vmware performance

incubator · Guru Joined: 05 Jun 2003 Posts: 584 Location: Belgium

I finaly managed to get windows xp pro working in vmware on a toshiba centrino laptop (1.7Ghz) with an ATI X700 and 1GB RAM

problem is, it is slower then my old 1.5Ghz amd athlon
Even during the installation, the CPU did nothing, the installer got stuck. But when I launched a tas so the CPU was working, only then did the installer continue.
And now, when windows is installed, visual stuff like effects (which I now turned off), progress bars or the loadingof a new screen, or even typig stuff has a serious delay , unless of course I am letting the cpu work.
I installed VMWare tools but that didnt fix this prformance issue.

If anyone knows what could possibliy be the cause of this, or how to fix this, it is highly appreciated

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Programming today is a race between Software Engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof Programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots.
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bkunlimited · l33t Joined: 18 Jun 2004 Posts: 672

i had a similar problem when i was running my machine in battery mode. when the power supply is attached it is working fine.

incubator · Guru Joined: 05 Jun 2003 Posts: 584 Location: Belgium

I always have the power supply attached :s
_________________
Programming today is a race between Software Engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof Programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots.
So far, the Universe is winning!

stardotstar · Posted: Wed Apr 12, 2006 9:21 pm Post subject:

You have very similar specs to me. I have a thinkpad R51 - 1G RAM/1.8PentiumM with VMware Workstation 5.5 and I can successfully run WinXpPro and Win 2003 Server simultaneously with very tollerable results; either one with no appreciable difference to native hardware speed... BUT I only managed to get this good performance using a really lightweight wm - I am currently running all my vm sessions under fvwm and I notice that the processor load is much more evenly distributed between the VMs than in gnome. Now I am not a wm expert at all so I don't know how to tune the processor scheduling for foreground processes like VMs in gnome but I certainly noticed a diff.

Certainly the VM will be at its slowest during processor intensive operations (like startup/shutdown and installs etc) and this will be compounded if there is much going on in the background. I was surprised to see the Gnome system monitor not showing heavy utilisation even in Performance Governor mode with both VMs working hard (and very slowly).

The other thing that seems to screw up performance is the networking - bridge and NAT seem to compete especially with printing and other network intensive processes.

I did not experience any of your symptoms so I am afraid this is probably not much help but it might be worth trying a more lightweight wm?

I began that process by choosing a custom X session in the gnome login manager and starting vm from a terminal all by itself...
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drescherjm · Posted: Thu Apr 13, 2006 3:00 am Post subject: