VMWare bogging down the whole Mac? - Fixed

[nagromme]

I've been trying VMWare Fusion for a few weeks now, and am trying to decide whether to buy. It frequently bogs down my Mac even when just sitting on the XP desktop with no apps running. Is this normal? Solvable?

* 2.33 Ghz iMac Core 2 Duo / nVidia 7600

* 2 GB RAM, 80 GB free HD space

* Latest versions of VMware and Tiger, set to use one processor and 640 MB RAM

* Activity Monitor shows plenty of unused CPU cycles

* About 25-75 MB free RAM, 575 MB inactive. Very little network or disk activity.

And yet I find that windows and menus open slowly, typing is delayed, Dock responds slowly--everything, pretty much. Not all the time, and sometimes worse than others, but it definitely only happens when I have VMWare running.

These little delays really feel as though I have a very slow HD.

(The Windows side doesn't seem all that fast either.)

Any thoughts? Is this just what you have to live with running two OS's at once? Is Parallels better?

I compare it to running XP in VPC on my single G4 with 1 GB RAM: Windows may be slow, but it doesn't slow down the Mac.

 

[brkirch]

Any thoughts? Is this just what you have to live with running two OS's at once? Is Parallels better?

Since Fusion is running slowly for you, you might as well give Parallels a try. I regularly use Parallels and the performance I get is quite good, and its overall impact on system performance is so little that I frequently forget that I have it running in the background. Owning both Parallels Desktop and VMWare Fusion, I actually prefer Parallels.

 

[nagromme]

True--nothing wrong with a free trial! (Though each time I move XP to a new system I have to activate, and I'm not sure when Microsoft is going to cut me off.)

I'm trying an option I had overlooked in VMWare too--which had been set to improve Windows disk performance, at the expense of Mac "application performance." If that makes the difference (or the 1.1 beta I just downloaded) then that's great. I'll report back.

 

[majordude]

I've found VMware to be faster and WAY less crash prone than Parallels.

And sadly, I bought Parallels (at version 2.0) and version 3.0 is a step backwards. It's like they called up Microsoft and outsourced bloat.

I tried VMware a few weeks ago because I was growing disappointed with Parallels. I was about to buy VMware (on the LAST DAY of the trial!) but then they released a beta version and I extended the trial for free!

 

[brkirch]

I've found VMware to be faster and WAY less crash prone than Parallels.

And sadly, I bought Parallels (at version 2.0) and version 3.0 is a step backwards. It's like they called up Microsoft and outsourced bloat.

It sounds you haven't used Parallels for at least a month. There is an update to Parallels 3.0 that significantly improves resource usage (has lower idle CPU usage) and improves stability.

I tried VMware a few weeks ago because I was growing disappointed with Parallels. I was about to buy VMware (on the LAST DAY of the trial!) but then they released a beta version and I extended the trial for free!

The reports that I've seen of VMWare Fusion's latest beta (1.1) are that it is slower than the previous version.

 

[majordude]

It sounds you haven't used Parallels for at least a month. There is an update to Parallels 3.0 that significantly improves resource usage (has lower idle CPU usage) and improves stability.

I used it up until the end of August (with all the updates) and then installed VMware. I could get it to crash once every week and if I opened and closed it more than three or four times (I forget the number) without rebooting it could not connect to the internet again.

The reports that I've seen of VMWare Fusion's latest beta (1.1) are that it is slower than the previous version.

I can't confirm or deny this. I just installed the beta last night.

BTW your post is somewhat OT... please refrain from it as it will not bring the OP any closer to a solution.

Yes massah. Sorry massah. Didn't know you ran this forum massah.

 

[brkirch]

I used it up until the end of August (with all the updates) and then installed VMware. I could get it to crash once every week and if I opened and closed it more than three or four times (I forget the number) without rebooting it could not connect to the internet again.

You haven't tried the latest update then. There was a beta of it available last month (which oddly enough, was more stable than the "stable" version at that time).

Yes massah. Sorry massah. Didn't know you ran this forum massah.

I figured that part of the post would end up doing the exact opposite of what I had hoped it would when I wrote it (this is, I was hoping to bring this thread back on topic before it got totally OT...) so even before you posted your response I had edited it out. So NVM.

 

[majordude]

You haven't tried the latest update then. There was a beta of it available last month (which oddly enough, was more stable than the "stable" version at that time).

Well, that would be cool if true since I actually paid good money for the program.

So NVM.

Cheers!

 

[brkirch]

Well, that would be cool if true since I actually paid good money for the program.

If you still have problems after the update and have any crash logs or whatnot you could just post them on the Parallels support forum. I've had a lot of luck getting what problems I had with Parallels fixed just by occasionally posting them there.

 

[Celeron]

I've never had any trouble with VMware. The newest beta of 1.1 fixes the airport 100% cpu usage issue that some people ran into. I don't usually bridge to the airport card so that may be why I've never run into it.

 

[nagromme]

I'm trying an option I had overlooked in VMWare too--which had been set to improve Windows disk performance, at the expense of Mac "application performance." If that makes the difference (or the 1.1 beta I just downloaded) then that's great. I'll report back.

I guess I can't be sure which, but one or the other did the trick! Probably the former.

(I don't notice any new slowness issues with the beta, though I did get a major Mac freeze when I tried to update the VWmare tools from the Windows taskbar!)