VMware Communities: Message List - Bug hunt: Extremely slow boot times

Re: Bug hunt: Extremely slow boot times

pgflmac — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 16:47:25 GMT

I converted this VM from Fusion v 1.1.2 to Fusion v.2.0.1. As part of
the upgrade to Fusion v.2.0.1 instructions. It has never been a
Parallels or Boot Camp VM.

Re: Bug hunt: Extremely slow boot times

bgertzfield — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 16:30:28 GMT

pgflmac wrote:
Mr. Gerzfield, I was wondering if you saw something in these logs or my comments to explain the slow boot times? I was wondering if this had to do with installing VMWare tools into a converted VM and maybe the old VMWare tools is not allowing the new ones (v 2.0.1) to install properly. I did try to de-install and re-install VMware tools into the converted XP VM.

Hi Rob,

You say this is a "converted VM". Is it converted from Parallels, or another VMware product?

Re: Bug hunt: Extremely slow boot times

pgflmac — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 14:47:21 GMT

Mr. Gerzfield, I was wondering if you saw something in these logs or my comments to explain the slow boot times? I was wondering if this had to do with installing VMWare tools into a converted VM and maybe the old VMWare tools is not allowing the new ones (v 2.0.1) to install properly. I did try to de-install and re-install VMware tools into the converted XP VM.
Rob

Begin forwarded message:

From: Rob Tholemeier <rob_tholemeier@ix.netcom.com<mailto:rob_tholemeier@ix.netcom.com>>
Date: 13 January 2009 16:05:54 EST
To: bgertzfield <communities-emailer@vmware.com<mailto:communities-emailer@vmware.com>>
Subject: Re: VMware Fusion New message: "Bug hunt: Extremely slow boot times" 19AUXZ-1iW3-4Noi

Ok, I am not much of a Windows guy. Much better on Mac, Unix or Vax/VMS.

I could not find tools.conf where the link below suggested. I figured out how to search Windows for the file "tools.conf" and it was found in c:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\VMware\VMware Tools.

I made the additions to this file to capture the logs and here they are:

Re: Bug hunt: Extremely slow boot times

pgflmac — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 21:10:09 GMT

Ok, I am not much of a Windows guy. Much better on Mac, Unix or Vax/VMS.

I could not find tools.conf where the link below suggested. I figured
out how to search Windows for the file "tools.conf" and it was found
in c:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\VMware\VMware
Tools.

I made the additions to this file to capture the logs and here they are:

Re: Bug hunt: Extremely slow boot times

bgertzfield — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 20:00:58 GMT

Thanks for posting your vmware.log! The one with Tools installed definitely shows a one minute gap during the boot:

Jan 12 08:31:46.599: vcpu-0| Guest: toolbox: Version: build-128865
Jan 12 08:31:46.600: vcpu-0| TOOLS unified loop capability requested by 'toolbox'; now sending options via TCLO
Jan 12 08:31:46.946: vcpu-0| TOOLS state change 3 returned status 1
Jan 12 08:32:46.580: vcpu-0| MKS Backdoor get pointer: first time, notify tools are running
Jan 12 08:32:47.180: vcpu-0| TOOLS unified loop capability requested by 'toolbox-dnd'; now sending options via TCLO

This is a very large gap. There should be only a small delay between the "TOOLS state change 3" line and the next line. In my VMs, I usually see just a few seconds' gap here:

Jan 05 15:17:53.549: vcpu-0| Guest: toolbox: Version: build-XXXXXX
Jan 05 15:17:53.549: vcpu-0| TOOLS unified loop capability requested by 'toolbox'; now sending options via TCLO
Jan 05 15:17:54.380: vcpu-0| TOOLS state change 3 returned status 1
Jan 05 15:17:58.768: vcpu-0| MKS Backdoor get pointer: first time, notify tools are running
Jan 05 15:17:59.572: vcpu-0| TOOLS unified loop capability requested by 'toolbox-dnd'; now sending options via TCLO

Can you enable VMware Tools debug logging and send us the logs from inside the guest? Here's instructions on how to do that (see the section "Collect Tools installation logs"):

http://communities.vmware.com/docs/DOC-8720

Thanks,

Ben

Re: Bug hunt: Extremely slow boot times

pgflmac — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 19:50:11 GMT

Thank you so much. I know you are trying to debug this and as a former
programmer I would be glad to get data points.

Re: Bug hunt: Extremely slow boot times

bgertzfield — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 19:12:42 GMT

pgflmac wrote:
Does anyone from VMWare monitor these threads? I would like the companies view and suggestions. The problem is simple. I upgraded from 1.1.2 to 2.0.1 and boot performance of XP is terrible. I de-install VMWare tools and boot performance is great. Re-install VMWare tools and poor performance. I have logs.

Sorry for the inconvenience. We do monitor these threads, but it's not a paid support mechanism, so we aren't able to guarantee replies.

Can you please post your VMware Tools logs and vmware.log?

Is this virtual machine imported from Parallels, or did you create it with VMware Fusion 1?

Does this reproduce on a new virtual machine, or only the one you brought in from Fusion 1?

Thanks,

Ben

Re: Bug hunt: Extremely slow boot times

pgflmac — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 18:49:19 GMT

Does anyone from VMWare monitor these threads? I would like the companies view and suggestions. The problem is simple. I upgraded from 1.1.2 to 2.0.1 and boot performance of XP is terrible. I de-install VMWare tools and boot performance is great. Re-install VMWare tools and poor performance. I have logs.

Re: Bug hunt: Extremely slow boot times

pgflmac — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 22:00:04 GMT

Posted elsewhere until I saw this thread:

I just upgraded from V1.1.2 to V.2.0.1 and the boot of XP is very, very slow (maybe five minutes). The startup seems "hung" for very long time (over 3 mins) in a screen called 'Loading your personal settings...".

I followed the upgrade instructions very carefully.

This same VM started so fast under V1.1.2 that I don't even remember seeing that screen.

Anybody have any ideas on how to improve performance or analyze what is causing this slow start?

Then:

I looked around the discussion board and saw some discussion of de-installing VMWare tools to improve XP performance and indeed XP boots fast after I de-install. BTW, this is completely repeatable. VMWare tools installed = boot slow; VMWare tools not installed boots fast.

Meanwhile, every time XP boots without VMWares tools installed I get a "new hardware found" dialog box and the screen is set to a tiny 4x5 inch square. I tried to improve this with the display control panel but fonts got tiny and fuzzy. It is not clear to me what exactly is "found" but XP seems to be looking for a hardware driver - VGA?. I sure wish I knew what was going on. Any help?

Re: Bug hunt: Extremely slow boot times

bgertzfield — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 16:37:51 GMT

mercurio wrote:

Installed the new version and my boot is now taking closer to 20 minutes!

We have had no success with any of our VMs reproducing anything like this kind of slowdown. If it's okay, can we get a copy of this VM? Please send me a private message and we'll get things going.

I still have the same vmdebug error in my event viewer.

Does anyone know what the solution to that is?

From what I understand, the error can be ignored, and it doesn't have anything to do with your slow boot times (everyone sees it). VMDebug is a driver for a Visual Studio debugging plugin for VMware Workstation.

Re: Bug hunt: Extremely slow boot times

musicofnote — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 21:36:19 GMT

Hi!

Thanks for the reply. In my case, the boot time is good and with
printer sharing turned off, Word starts in 25 seconds, so I can't
really complain. I guess I'll just monitor this thread in case the
VMWare-vs-Acrobat fix makes it into a future build.

greetings

Leonard Cecil, ACSA
EDV-Coordination / IT-Support
Ethnological Seminar

Re: Bug hunt: Extremely slow boot times

etung — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 18:27:00 GMT

Not a show-stopper for me, but it is an advertised feature that's not ready for prime time if Acrobat is not playing nice with VMWare.

This is actually our (well, Thinprint's) bug, not Acrobat. We know the problem, but the fix didn't make it in in time for 2.0.1. See conversation with musicofnote a little higher up in this thread.

Re: Bug hunt: Extremely slow boot times

mercurio — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 14:03:22 GMT

Installed the new version and my boot is now taking closer to 20 minutes!

I still have the same vmdebug error in my event viewer.

Does anyone know what the solution to that is?

Event Type: Error
Event Source: vmdebug
Event Category: None
Event ID: 3
Date: 11/15/2008
Time: 1:29:27 PM
User: N/A
Computer: VENEZIA
Description:
VMDebug driver http://7.3.3.2 was disabled for this VM. Recording for replay-debugging will not work.
Data:
0000: 00 00 00 00 02 00 50 00 ......P.
0008: 00 00 00 00 03 00 07 c0 .......À
0010: 00 00 00 00 85 01 00 c0 ......À
0018: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ........
0020: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ........

Thanks

Re: Bug hunt: Extremely slow boot times

musicofnote — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 09:27:33 GMT

Thanks for the heads-up. I installed it, updated the VMW image and rebooted. Looked good. Then I turned on the shared printing. First reboot into WIndows took a little longer - about 75 Seconds instead of 55, but that's ok. Waited after loggin on until Windows was fully operational - about another minute. The started Word. It took a loooong time - perhaps voer a minute. SInce I wasn't prepared for this, I didn't time it. Created a document and printed it on a Mac-installed printer. Worked fine.

Logged out, shut down Windows. Waited a bit, restarted Windows. Same as above. But this time I noticed that my trash was full, so I clicked onto the Trash icon. As soon as I did, Acrobat 8.1.2 wanted to install itself - of course it was already installed. In other words, the same old problem. This problem persisted at every subsequent new start of Windows, whether I elect to install Acrobat or not. So this bug at any rate is not yet quashed.

Not a show-stopper for me, but it is an advertised feature that's not ready for prime time if Acrobat is not playing nice with VMWare.

Re: Bug hunt: Extremely slow boot times

etung — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 00:50:08 GMT

2.0.1 is out, grab it from the usual location. It has the fixes from the experimental build and hopefully resolves most performance problems.

Re: Bug hunt: Extremely slow boot times

mercurio — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 01:41:47 GMT

Yes, copied from my event viewer:

Event Type: Error
Event Source: vmdebug
Event Category: None
Event ID: 3
Date: 11/10/2008
Time: 10:19:47 PM
User: N/A
Computer: VENEZIA
Description:
VMDebug driver http://7.3.3.2 was disabled for this VM. Recording for replay-debugging will not work.
Data:
0000: 00 00 00 00 02 00 50 00 ......P.
0008: 00 00 00 00 03 00 07 c0 .......À
0010: 00 00 00 00 85 01 00 c0 ......À
0018: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ........
0020: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ........

Re: Bug hunt: Extremely slow boot times

firebird2k — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 01:16:41 GMT

I'm also running into something similar. It boots fine, but sits after I enter my password to login for about 1 1/2 minutes

I also see the VMDebug driver http://7.3.3.2 was disabled for this VM. Recording for replay-debugging will not work. in the event viewer....

but based on this http://communities.vmware.com/message/1058702#1058702 , it is supposedly harmless..

Re: Bug hunt: Extremely slow boot times

bgertzfield — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 00:42:59 GMT

mercurio wrote:

I could not attach the file as it is huge even zipped. So I copied upto the logon and saved to a text file.

No problem -- this helps a lot. So it was 9 minutes until the logon screen, right? After that, everything was fast?

I had a look and noted that the gap comes just after a reference to vmscsi.sys

There is also an error in the event viewer at the same time due to vmdebug.

This is VERY suspicious to me! What is the error in the event viewer? Is it this one?

Event Type: Error
Event Source: vmdebug
Event Category: None
Event ID: 3
Description:
VMDebug driver (foo) was disabled for this VM. Recording for replay-debugging will not work.

Re: Bug hunt: Extremely slow boot times

mercurio — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 00:19:23 GMT

Hi Ben,

I could not attach the file as it is huge even zipped. So I copied upto the logon and saved to a text file.

I had a look and noted that the gap comes just after a reference to vmscsi.sys

There is also an error in the event viewer at the same time due to vmdebug.

I ran it twice and noted the same occured both times.

Thanks for your help,

Mercurio

Re: Bug hunt: Extremely slow boot times

bgertzfield — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 19:16:17 GMT

mercurio wrote:

Can anyone shed some light on the messages I am seeing in my log file:

Nov 01 19:43:19.857: mks| Ignoring update request in VGA_Expose (mode change pending).
Nov 01 19:43:29.892: mks| Ignoring update request in VGA_Expose (mode change pending).
Nov 01 19:43:39.887: mks| Ignoring update request in VGA_Expose (mode change pending).

Hi Mercurio,

I think these are unrelated to your slow boot. I'd like to diagnose this further.

Can you please download Process Monitor from Microsoft:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896645.aspx

then install it, and select the menu Options -> Enable Boot Logging, and restart your VM.

When the VM comes back up, run Process Monitor again, and it will prompt you to save the trace file. Please respond to this post and attach the trace file. We'll take a look and see what's causing your boot to take so long.

Thanks,

Ben

Re: Bug hunt: Extremely slow boot times

jschmidt1340 — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 16:45:04 GMT

Interesting note... I was running Vista x86 and had the slow performance under Boot Camp. Just outof curiosity, I blew away the particion and installed Vista x64. x64 runs MUCH faster. I changed nothing under OSX or under VMWare. Just performed a base x64 install and VOILA! It worked great!

I'm running on a new MBP 2.53Ghz (Late 2008) with 4GB RAM and 320GB 7200RPM HD.

Jon

Re: Bug hunt: Extremely slow boot times

mercurio — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 13:50:52 GMT

Can anyone shed some light on the messages I am seeing in my log file:

This is slowing down my boot time by 6 minutes!

I think it is something to do with the graphics card recognition. I am running on an IMac (ati card -the IMac is the previous to current generation).

Is there a setting I could change? I have switched off 3d acceleration but that did not help.

Thanks

Re: Bug hunt: Extremely slow boot times

musicofnote — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 12:12:57 GMT

Ok, turning off the shared printing with the Mac side fixed it. Both the slow start-up times and also the re-installing of Acrobat. On to the next problem with mirrored Dekstops...

thanks!

Re: Bug hunt: Extremely slow boot times

etung — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 01:34:47 GMT

For some reason the Thinprint drivers wipe out a directory used by Acrobat, causing it to want to reinstall on every boot. We've reported the problem to Thinprint, more details in Adobe Acrobat 7.0 Re-Install Issue - Fusion 2.0. I don't know if this is related to slow boot times, but for now you may have to choose between PDF printing and passthrough printing.

Re: Bug hunt: Extremely slow boot times

jschmidt1340 — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 23:33:46 GMT

I tried to download the new build, but I got a 404 error. Is it no longer available? I'm having 100% CPU usage and have tried the suggestions posted here. I am a new VMWare user and have never had previous versions of tools installed. I am running Vista x86 on BootCamp. It is extremely slow to start and takes about 4 minutes or so. I have a new MBP 2.53 unibody with 4GB ram and gave the VM 1GB.

Any help is appreciated.

Jonathan

Re: Bug hunt: Extremely slow boot times

musicofnote — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 21:33:26 GMT

OK, will try it, although that is one of the yummy things I really liked in Fusion 2. but perhaps I wasn't clear. I was able to install Acrobat 8 and even update it successfully. Inspite of that, when starting a Word document, I got the message that 8.1.2 needed to be installed. This wasn't a problem in 1.1.3. I don't know what it's trying to install, but word 2007 offers the user the option of saving a document as a PDF if Acrobat is installed. In my case, everything works fine UNTIL I install Acrobat. The problems began after having successfully installing Acrobat - seemingly triggered by something in Word. why this would also have an influence on basic Windows starting times is also beyond me. At any rate, I will try this tomorrow and post again thereafter.

Re: Bug hunt: Extremely slow boot times

etung — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 21:19:26 GMT

Try disabling printing passthrough (Virtual Machine > Settings > Printing) and see if you can install Acrobat.

Re: Bug hunt: Extremely slow boot times

musicofnote — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 18:53:04 GMT

Running WIn XP SP 3 32-bit on Mac OS 10.5.5

Seen on 4GB 20" 2.4GHz iMacs and 2GHz MacMinis with 3 GB RAM as well as my 2.4GB MacBook with 4 GB RAM, all with Mac OS 10.5.5

I saw this with system upgraded from Fusion 1.1.3 and also newly installed from scratch under Fusion 2.0 shipping.

In other words it's been 100% reproducable on all my systems.

Windwos software installed besides the basic OS:

Office Standard 2007

OpenOffice 3.0 (although once I left this off without any change in result)

VLC

Picasa2

MacAffee 8.5.1

CrapCleaner

all is well up to this point. Fast boot times, smiles all around

then I install Adobe Acrobat 8.0 and update to 8.1.2

At this point, boot times increase from 1 minute (quite fast for a WIndows system) to over 5 minutes.

Everytime I start an Office document the first time, I get a message that new software has been detected and Adobe Acrobat 8.1.2 need to be installed. What is installed exactly I do not know. I tried to disable all references to Acrobat in Office programs to no avail. If I deinstall Acrobat, all is well again.

For the time being, I've installed
PDFCreator in place of Acorbat and it works fine, but will have unhappy users if they need to change PDFs. For the time being they will accept doing this on the MAc side, but they'd rather do it on the Windows side.

BTW - this problem was NOT apparent under Fusion 1.1.3. All programs played nice together.

Thanks for any help!

Leonard Cecil, ACSA

Ethnological Seminar

University of Zürich

Re: Bug hunt: Extremely slow boot times

mercurio — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 17:13:12 GMT

Hi,

I have the same long boot problem, takes about 8 mins at the moment.

Guest OS - Windows XP SP3 32 BIT

Normal Virtual Machine

Not imported, created from scratch using fusion 2

Allow your Mac to open applications in the virtual machine - Disabled - No improvement

Have repaired, reinstalled and removed tools - No improvement

Not downgraded virtual machine yet

Tried pciBridge fix. Saw no improvement

pciBridge4.present = "FALSE"
pciBridge5.present = "FALSE"
pciBridge6.present = "FALSE"

Attached is log file. I think my problem is related to

Nov 01 19:43:19.857: mks| Ignoring update request in VGA_Expose (mode change pending).
Nov 01 19:43:29.892: mks| Ignoring update request in VGA_Expose (mode change pending).
Nov 01 19:43:39.887: mks| Ignoring update request in VGA_Expose (mode change pending).
Nov 01 19:43:49.939: mks| Ignoring update request in VGA_Expose (mode change pending).

Any idea why this it is doing that? It gets stuck for about 6 minutes on that step.

I saw an earlier poster with the same problem.

Should I do a downgrade of the vm?

Would using the beta help my problem?

Thanks

Re: Bug hunt: Extremely slow boot times

TT12345678 — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 07:30:21 GMT

Hi

http://ftpsite.vmware.com/download/Fusion20/VMware-Fusion-2.0.1-125077.dmg

I could not download this build to fix the issue.

Thanks

Re: Bug hunt: Extremely slow boot times

stevesuh — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 06:54:03 GMT

The private build seems to have fixed my issues. I will keep using it to see if the stability and speed issues come back. Thanks for making this build available as it is indispensable

for work.

Thanks,

Steve Suh

Re: Bug hunt: Extremely slow boot times

cmasters — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 18:29:27 GMT

Sent other reply on lack of attachment through email. Additional reply follows:

Wasn't actually drawing any conclusions but was fishing for a better response than "Uh, He did it!" (visualizing Dark Helmet in Spaceballs during the Schwartz fight scene ). I was quite confident that your assertion was correct just didn't want other people to get a bad impression. This kind of prompt, technical dialog is precisely why I've been a loyal customer all these years . So once again thanks for the prompt, courteous responses and clarifications.

Re: Bug hunt: Extremely slow boot times

etung — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 17:18:52 GMT

this problem didn't happen under 1.1.3 and since their kext hasn't changed between these 2 versions it suggests the problem lies with vmware.

Not quite the right conclusion. Yes, something changed between 1.1.3 and 2.0 -- we're triggering a bug that was already present when we weren't before. If they're going to trap other programs, it's their responsibility to do so correctly. Virtualization is it's own worst enemy - it is difficult to properly virtualize a virtual environment (at reasonable speed, anyway). There are also a number of instructions that are pretty much only used by virtualization programs (e.g. VT extensions). My guess is that it's one of these that they're not handling and they didn't properly test it (or took a shortcut, saw it wasn't obviously broken with 1.1.3, and figured "good enough" was better than "right").

There is more info in various other threads, such as Fusion 2.0b1 caused a kernel panic and sometimes quits on launch.

I'm attaching the panic log

Try again? I don't see it.

Re: Bug hunt: Extremely slow boot times

bgertzfield — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 17:12:38 GMT

cmasters wrote:
Thanks for your response.

Given that I'm a long time (since 1999) customer of VMWare products, I'd be inclined to agree however, this problem didn't happen under 1.1.3 and since their kext hasn't changed between these 2 versions it suggests the problem lies with vmware.

Hi cmasters,

This is indeed a bug in Parallels 3, and it's fixed in the upcoming Parallels 4 release. Give that one a try when it comes out.

The problem is that Parallels tries to detect VMware's code to toggle back and forth between your Mac and a running virtual machine, but their workaround only detects VMware Fusion 1. When they fail to detect VMware Fusion 2, they leave the machine in an invalid state and crash in their kernel module.

Ben

Re: Bug hunt: Extremely slow boot times

cmasters — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 16:14:28 GMT

Thanks for your response.

Given that I'm a long time (since 1999) customer of VMWare products, I'd be inclined to agree however, this problem didn't happen under 1.1.3 and since their kext hasn't changed between these 2 versions it suggests the problem lies with vmware. I concede that the log shows the trap happening in parallels' kext however, it only happens in Fusion 2.0.1 and only when a VMWare VM is running. When inspecting the log it seems to me that parallels is not gracefully handling an exception. That doesn't say what VMWare is doing with the kernel that causes Parallels to panic. It must be something the VMWare is doing else why would it only trap when VMWare is running a VM?

I'm attaching the panic log however, I would humbly request you please give particulars on how this is parallels problem given that their product has not changed and yours has. I'm sure there is a valid response so this more to satisfy my curiosity and to (hopefully)prevent lurkers from thinking you're merely passing the buck which I'm certain you're not

Please note I like both products they each have their strengths and weaknesses I confess that I favor VMWare more due to my history with you which is why I press for a more thorough answer as I truly want to see this product excel.

Re: Bug hunt: Extremely slow boot times

etung — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 15:14:38 GMT

3. Launching a Parallels VM while any VM under this release causes an immediate kernel panic.

panic.log? We know of an issue where a Parallels kext causes a problem; if this is the same issue, it's their bug and they need to fix it.

Re: Bug hunt: Extremely slow boot times

cmasters — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 07:27:04 GMT

Just thought I'd share my experiences with this build.

1. Boot times have improved in my VM however occasionally resuming takes awhile (around 2 minutes) for the taskbar/explorer to become responsive.
2. Though I didn't see it mentioned, my slow keyboard response has been repaired by this build. I have not updated the hardware or tools but did not do so in 2.0.0 either and had problem with or without tools installed and with or without hardware upgraded.
3. Launching a Parallels VM while any VM under this release causes an immediate kernel panic.

Other than this performance has been much better than with 1.1.3 or 2.0.0. This VM I'm using was originally created with P2V under windows from my MacPro's boot camp partition, then converted from Workstation 5.5 to Fusion 1.0. I have used the MSI Zapper to remove the Mac drivers from the VM and have used devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices and cleared all missing hardware long ago. I also see 3 devices under mouse where I didn't see them in 1.1.3. Hope you guys find this helpful.

Carl

Re: Bug hunt: Extremely slow boot times

mcmspark — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 06:16:58 GMT

My Slow boot time problem was resolved by disabling the extra pciBridge entries in the vmx file. for example: pciBridge4.present = "FALSE"

I will move my mouse problem to another thread. Thank you for your support.

Re: Bug hunt: Extremely slow boot times

bgertzfield — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 17:37:58 GMT

gregmac wrote:

1) See attached, let me know if these are the files you need.

Hi Greg,

Thanks so much for all the information. We'd really like to get to the bottom of this problem.

I see from the log files you attached that this VM has an IDE disk. From vmware.log:

Nov 02 13:22:59.091: vmx| DICT ide0:0.present = TRUE
Nov 02 13:22:59.091: vmx| DICT ide0:0.fileName = XP.vmdk

I'll guess you didn't use VMware Fusion to create this VM, or if you did, you might not have used Windows Easy Install.

If you didn't use VMware Fusion to create it, how did you create this VM? Was it with VMware Workstation, or did you import it from Parallels or another product?

If you imported it, did you use VMware Converter for Windows, VMware Importer for Mac, or the built-in converter in VMware Fusion 2?

I also see this:

Nov 02 13:22:59.092: vmx| DICT numvcpus = 2

This means you've allocated 2 CPUs to this virtual machine. Can you try shutting down your virtual machine, then changing it to 1 CPU? Please let me know if this makes a difference.

1. With no apps running the CPU
usage is 100% (taskmgr appears to consume the most at 30-60% with a
lot of volatility).

Is this 100% CPU in the guest, or in the host? This is very strange. Taskmgr should not take up very much CPU at all; it sounds like the timer in your virtual machine isn't behaving correctly.

3) Takes about 2 min to see desktop which might be a bit slower than
before but at desktop everything still too slow.

Are things slow before getting to the desktop?

Finally,

I see that you're running with debugging checks enabled. From vmware.log:

Nov 02 13:22:59.284: vmx| Msg_Hint: msg.loader.debug.fusion (sent)
Nov 02 13:22:59.284: vmx| You are running VMware Fusion with debugging enabled. Debugging performs extra error checking to help diagnose problems, but also lowers performance.
Nov 02 13:22:59.284: vmx|
Nov 02 13:22:59.284: vmx| To disable debugging, select the VMware Fusion > Preferences menu and uncheck "Enable debugging checks". You will need to restart your virtual machines for this change to take effect.

Can you try disabling debugging from the menu VMware Fusion -> Preferences, then unselecting "Enable debugging checks"?

Thanks for your patience and help.

Ben

Re: Bug hunt: Extremely slow boot times

gregmac — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 13:22:47 GMT

Hi,

Responding to points below by number:

Note: the order I did these was 5 then 4 then 2. It's possible #2 made
the most difference but it was hard to tell, and there has not been a
complete improvement compared to ver 1 speeds as I recall them.

1) See attached, let me know if these are the files you need.

