or repartition your drive to add a Windows installation. Common emulators include Wine, iEmulator and CrossOver. Unfortunately, emulators use a lot of processor power, and if your Mac is not a top-of-the-line speed demon, you may notice some serious lag when it is running. There are a few ways to fix this.
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Instructions
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Quit all other working programs. The key to getting an emulator to work at top speed is freeing enough RAM for it to work. Perhaps the easiest, most effective way to free up RAM is to quit any running programs that you don't need or aren't using.
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Clean up your hard drive. OS X uses virtual memory a lot, which means that it needs free space on your hard drive to use as memory. If there isn't much space on the drive, RAM-intensive programs will stall. Delete files you don't need, or move them to external drives.
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Streamline your visual effects. Things like minimizing the Dock and animated backgrounds all use processing power and memory which could be used by the emulator. Make your desktop and effects as bare-bones as possible to free up RAM.
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Maintain your hard drive on a regular basis. While you can't defragment your drive the way you can in Windows, there are maintenance tasks you can perform, such as repairing permissions. To do this, open the "Utilities" folder in your "Applications" folder, and select "Disk Utility." Select your startup drive and click the "Repair Permissions" button.
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