Slow response for mouse and keyboard

[wtsai]

I have installed XP Pro SP2 in Workstatioin 6.0.3. However, I found that the mouse and keyboard become very slow after installing VMware toolswhich is opposite to what I would expect: the VMware tools should improve the performance. I don't know if this has anything to do with it, but I've increased the memory allocated to this VM from 512M to 1024M (1G) after installing XP and the Vmware tools. The slowness of mouse and keyboard seemed to have come after I have increased the mem sizeI have to clcik several times for any action to take place; same thing with keyboard.

I got message after I increased the mem size saying I should re-config the VMware tools--which I did, but it still doesn't change anything. I finally reverted back to the memory size of 512M. But to no obvious effect.

I will tweak the mouse settings from control panel. However, since both my mouse and keyboard are affected and very slow, this is a hard task to achieve--it takes several clicks and tens of seconds for any user input to register.

TIA

[magic-man]

I have installed XP Pro SP2 in Workstatioin 6.0.3. However, I found that the mouse and keyboard become very slow after installing VMware toolswhich is opposite to what I would expect: the VMware tools should improve the performance. I don't know if this has anything to do with it, but I've increased the memory allocated to this VM from 512M to 1024M (1G) after installing XP and the Vmware tools. The slowness of mouse and keyboard seemed to have come after I have increased the mem sizeI have to clcik several times for any action to take place; same thing with keyboard.

I got message after I increased the mem size saying I should re-config the VMware tools--which I did, but it still doesn't change anything. I finally reverted back to the memory size of 512M. But to no obvious effect.

I will tweak the mouse settings from control panel. However, since both my mouse and keyboard are affected and very slow, this is a hard task to achieve--it takes several clicks and tens of seconds for any user input to register.

XP memory management inside a VM is different than when it is installed (host)... In the many (hundreds) of VMs I have created and used, I have found the following to be true: In a regular XP install, I had to have 1 GIG of RAM installed to make autocad and other titles work well. In the VM, they actually work BETTER with only 256 megs of RAM. I think that it is due to the very efficient way VMWare manages the virtual memory. To date, I have only had one instance where I had to set a RAM limit of 512 meg, and that was for a VISTA VM I created to test the software I write in. It all comes down to what apps you run and what memory they actually REQUIRE as opposed to SUGGEST. I like to add 10-20% to the required memory for my VMs with a minimum of 256 megs. I DO have a couple that run neutered XP VMs in 128 megs (Visual basic 6), and they run fine. I can't even imagine how I survived in computing before VMWare ... It is VERY kewl. Just don't let on to the boss when your productivity jumps as to how you are doing the 'magic'.

Bill (Magic-Man)

[wtsai]

Thanks, magic_man! I tried to reduced the memory allocated to the VM to 256MB, which is the amount recommended. But the response time is definitely getting worse. Instead of getting a non-response period (for mouse or keyboard) of around 30 seconds every minute or so, now I am getting them after only 5-10 seconds of normal response, i.e. for about 5-10 secs, my mouse is working fine, then I get about 30 secs of non-response period--my mouse appears to be frozen and keyboard is not registered (yes, I timed it using the Date and Time applet that comes with a clock with second hand). The HD icon and the CD-ROM icon (at the lower right corner of the VM window) stopped flashing during the non-reponse perioed.

It almost appears that the VM is time-sliced out of CPU cycles and becomes totally frozen. I mean I know that the VMs are just processes running time-slices--but at 30 secs at a time?!

BTW. I ran the VMware tool Installation in repair mode each time I changed the memory settings for the VM, but it doesn't appear to have noticeable effect.

Are there options or settings I can tweak?

Thanks,

[wtsai]

Additional information:

If I ran the Date and Time applet from within the VM itself, the clock would stop during the non-response period. This applet should be driven by the (virtual) real time clock. So if it is NOT getting the clock clicks it needs, some thing is definitely wrong. I had started this VM about an hour ago, so far it has lost about 15 min as compared to the time I have on the host OS (11:16am vs. 11:33am).

[AWo]

Have you checked that full hardware acceleration is enabled under the video driver settings? That should help at least for the mouse.

AWo

[magic-man]

Try this for me:

In the HOST, bring up task manager. Stop the process VMAUTHD.EXE. Try it now... If all is well, then use services.msc in the host to disable the service.

Bill

[wtsai]

I actually figured out why my VM was suspended for 30 sec every now and then. Turned out I tried to burn a CD-R (on the host) using Roxio and failed somehow. However the CD has been left in the CD-ROM during that time. When I started the VM guest OS, it tried to read the CD, and somehow got totally pre-occupied with that. The behavior was not acceptable in that it should not preempt high priority tasks like user input. In the end, however, once I took out the bad disk, it was back to normal. Duh! My bad.

Thanks for your tips on wmauthd though. I will keep that in mind when things get awry.

Regards,