2) I did upgrade VM tools, it took about a half hour. Then it has
improved the boot time by a minute and apps open more quickly but it
is still slow compared to VMware ver. 1. With no apps running the CPU
usage is 100% (taskmgr appears to consume the most at 30-60% with a
lot of volatility). The mouse doesn't respond quickly, sometimes it
flips from Mac pointer to XP pointer for no apparent reason.

3) Takes about 2 min to see desktop which might be a bit slower than
before but at desktop everything still too slow.

4) I unchecked "Allow Mac to open..." but there was no apparent
improvement.

5) I downgraded but this also made no obvious difference.

Please advise whether I should return to version 1 for the moment, I
need VMWare to work today. Thanks for working on this -

Greg

Re: Bug hunt: Extremely slow boot times

random77 — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 00:40:39 GMT

I have followed the steps outlined.

Have installed the new build (2.01).

When I restart my guest (Windows xp Pro SP3. *This was migrated from Parallels.*) from the task bar and requesting the guest to restart it takes a while to shutdown.....then vmware fusion begins starting the guest and about 10% of the way just hangs.

At the time it hangs I am seeing this message repeated in console:

Nov 01 19:43:19.857: mks| Ignoring update request in VGA_Expose (mode change pending).
Nov 01 19:43:29.892: mks| Ignoring update request in VGA_Expose (mode change pending).
Nov 01 19:43:39.887: mks| Ignoring update request in VGA_Expose (mode change pending).
Nov 01 19:43:49.939: mks| Ignoring update request in VGA_Expose (mode change pending).
Nov 01 19:43:59.877: mks| Ignoring update request in VGA_Expose (mode change pending).
Nov 01 19:44:09.837: mks| Ignoring update request in VGA_Expose (mode change pending).
Nov 01 19:44:19.840: mks| Ignoring update request in VGA_Expose (mode change pending).
Nov 01 19:44:29.897: mks| Ignoring update request in VGA_Expose (mode change pending).
Nov 01 19:44:39.837: mks| Ignoring update request in VGA_Expose (mode change pending).
Nov 01 19:44:49.837: mks| Ignoring update request in VGA_Expose (mode change pending).

It just keeps writing that over and over.

I downgraded the Virtual Machine and it restarts fine. Upgraded it and it hangs again.
Repeated (duplicated the issue) over and over. The downgraded machine will reboot. the upgraded will not.

This occurs on my MacBook Pro. BUT I can duplicate it with the the same result on my iMac.

Again: Running Windows XP SP3 - converted from Parallels (not Vista).

Re: Bug hunt: Extremely slow boot times

bgertzfield — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 20:46:56 GMT

gregmac wrote:

My problem: Fusion for Mac 4-minute boot time for WinXP guest (not sure of 32 vs 64 bit or SPs), programs grind to a halt, this didn't occur with previous version of Fusion

Hi Greg,

Thanks for trying the build. A few questions for you:

1) Can you reply to this post and attach your vmware.log and *.vmx files from inside your virtual machine? (Go to Finder, browse to ~/Documents/Virtual Machines, control-click on your VM and select "Show Package Contents", and the files will be inside).

2) Did you upgrade VMware Tools?

3) Which part of the boot is slow?

a) Before the login prompt
b) After the login prompt
c) At the desktop

4) If you go to the menu Virtual Machine -> Settings -> Sharing and uncheck "Allow your Mac to open applications in the virtual machine", does that help the boot time?

5) If you shut down your virtual machine and click on the menu Virtual Machine -> Downgrade Virtual Machine, does it help the boot time?

Thanks,

Ben

Re: Bug hunt: Extremely slow boot times

gregmac — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 18:01:42 GMT

Hi,

My problem: Fusion for Mac 4-minute boot time for WinXP guest (not sure of 32 vs 64 bit or SPs), programs grind to a halt, this didn't occur with previous version of Fusion

Not using Boot Camp

Tried the re-build and didn't solve problem

Haven't tried all suggestions yet, simply want a rebuild that works. Can I get an email notification when something is available -

Thanks- Greg

Re: Bug hunt: Extremely slow boot times

WoodyZ — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 20:17:27 GMT

No biggie... Thanks for the info.

Re: Bug hunt: Extremely slow boot times

bgertzfield — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 19:54:23 GMT

WoodyZ wrote:
What is the md5sum for the VMware-Fusion-2.0.1-125077.dmg file?

Apologies for not providing this! Here you go.

URL: http://ftpsite.vmware.com/download/Fusion20/VMware-Fusion-2.0.1-125077.dmg
MD5 checksum: b9dc4486b2d19fd23b50ba4c03ff868b
File size (bytes): 258625173

Ben

Re: Bug hunt: Extremely slow boot times

WoodyZ — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 18:42:43 GMT

davidliu wrote: But we need your help: download the private build 125077 from http://ftpsite.vmware.com/download/Fusion20/VMware-Fusion-2.0.1-125077.dmg

What is the md5sum for the VMware-Fusion-2.0.1-125077.dmg file?

Thanks.

Re: Bug hunt: Extremely slow boot times

mcmspark — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 18:04:23 GMT

This VM was imported from a MS VPC image downloaded from Microsoft and converted to VMWare by VMWare Converter

I tried adding the setting: mouse.vusb.enable = "FALSE"

no help.

The Guest OS shows 3 mouse drivers

HID-compliant mouse - (Microsoft)
HID-compliant mouse - (Microsoft)
VMWare Pointing Device

Re: Bug hunt: Extremely slow boot times

bgertzfield — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 17:43:29 GMT

JeFurry wrote:
The new build has not solved this problem for me, but things have changed. As I type this on a late 2008 Mac Pro running the private build, VMWareUser.exe on my 2-core XP VM is taking up approximately 25% of the VM's total processing power. This is oddly high, as the machine is otherwise idling with no additional devices connected, but it's not as high as it used to be. However, 150%-200% of the available 800% CPU (~25% from each of 8 cores) is being used by the vmware-vmx task. The VM is still operational, but sluggish and getting worse.

I assume you did upgrade VMware Tools, right? Can you double check that you upgraded Tools, then enable Tools logging?

1) Go to C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\VMware\VMware Tools (note: the folder is hidden, so you'll have to set Explorer to view hidden and system files.)
2) Edit the file tools.conf in WordPad
3) Add the lines:

log = "TRUE"
log.file = "C:\vmtools.log"

VMware Tools will automatically reload the configuration file and start logging to C:\.

When the problem reproduces, please note down the time and post a ZIP file with all the c:\vmtools*.log files.

When you're done reproducing the problem, turn logging off by editing the same file and deleting the lines above.

Re: Bug hunt: Extremely slow boot times

bgertzfield — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 17:39:05 GMT

gdd9000 wrote:
My reinstall of vm tools didnt go well - terribly in fact, the first time, and then only so so the next. That seems to be a big part of my problems. It takes 20 extra seconds for tools to install once the full boot of windows is otherwise complete (that is the last step it seems.)

Are you running the updated build from this thread?

Can you please give us some more information about this VM? Did you create it in VMware Fusion 1, VMware Fusion 2, or did you import it from Parallels or another product?

What do you mean by the reinstall didn't go well? Did you get an error?

Can you please post the vmware.log file from inside the VM? (Go to your home folder, then Documents/Virtual Machines, and control-click or right click on your VM, pick "Show Package Contents", and reply to this post and attach the vmware.log file.)

What really bothers me in addition to the slow boot is that performance is horrid. I can barely multitask, especially if any java is open. I also notice constant problems with embedded video that start for 2 seconds, then hang. Firefox takes 5 full seconds from click to startup page. Excel cursor moves incredibly slowly. So many issues, so little time....

This definitely sounds like you're running low on memory, and swapping. How much memory is assigned to this VM? How much memory do you have on your Mac?

Re: Bug hunt: Extremely slow boot times

bgertzfield — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 17:35:16 GMT

mcmspark wrote:

I am running a VM with Windows Server 2008

Was this VM imported from Parallels? Please post the vmware.log file from inside the virtual machine's bundle.

The private build did not improve the boot time also the mouse is still missing.

Do you have any third-party mouse drivers installed in Windows or on your Mac?

Can you try shutting down your VM, editing the configuration file for your VM, then adding:

mouse.vusb.enable = "FALSE"

Re: Bug hunt: Extremely slow boot times

mcmspark — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 16:48:16 GMT

WOW! What a difference!

I manually edited the vmx file to set the pciBridge entries to not present, and the VM starts up in 1/20th of the time. Huge difference.

Wast taking over 5 minutes to start before, now is ~30 seconds.

I edited these lines to be false

pciBridge4.present = "FALSE"
pciBridge5.present = "FALSE"
pciBridge6.present = "FALSE"
pciBridge7.present = "FALSE"

Unfortunately I still have no mouse.

Re: Bug hunt: Extremely slow boot times

mcmspark — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 16:28:07 GMT

My fusion uses a vmx file.

Do you mean the PCIBridge entries?

