Vmware Workstation 6.1 extremely slow on Vista and XP 32bit hosts

[Mjsmithlbl]

I am using Vista Business 32 host + XP 32bit guest, and every other combo of vista and xp guest and host you can use. On all of the machines they run great the first time I start them up, but if I shut the VM off and switch it on again it is unusable it is so slow... like 45 seconds-1min to open task manager.

I made sure debugging wasn't active, and that's the only thing that I would think could slow it down so much.

Dell Optiplex 745

Intel Core 2 6400

2G ram, assigning 1.5g to virtual machines.. only running one VM at a time

assigning 20gb hard drives to all virtual machines

VT technology is turned on

I renamed the Debugging files, even though the website said that was only a problem in beta.. it didnt help

Running both hosts on machines with the exact same specs, both optiplex 745s

I am sure I am just messing something up on install or something like that, but i followed VMware's installation instrictions.

Thanks, and I hope someone can tell me what my problem is.

[jimbo45]

I had a similar problem on VISTA HOME Premium. After starting a VM which was fine the hard disk would after a few minutes just indicate HUGE activity which continued even after shutting down the VM (Windows XP guest on a Windows Vista home premium host).

The disk activity would last for around 3 - 4 mins even AFTER shutting down the VM and ending the VMWARE application on the host.

I was running a MINISAP application on the guest which uses a fairly large DB for a single user workstation - (SAP MAXDB around 7GB).

What I gather is that VISTA gets its knickers in a twist by trying to "over optimise". It sort of stores the I/O it thinks you have been doing so hopefully next time you access the same data the I/O area will still be in memory.

Fine if it's just a couple of small records from a file but remember that VMWARE WKS 6 is just another application as far as VISTA is concerned. The large DB I was acessing is just a "file" to the VISTA host so it really does get its knickers in a twist when trying to optimise the "SAP MAXDB" file which is around 6 GB.

Sorry for the non technical description but you should be able to gather what I'm trying to say here.

Anyway I solved the problem by removing VISTA from my machine and have reverted back to Windows server 2003 standard edition (set up with a lot of the server stuff disabled so it's Work station friendly).

Now my WinXP Guest FLIES.

I really think the problem is VISTA and not WKS 6. Maybe someone more technical than me can give a better answer --but running a modified W2K3 server host even on a laptop yields far better performance than any flavour of VISTA.

Cheers

Jimbo

[continuum]

>>> but running a modified W2K3 server host even on a laptop yields far better performance than any flavour of VISTA.

You are right - my new notebook came with Vista pre-installed. I installed WS 6 and two hours later I had enough of it.

So I replaced Vista with 2k3 and now the notebook feels 5 times faster than with that Vista-bloat

[jimbo45]

Hi there -- I needed WINXP as the MINISAP doesn't run on VISTA --however having reverted back to W2K3 I was surprised that the WINXP guest with the SAP application on it really ran at almost "Native" speed. So I left the XP VM rather than installing the SAP system on the HOST machine.

In any case if I want to change the configuration or mess around with other applications using VM's is the real way to go.

For running W2K3 server standard edition on a workstation in almost " XP Mode" (including themes, multi-media, games, user logon without ctrl-alt-del required) look at this link

http://win2k3.msfn.org/

For "De-Vista-ing" a new laptop you will need to slipstream SP2 with your original W2K3 / XP CD and you will also need to add SATA drivers or you'll probably hit the message "Windows cannot find any Hard Disks".

If you get into this situation look at http://driverpacks.net/ where you should be able to resolve the issue and "De-Crapify" your new laptop.

Cheers

Jimbo

[RDPetruska]

>Thanks, and I hope someone can tell me what my problem is.

Return your Workstation to the pirate you obtained it from. version 6.0.1 beta is not even available yet... let alone 6.1!

[zhanghwem]

2G ram, assigning 1.5g to virtual machines.. only

I think you should left at least 1G RAM for VISTA.

[Mjsmithlbl]

Yea I did put 6.1 up there didnt I =).... its 6.0...

Ill try giving vista host more RAM.. I just used the ammount reccomended by vmware for running on a vista host

[RDPetruska]

I think zahn's post was more asking if you really need 1.5 GB of RAM for your guest. Recommending lowering that so that there is more RAM available to the host.

[RuralRob]

" Vmware Workstation 6.1 extremely slow..."

You think that's bad? I'm struggling to get Workstation 8.0 running here, but its minimum requirements seems to be 16 cores and 8Gb RAM. And what's worse, the rip in the space-time continuum I downloaded it through seems to be slowly growing; it's already consumed half my desk.

Oh well, at least they finally got DirectX 9 support in.

[Mjsmithlbl]

yea I just reduced RAM to 1g on guest so that I would have 1g available to host... still having problem. I want to have as much RAm as possible available to the guest, because I am comparing Parallels workstation, Virtualpc, and Vmware with benchmarks, so I am using the maximum reccommended Ram for all of them

[Mjsmithlbl]

I have been running parallels workstation 2.2 and Virtualpc2007 with the exact same settings that I am using for vmware, and I don't experience these issues with those programs. I like Vmware's interface and the ability to drag and drop, but if I can't figure out this slowdown issue those arent going to help much.

[Mjsmithlbl]

I still have no progress heh... if anyone could tell me what im doin wrong id appreciate it

[cymrujmc]

I'm not sure if this will help you, since I'm just starting with VMware, but I've been using vpc 2007 w/vista as host with 1gb ram dedicated to host and 1gb to Ubuntu. What seems really to help is I've also got 1.5 GB on a thumb drive dedicated through Vista's ReadyBoost (I think it's called) to help the host. I'm just a home-user but I've got no complaints (maybe even overkill). I'd agree with all the others leaving only 512 for a vista host has got to be starving that memory hog.

[Mjsmithlbl]

Yea I bet it does.. thing is, I use more RAM when I create VMs with parallels or virtualpc, leaving less for the host, and they run great..I have tried using 1g/1g but it doesnt change.

Thanks,

Matt

[irishcopster]

When I first purchased the quad 4 at Best-Buy I had the exact same software configuration and the exact same thing happened to me. The kind folks at Best-Buy would not put 64 bit software in there new 64 bit machines even though it would not cost them more. Go figure! So I was stuck with 32 bit software. The time to open task manager sometimes was over 3 minutes. I have been on XP for a long time and I tried everything to speed it up. More memory, delete everything I could think of, go over every process that was going on, delete all my security programs, defrag three times a day, put in super fast drives, put into effect all my old XP tricks, everything. Nothing worked and the darn thing just seemed to be getting slower and in all good faith I couldn't let someone on who has been used to a "fast" system and see their guest run a slow as a turtle. I did what the German did. I put W2K3 on and it was like a

little miracle. That got me over the hump and the Gateway people told me my main problem was I should be using 64bit software. Three months later I gave in a got Vista Ultimate and never looked back. All the guests are going faster than the benchmarks I took on all 104 machines before I converted each of them. Anyway W2K3 is the answer if your not going to 64bit.

[Mjsmithlbl]

Yea it looks like om going to have to put win 2k3 on a couple computers...just really wanted to test with alot of guests and hosts because I am doing the virtualization testing for an internship project... guess I wont be recommending vista as a host heh...at least not until SP1