My vmx file is:

.encoding = "UTF-8"
config.version = "8"
virtualHW.version = "7"
memsize = "2048"
MemAllowAutoScaleDown = "FALSE"
MemTrimRate = "-1"
displayName = "VS2010 CTP"
guestOS = "longhorn"
numvcpus = "1"
floppy0.present = "FALSE"
floppy0.fileName = "A:"
floppy0.startConnected = "FALSE"
usb.present = "TRUE"
sound.present = "TRUE"
sound.filename = "-1"
sound.autodetect = "TRUE"
ethernet0.present = "TRUE"
ethernet0.addressType = "generated"
ethernet0.connectionType = "nat"
ethernet0.virtualDev = "e1000"
scsi0:0.present = "TRUE"
scsi0:0.fileName = "VS2010 CTP.vmdk"
pciBridge0.present = "TRUE"
tools.upgrade.policy = "useGlobal"
ehci.present = "TRUE"
ide0:0.present = "TRUE"
ide0:0.autodetect = "TRUE"
ide0:0.filename = "auto detect"
ide0:0.deviceType = "cdrom-raw"
scsi0.present = "TRUE"
scsi0.virtualDev = "lsilogic"
lsilogic.noDriver = "FALSE"
priority.grabbed = "normal"
priority.ungrabbed = "normal"
tools.syncTime = "FALSE"

extendedConfigFile = "VS2010 CTP.vmxf"

virtualHW.productCompatibility = "hosted"

pciBridge4.present = "TRUE"
pciBridge4.virtualDev = "pcieRootPort"
pciBridge4.pciSlotNumber = "21"
pciBridge4.functions = "8"
pciBridge5.present = "TRUE"
pciBridge5.virtualDev = "pcieRootPort"
pciBridge5.pciSlotNumber = "22"
pciBridge5.functions = "8"
pciBridge6.present = "TRUE"
pciBridge6.virtualDev = "pcieRootPort"
pciBridge6.pciSlotNumber = "23"
pciBridge6.functions = "8"
pciBridge7.present = "TRUE"
pciBridge7.virtualDev = "pcieRootPort"
pciBridge7.pciSlotNumber = "24"
pciBridge7.functions = "8"
vmci0.present = "TRUE"

vcpu.hotadd = "TRUE"
maxvcpus = "4"
mem.hotadd = "TRUE"

ethernet0.linkStatePropagation.enable = "TRUE"

ide0:0.startConnected = "TRUE"
ethernet0.generatedAddress = "00:0c:29:5d:dd:86"
uuid.location = "56 4d 1a 98 5b 03 68 df-dc fd 19 32 5a 5d dd 86"
uuid.bios = "56 4d 1a 98 5b 03 68 df-dc fd 19 32 5a 5d dd 86"
scsi0:0.redo = ""
vmotion.checkpointFBSize = "134217728"
pciBridge0.pciSlotNumber = "17"
scsi0.pciSlotNumber = "16"
usb.pciSlotNumber = "32"
ethernet0.pciSlotNumber = "33"
sound.pciSlotNumber = "34"
ehci.pciSlotNumber = "35"
vmci0.pciSlotNumber = "36"
usb:0.present = "TRUE"
usb:1.present = "TRUE"
ethernet0.generatedAddressOffset = "0"
vmci0.id = "1516100998"
tools.remindInstall = "FALSE"
usb:1.deviceType = "hub"
usb:0.deviceType = "mouse"
gui.fullScreenAtPowerOn = "TRUE"
gui.viewModeAtPowerOn = "fullscreen"

unity.wasCapable = "FALSE"

checkpoint.vmState = ""

mks.enable3d = "TRUE"

chipset.useAcpiBattery = "TRUE"
chipset.useApmBattery = "TRUE"

Re: Bug hunt: Extremely slow boot times

JeFurry — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 15:46:06 GMT

I have not suffered slow bootup times, but I've definitely suffered slow operation, which starts some time later. The VM is fine, quick and responsive, when first booted on a freshly booted Mac but some indeterminate time later, VMWareUser.exe used to start monopolising the CPU and it would become sluggish. Rebooting the VM did not fix the problem, nor did suspending the VM and rebooting the Mac - I had to shut down the VM, reboot the Mac, then reboot the VM, and then the problem would not return for a few hours. I've not been able to tie down any particular cause, though my unscientific impression is that letting the screensaver kick in, or putting the host Mac to sleep, both make the problem return faster.

The new build has not solved this problem for me, but things have changed. As I type this on a late 2008 Mac Pro running the private build, VMWareUser.exe on my 2-core XP VM is taking up approximately 25% of the VM's total processing power. This is oddly high, as the machine is otherwise idling with no additional devices connected, but it's not as high as it used to be. However, 150%-200% of the available 800% CPU (~25% from each of 8 cores) is being used by the vmware-vmx task. The VM is still operational, but sluggish and getting worse.

The VMWare log shows nothing wrong - the only entries relate to the automatic snapshot taken this morning, followed by republishing the proxy applications and re-registering the URL handlers.

Re: Bug hunt: Extremely slow boot times

gdd9000 — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 15:45:35 GMT

My reinstall of vm tools didnt go well - terribly in fact, the first time, and then only so so the next. That seems to be a big part of my problems. It takes 20 extra seconds for tools to install once the full boot of windows is otherwise complete (that is the last step it seems.)

Is there a thread somewhere which tells you specifically the right way to do this? Ive tried the installing as a repair method (bad), the uninstalling and reinstalling (better) and am still hoping to fix this.

What really bothers me in addition to the slow boot is that performance is horrid. I can barely multitask, especially if any java is open. I also notice constant problems with embedded video that start for 2 seconds, then hang. Firefox takes 5 full seconds from click to startup page. Excel cursor moves incredibly slowly. So many issues, so little time....

Re: Bug hunt: Extremely slow boot times

mediamacros — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 15:25:43 GMT

Changing the vxd file for the PCI items to false and rolling back the hardware fixed it from me. Went from 10 minutes down to 3 or so. Also seems to be running much faster. Definately has to do with the Parallels PCI stuff from what I see here. I may try the 2.0.1 build to see if that helps more. Now if I could just get it to let me target which monitor Unity mode should be used on...

-Chuck

Re: Bug hunt: Extremely slow boot times

mcmspark — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 15:03:37 GMT

I am running a VM with Windows Server 2008

The private build did not improve the boot time also the mouse is still missing.

If I right click, I get a taskbar menu. Its position suggests that the VM thinks the mouse is at the extreme bottom right corner of the screen.

Sometimes, the mouse becomes visible, but disappears as soon as I move it.

I have seen this before in Server 2003. I had to disable entirely all VMWare related drivers in the VM to the mouse to get it to work. I expect I will have to something similar here.

I have a similar mouse problem in my Vista64 VM, but I usually can resolve it by switching spaces and then switching back.

Re: Bug hunt: Extremely slow boot times

manfredell — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 08:08:12 GMT

I haven't found any differences between 2.0 and the new build.

I had the problems with the vmuser taking 100% originally. But I had this resolved by uninstalling and reinstalling tools in 2.0 Haven't had it since.

Re: Bug hunt: Extremely slow boot times

matthewls — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 01:54:34 GMT

To add a little more information, when I first switched to version 2.0 I saw that VMWareuser.exe was taking very high CPU percentages. I haven't seen that in a long time and haven't seen it at all in the 2.01 release.

Re: Bug hunt: Extremely slow boot times

bgertzfield — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 23:03:20 GMT

Hey all,

We haven't gotten a lot of feedback on the performance fixes we put up in the private build, so I'd like to repeat the download URL and ask that folks grab this to see if it resolves the slowdowns you've been running into:

http://ftpsite.vmware.com/download/Fusion20/VMware-Fusion-2.0.1-125077.dmg

This build is not fully tested; run it at your own risk, and do not run it in a production environment.

We do know about the issue with Windows Vista VMs originally imported from Parallels in VMware Fusion 1.0; for those VMs, we currently recommend NOT upgrading the virtual hardware.

Performance Issues identified and fixed in build 125077:

VMwareUser taking 100% CPU after certain drag and drop operations
Guest start menu traversal slow when it contains broken shortcuts (XP and earlier only)
High CPU utilization by VMwareUser.exe when first starting up
Slow boot when iSight (product ID 0x8502 as reported by System Profiler) attached to VM
Improved load time of the VM Library on Fusion startup after the first startup

Performance issues identified but NOT fixed in build 125077:

Slow boot times when Windows drive letters are mapped to non-existent locations (physical Windows systems have the same issue). Workaround: Unmap unused drive letters by right clicking on Start -> My Computer, selecting Disconnect Network Drives, then disconnecting the troublesome drives.
Slow boot of Boot Camp VMs caused by Apple kbdmgr.exe. This is a bug in Apple's Boot Camp software. Workaround: Click Start -> Run, then enter 'msconfig'. Click on Startup, then disable kbdmgr.exe. (If you need Apple's keyboard extensions when rebooting into Boot Camp, then re-enable kbdmgr.exe before rebooting.)
High CPU usage for Windows Vista VMs imported from Parallels in VMware Fusion 1, then upgraded with VMware Fusion 2

Re: Bug hunt: Extremely slow boot times

braswels — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 02:06:18 GMT

In addition to my previous post.

a) I have Four VMDK files. My VMWare hard drive is set to split into 2 gig files. (does this cause fragementation? and how does VMware work with SPOTLIGHT indexing?)

1) winvista-s010.vmdk

2) winvista-s011.vmdk

3) winvista-s012.vmdk

4) winvista.vmdk

b) I have 119 files under Applications (.app) and have not deleted them yet

c) I have "turned off" "allow your Mac to open applications in the virtual machine

Re: Bug hunt: Extremely slow boot times

braswels — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 01:48:07 GMT

Hi, I am one of those that complained of super long boots a couple of posts ago. I am one of those that was a Parallels running Vista user that converted to Fusion 1 with no issues. My VMware boots are 7+ minutes (consistently). The problems began when I upgraded to Fusion 2.0 I have those errors inside the event view. I have attached my VMWARE Log and VMX file.

Re: Bug hunt: Extremely slow boot times

rhind — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 19:21:35 GMT

bgertzfield wrote:

If it's okay, let's move further discussion of AutoProtect onto a new thread. I'd like to keep this discussion thread about slow boot times.

Here http://communities.vmware.com/thread/169087?tstart=0&start=0 would be good as that is where we were discussing the issue of the snapshots not being taken.

Cheers

Russell

Re: Bug hunt: Extremely slow boot times

bgertzfield — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 19:17:22 GMT

manfredell wrote:
If I now understand it correctly: If I use the VM 1 hr each day I get a snapshot after 24 days?

Yes, that's right -- if you set AutoProtect to use daily snapshots. You can choose hourly or every half hour if you want snapshots more often.

If it's okay, let's move further discussion of AutoProtect onto a new thread. I'd like to keep this discussion thread about slow boot times.

Thanks!

Ben

Re: Bug hunt: Extremely slow boot times

rhind — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 19:16:43 GMT

bgertzfield wrote:

We chose to make AutoProtect take the snapshots each X minutes of VM uptime, which accumulate even when suspending and resuming the VM multiple times. You don't have to keep the VM up for 24 hours continually, but there need to be 24 hours of VM uptime before VMware Fusion will take another "daily" AutoProtect snapshot.

This is how I expected it to work, and for me, this is the correct behaviour. I use my VM for 5 to 10 hours a day and don't need a backup every 24 hours of real-time as not much has changed in the VM during that period but after 24 hours of use, it may have so the current behaviour seems correct.

My documents folder (which is changing a lot) is shared with the host (via and xcopy scheduled task running every hour in the guest) and so is backed up by TimeMachine every hour.

The auto-protect, for me, is in case I install a program/driver etc that screws the guest and I don't do this every time I use the VM.

Cheers

Russell

Re: Bug hunt: Extremely slow boot times

manfredell — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 19:14:32 GMT

bgertzfield wrote:

manfredell wrote:
Doesn't seem logical to me... When I set daily I expect to get a snapshot after 24hrs, the NEXT time I run the VM....

If I now understand it correctly: If I use the VM 1 hr each day I get a snapshot after 24 days?

Re: Bug hunt: Extremely slow boot times

bgertzfield — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 19:12:25 GMT

manfredell wrote:
Doesn't seem logical to me... When I set daily I expect to get a snapshot after 24hrs, the NEXT time I run the VM....

Re: Bug hunt: Extremely slow boot times

manfredell — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 19:05:21 GMT

bgertzfield wrote:

manfredell wrote:

Most users will probably have 24 hours pass between running VMs, so they would get a snapshot every single time they used the VM. This is not desirable.

If you want this behavior with your setup, I would recommend choosing an AutoProtect snapshot every 30 minutes.

I understand that you want to make sure to take a snapshot after 24 hours of time have passed in the real world. We're looking into how to best offer this kind of scheduling in the future.

Doesn't seem logical to me... When I set daily I expect to get a snapshot after 24hrs, the NEXT time I run the VM....

Re: Bug hunt: Extremely slow boot times

bgertzfield — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 19:01:49 GMT

manfredell wrote:
Hi,

No I don't run it continually. I resume it, work in it, 30 mins/day, suspend it.

I expect it to see when 24hrs have passed since last time suspended, or working or whatever and then to snapshot it. Who runs Win 24hrs?? I have a Mac!

Hi manfredell,

Most users will probably have 24 hours pass between running VMs, so they would get a snapshot every single time they used the VM. This is not desirable.

If you want this behavior with your setup, I would recommend choosing an AutoProtect snapshot every 30 minutes.

I understand that you want to make sure to take a snapshot after 24 hours of time have passed in the real world. We're looking into how to best offer this kind of scheduling in the future.

Thanks,

Ben

Re: Bug hunt: Extremely slow boot times

manfredell — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 18:58:25 GMT

Hi,

No I don't run it continually. I resume it, work in it, 30 mins/day, suspend it.

I expect it to see when 24hrs have passed since last time suspended, or working or whatever and then to snapshot it. Who runs Win 24hrs?? I have a Mac!

Re: Bug hunt: Extremely slow boot times

bgertzfield — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 17:41:18 GMT

manfredell wrote:
I still find that the daily autosnapshots are not taken. I can't find a change in behaviour from the buggy 2.0 here

Hi manfredell,

Can you post the vmware.log file from inside your virtual machine?

Are you running the virtual machine continuously for 24 hours? The daily AutoProtect snapshot will only be taken once for each 24 hours the virtual machine is running. (It does not take it once a day at a specific time.)

Thanks,

Ben

Re: Bug hunt: Extremely slow boot times

bgertzfield — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 17:39:43 GMT

Gangee wrote:

All pcibridge*.* entries were already set to 'FALSE', except pcibridge0, which I changed from TRUE to FALSE.

Hmm, that's odd. Did you change them to FALSE yourself?

Attached are the log files you asked for.

The log file says you were running virtual hardware version 6, which means the VM had not been upgraded to version 7. Were you encountering the slow boot times before upgrading the virtual hardware? I thought you saw them after upgrading.

FWIW, when I switched over from Parallels, it didn't go smooth. So, maybe my issue has something to do with that?

What happened when you switched over from Parallels?

I see that you have a Seagate USB storage device directly connected to the virtual machine. It looks like you might also have the Apple iSight set to directly connect.

Can you try disconnecting these devices from the menu Virtual Machine -> USB to see if that helps at all?

Re: Bug hunt: Extremely slow boot times

manfredell — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 22:20:33 GMT

davidliu wrote:

Thanks for the responses so far. We have been working on the performance issues in the past couple of weeks and we think we identified and fixed most of them. But we need your help: download the private build 125077 from http://ftpsite.vmware.com/download/Fusion20/VMware-Fusion-2.0.1-125077.dmg, power off your VMs, upgrade to this build, and see if it fixes the slow boot times for you. Please report back to this thread with your results.

WARNING: this private build is meant for users to verify fixes to the performance issues seen in VMware Fusion 2.0 release. It is not fully tested and thus NOT suited for general use in a production environment. In another word, use this build at your own risk.

Fixed a bug that causes daily AutoProtect snapshots not to be taken.

Installed this over 2.0

I still find that the daily autosnapshots are not taken. I can't find a change in behaviour from the buggy 2.0 here

Re: Bug hunt: Extremely slow boot times

etung — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 20:01:58 GMT

FYI deleted two duplicate messages that had a bunch of XML spew at the top.

Re: Bug hunt: Extremely slow boot times

Gangee — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 17:48:30 GMT

Hi Ben,

I looked around in Event Viewer, couldn't see anything. I looked in System and Application. Would they be near the top? What Event ID?

Re: Bug hunt: Extremely slow boot times

Gangee — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 17:48:29 GMT

Hi Ben,

All pcibridge*.* entries were already set to 'FALSE', except pcibridge0, which I changed from TRUE to FALSE.
Attached are the log files you asked for.

FWIW, when I switched over from Parallels, it didn't go smooth. So, maybe my issue has something to do with that? I'm getting a new MacBook Pro in another month or so and I plan to install Fusion and Vista from scratch. So I'm sure that'll help.

Thanks!

Re: Bug hunt: Extremely slow boot times

matthewls — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 02:36:01 GMT

I installed the 2.01 beta despite not having boot up time problems, and it continues to work great. It does seem a bit quicker than the 2.0 release in any case.

Re: Bug hunt: Extremely slow boot times

bgertzfield — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 22:24:17 GMT

Gangee wrote:
2) It's a machine originally imported from Parallels.

OK. We have reproduced this issue (imported Parallels Vista VMs take an excruciatingly long time to boot once upgraded to Hardware Version 7).

To confirm you're hitting this issue, please right click on My Computer, select Manage, and go to Event Viewer. If you see tons and tons of lines like:

"IRQARB: ACPI BIOS does not contain an IRQ for the device in PCI slot 24, function 3. Please contact your system vendor for technical assistance."

then this is definitely the issue with the new PCI bridge devices in Hardware Version 7 conflicting with something Parallels has done to make Vista work with their ACPI implementation.

Re: Bug hunt: Extremely slow boot times

Gangee — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 22:01:06 GMT

Greetings and salutations from Eagle, CO!

I can answer 1 and 2, I'll answer the rest tomorrow (I'm out of cycles for today).

1) Yes, it's a non-Boot Camp Windows Vista Ultimate (that I've been talking about). Not, another VM.

2) It's a machine originally imported from Parallels.

I'll get the rest to you this weekend.

Thanks for your help!

Re: Bug hunt: Extremely slow boot times

bgertzfield — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 20:44:19 GMT

Gangee wrote:

I then Upgraded the Virtual Machine. Boot up to the desktop was right at 9 minutes, 15 seconds. Winblows feels sluggish.

OK. This is definitely a problem. I'd like to help narrow this down by asking a few questions:

1) Is this your (non-Boot Camp) Windows Vista Ultimate VM that you previously talked about, or is it another VM?

2) Was this VM created with VMware Fusion 1, or was it imported from Parallels or another product?

3) Can you please reply to this post and attach your VM's configuration (.vmx) and vmware.log files after a sluggish boot? You can get your VM's configuration file by going to Finder, browsing to your Documents/Virtual Machines folder, then control-clicking or right clicking on your VM and choosing "Show Package Contents".

4) Can you try powering off your VM, then opening your VM's configuration (.vmx) file in TextEdit, and looking for lines like:

pciBridge0.present = "TRUE"
pciBridge4.present = "TRUE"
pciBridge5.present = "TRUE"
pciBridge6.present = "TRUE"
pciBridge7.present = "TRUE"

and changing them to:

pciBridge0.present = "FALSE"
pciBridge4.present = "FALSE"
pciBridge5.present = "FALSE"
pciBridge6.present = "FALSE"
pciBridge7.present = "FALSE"

then start up your VM again.

Thanks,

Ben

Re: Bug hunt: Extremely slow boot times

Gangee — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 20:37:22 GMT

1) When I did the new install, it took 5 1/2 minutes to boot. VMWare tools didn't load, I think it was doing an install of new tools? At about 8 minutes it told me to reboot, to finishing installing tools.

2) I rebooted, my desktop booted up with all the services I load in about 3 1/2 minutes. Winblows feels snappy, performance is pretty good. Much better than I'm used to, downgrading the Virtual Machine really made a difference.

3) I then Upgraded the Virtual Machine. Boot up to the desktop was right at 9 minutes, 15 seconds. Winblows feels sluggish.

4) I then downgraded the Virtual Machine, booted up in just under 4 minutes. Back to performance in #2, above.

Re: Bug hunt: Extremely slow boot times

neving — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 19:54:10 GMT

3 1/2 minute boot times would drive me nuts; I think this was about the time it was taking mine to boot, initially, in 2.0. Did you check the 'Applications' folder in your VM? I moved the app files out of here and it appeared to help me. I do have a slightly different setup, though.

Re: Bug hunt: Extremely slow boot times

bgertzfield — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 19:41:50 GMT

Gangee wrote:

1) should I install it with the settings I currently have (I downgraded my Virtual Machine -- which took the boot times from almost 9 minutes to about 3 1/2 minutes), or would you prefer I change something first (Upgrade the Virtual Machine)?

Hi Gangee,

We didn't make any changes in this release that would impact VMs with different hardware revisions.

Please try first without upgrading your virtual hardware, and let us know how long your boot takes.

Then, please try again after upgrading the virtual hardware.

Thanks!

Ben

Re: Bug hunt: Extremely slow boot times

Gangee — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 19:38:02 GMT

Hi David,

I'm happy to help.

I'll install this build. Question:

Re: Bug hunt: Extremely slow boot times

Gangee — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 19:26:45 GMT

Hey Pete,

Thanks for chiming in.

1) No, I didn't try that. Should I?

Edit:

When I right click on the virtual machine, I don't any files with the extension .app.

2) I had the ram set to 1024, then I bumped it up. On the Vista side I can notice the performance increase, but on the OS 10.5 side, I notice a slight decrease. That's fine, because I spend more time in Winblows.

3) When I do a "Quit VMWare Fusion" then do a restore, which is what I normally do, Fusion restores fairly fast, in about 30 seconds. Does that sound like it's too long?

Re: Bug hunt: Extremely slow boot times

gdd9000 — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 19:29:13 GMT

Life sucks for me...the performance of my virtual machine is steadily heading downhill. I must have some sort of memory eating machine, because I can barely multitask now, and each day the performance is worse. I have to reboot constantly to clear out memory (I guess) just so that I can run excel, firefox, outlook, and ppt at the same time. Normally, it handled all those without a second of delay. Now, freezes up trying to switch between programs, cursor movement lags, etc. Total disaster. I HATE VMWARE for what they have done with v 2.0

Re: Bug hunt: Extremely slow boot times

davidliu — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 19:27:16 GMT

Performance Issues identified and fixed in build 125077:

VMwareUser taking 100% CPU after certain drag and drop operations
Guest start menu traversal slow when it contains broken shortcuts (XP and earlier only)
High CPU utilization by VMwareUser.exe when first starting up
Slow boot when iSight (product ID 0x8502 as reported by System Profiler) attached to VM
Improved load time of the VM Library on Fusion startup after the first startup

Performance issues identified but NOT fixed in build 125077:

Slow boot times when Windows drive letters are mapped to non-existent locations (physical Windows systems have the same issue). Workaround: Unmap unused drive letters by right clicking on Start -> My Computer, selecting Disconnect Network Drives, then disconnecting the troublesome drives.
Slow boot of Boot Camp VMs caused by Apple kbdmgr.exe. This is a bug in Apple's Boot Camp software. Workaround: Click Start -> Run, then enter 'msconfig'. Click on Startup, then disable kbdmgr.exe. (If you need Apple's keyboard extensions when rebooting into Boot Camp, then re-enable kbdmgr.exe before rebooting.)

Although not a focus of this post, I also wanted to provide a brief list on the issues and bugs we fixed in this build:

VMware Fusion 2.0.1 (Private Build 125077) Changelist:

No longer disables certain shared folders and mirrored folders that were nested folders. The potential data loss issue with nested shared folders has been resolved.
No longer publishes Windows guest applications to Mac if "Allow the virtual machine to open applications on yoru Mac" is unchecked in the VM Settings -> Sharing.
AutoProtect will postpone taking a snapshot when the user is interacting with the VM.
Fixed bug in VMware Fusion 2.0 that cause the Mac's default browser to change after install in some cases.
No longer maps Num Pad Enter to AltGr by default for non-European keyboards.
Brings back the "Enable Hints" menu item in Help menu.
Fixed an issue where Take Snapshot was incorrectly enabled for some Bootcamp VMs.
Fixed crash with Google Earth for Windows.
Fixed Outlook graphics glitches in Unity mode.
Fixed incompatibility between CVSNT (http://www.cvsnt.org) and VMware Tools.
Fixed disappearance of application Dock icons in Unity mode after a snapshot.
Fixed a bug that causes daily AutoProtect snapshots not to be taken.
Updated the Spanish localization to correct some translation issues.
Fixed Windows Media Player 11 and WinDVD 5 crashes when attempting to play DVD.
Fixed drag and drop when the Windows color depth is set to 16-bit.
Fixed an issue so that "/" now can be shared between guest and host.

David Liu

Product Manager, VMware Fusion

Re: Bug hunt: Extremely slow boot times

[p]ete — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 19:15:45 GMT

3.5 minutes is still too long, IMO.

I have a MacbookPro4,1 (2.5GHz, 4GB RAM) and Vista Ultimate VM restores in under 20 seconds. (Just did a quick test from suspend and it took 8 seconds before I could start typing in Vista)

1) Did you delete all the .app files in the VM's 'applications' folder (inside the vm package)?
2) How quickly does it boot if you shrink the VM ram allocation down to 1024mb?

Re: Bug hunt: Extremely slow boot times

Gangee — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 19:03:28 GMT

My machine takes almost 9 minutes (8 minutes, 35 seconds on last check) to boot up to the desktop. It's been like this for so long, I just got used to it. But now I'm sick of it. I don't normally boot up, I do the Suspend. But when I do bootup, it's painful.

1) Macbook Pro, 4 gig of RAM.

Model Name: MacBook Pro
Model Identifier: MacBookPro3,1
Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed: 2.4 GHz
Number Of Processors: 1
Total Number Of Cores: 2
L2 Cache: 4 MB
Memory: 4 GB
Bus Speed: 800 MHz

2) Vista Ultimate. I imported from Parallels.

3) I'm using 1 processor, 1536 of RAM allocated.

4) I don't use Boot Camp. I load the Virtual machine, Fusion 2.0

5) I don't have "Allow your Mac to open applications..." checked. I had it checked, then unchecked it. No change in the boot time.

6) I have USB devices connected; an external harddrive, monitor and keyboard. I haven't tried disconnecting them.

7) I have all but the necessary services disabled on startup

8) Downgrading the Virtual machine made a big difference. It took the boot time down to about 3 1/2 minutes.

Since I'm making progress, I wanted to stop here, before I go any further.

Questions:

1) Is 3 1/2 minutes about right for a boot up time? If so, I'm good. If not, what else should I try?

Thanks in advance,

Re: Bug hunt: Extremely slow boot times

neving — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 15:21:09 GMT

Thanks for the advice; I think this may have helped me. After I moved the apps from this directory, my boot time was down to about 80 seconds. I noticed that I had several versions of the same programs and even some that were no longer on my XP system.

I copied the files rather than deleting them in case I need to move any of them back. If I have some time, I will put them back in the Applications directory to see if I can replicate the slow boot time problem.

Re: Bug hunt: Extremely slow boot times

[p]ete — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 02:14:46 GMT

No worries. I just read it myself and it's still not that clear to me.

Ok, here's how I think it works because this is how Parallels also does it:

The option "Allow your Mac to open applications in the virtual machine" in your VM settings basically does this:

1) Let's say you have alot of .xls (Microsoft Excel) files on your Mac. Your coworker loves to send you XLS files to review. He sends 2008report.xls via email to you.
2) You have Microsoft Office 2003 installed in your VM (Windows XP let's say), and you do NOT have Excel for OS X installed.
3) You want OS X to know that every time you double-click/open an XLS file in OS X, it should open that file in Microsoft Excel 2003 in your Windows XP virtual machine.

In order for this feature to work, Fusion must create an Excel2003.app (it may be named something else, I'm just making this up to illustrate the feature) file in the "applications" folder of your .vmwarevm file.

This Excel2003.app acts as a placeholder for OS X to use. It essentially sends the 2008report.xls file to the Excel2003.app file to open. This results in the 2008report.xls file opening in Windows XP using Excel 2003.

So, if you are not using the "Allow your Mac to open applications in the virtual machine" feature in your VM settings, it's safe to delete the application placeholder .app files.

I've just read this again and it's already too long... I'll let someone else take a crack at this. lol

Re: Bug hunt: Extremely slow boot times

gdd9000 — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 01:29:22 GMT

Every time I read this :

"In order to let Fusion open certain filetypes in OS X using your guest OS (i.e. Windows) it has to create sample .app programs in OS X to represent those Windows programs. This came along with the new feature "Allow your Mac to open applications in the virtual machine"."

I have no idea what it really means.

Does this mean unity? Does it mean Im in OSX and I have some windows shared folder with files in it and I try to click one to open it? I must have been labotomized lately or something, because despite fairly highly tech literate, the VMware way of talking about stuff half the time makes no sense to me. I must be thinking about VMs conceptually wrong or something, because I have never been so confused in my entire life. I'll wait and see what some other people say before doing any deleting.

I did find out one thing - my blue screen of death stop error problem only occurs when I try to boot up windows in the non-full screen mode. (I never used unity so dont know if that would be a problem or not.) But when it is in its own window that you can move around with OSX in the background, it crashes every time on reboot. In full screen, it is slow, but at least it starts.

Why oh why did I upgrade to 2.0? Why? Why????? Life was so simple...

Re: Bug hunt: Extremely slow boot times

[p]ete — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 01:19:02 GMT

Here's what I "think" they're being used for:

In order to let Fusion open certain filetypes in OS X using your guest OS (i.e. Windows) it has to create sample .app programs in OS X to represent those Windows programs. This came along with the new feature "Allow your Mac to open applications in the virtual machine".

Since I've disabled that feature I also deleted those placeholder .app files.

Now startup and shutdown of my VM Guests are instantaneous.

Someone from VM will weigh in on this soon to confirm if my thinking's correct, hopefully.

Re: Bug hunt: Extremely slow boot times

gdd9000 — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 00:19:22 GMT

Ive got tons of stuff in my applications folder as well. I found it by showing package contents of my vm file. They are all dated Oct 10. No idea what they are for. Many Ive never heard of.

Why were these put here and how can I be sure they are ok to delete? Seems it helped you, but Im sort or scared to just delete things without knowing why Im doing it.

thx,
geoff

Re: Bug hunt: Extremely slow boot times

[p]ete — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 21:10:07 GMT

Problem solved for me:

32-bit WinXP Pro guest on 2.5" 5400 rpm Firewire HFS partition

The WinXP image has about 8 months of usage and was getting slower and slower

Do you have "Allow your Mac to open applications in the virtual machine" set in the virtual machine's Sharing Settings? Try disabling this - this has helped some users.

I disabled it, but the slow (read: 4+ minute) boot time of the VM library did not go away.

I checked the "Applications" folder inside the .vmwarevm file and found over 5000 .app files. Deleting these .app files (using rm -rf) now leads to a near-instantaneous boot up of my VM library.

Hope this helps others.

Re: Bug hunt: Extremely slow boot times

neving — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 15:37:35 GMT

I have all three of these as well, although I believe the vmdebug message can be ignored. I think this was noted somewhere on this forum, but I don't remember where I saw it. I think there is a registry change that will hide the message. I also have the 'Parallel port driver' message. Like you, I only noticed that these messages were occurring after I started troubleshooting.

Re: Bug hunt: Extremely slow boot times

sklarsky — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 05:39:47 GMT

I have definitely noticed that my Boot Camp partition boots and hangs when the Shared Folders are turned on in VM ware. The problem is that I have turned off the shared folders and they aren't always turned off when I boot natively using Boot Camp. I was about to do a complete wipe and reinstall of Boot Camp, VM Ware and Windows, but may wait and see if there is a true fix to this issue.

Re: Bug hunt: Extremely slow boot times

sklarsky — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 03:52:42 GMT

I have the following windows event viewer error when using VM. It did not hang for me. I've noticed more hard drive reading/writing occurring though.

Event Type: Error
Event Source: vmdebug
Event Category: None
Event ID: 3
Description:
VMDebug driver http://7.3.3.2 was disabled for this VM. Recording for replay-debugging will not work.

I have the following windows event viewer errors when using Boot Camp. It does hang on the welcome screen.
Event Type: Error
Event Source: vmdebug
Event Category: None
Event ID: 3
Description:
VMDebug driver http://7.3.3.2 was disabled for this VM. Recording for replay-debugging will not work.

Event Type: Error
Event Source: Service Control Manager
Event Category: None
Event ID: 7009
Description:
Timeout (30000 milliseconds) waiting for the VMware Tools Service service to connect.

Event Type: Error
Event Source: Service Control Manager
Event Category: None
Event ID: 7000
Description:
The Parallel port driver service failed to start due to the following error:
The service cannot be started, either because it is disabled or because it has no enabled devices associated with it.

Looking back at my logs, I've had these errors occur in the past, though I never noticed it until lately.

Re: Bug hunt: Extremely slow boot times

neving — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 22:05:52 GMT

I just upgraded to 2.0 and am experiencing the same or similar problems to others. The notes below focus on the slow boot.

Eric - if you would like to see any of my logs or get more info from me, let me know.

System:
MacBook Pro, Core2Duo 2.4 GHZ
OS X 10.5.5
Moved from Parallels 3.0 build 5608 to Fusion 2.0
BootCamp 2.1 with XP SP3 (32-bit) on an NTFS partition
4 GB RAM (1GB for XP VM)

Install/Upgrade:
I was running Parallels 3.x on my original disk. I cloned my disk with CarbonCopy Cloner, and used Winclone to restore to a newly created BootCamp partition on the new disk. I booted to Parallels XP virtual machine and removed their tools, then uninstalled Parallels altogether. I then installed Fusion 2.0 and, from within the virtual machine, I successfully installed the updated Tools (uninstalled the old version, first, and rebooted).

Note - I also ran the pre 1.0 Fusion Beta last year, but uninstalled it before I installed Parallels.

Slow Boot Issues:
The initial boot was probably around three minutes. I tried to resolve this through some other forum suggestions noted below. Now, when I boot XP as a guest OS in Fusion, it boots in just over a minute. However, every time I go from BootCamp (i.e. boot straight to XP) then reboot to OS X and open XP in Fusion, it is around three minutes, again.
1) I deleted the directories with the incorrect .vmdk files since they pointed to the wrong disk. VMWare correctly re-created the new directory and files for me.
2) Disabled USB, Sharing, and Printer options. I have also tried with the CD disabled.
3) Reviewed the log file, just looking for things noted in the forum. I do not have the excessive Read/Write issue.
4) I can see the following repeating messages in the log, that I thought might be the CD:
- vmx| VIDE: ATAPI DMA 0x43 Failed: key 0x2, asc 0x3a, ascq 0x0
- vcpu-0| VIDE: ATAPI DMA 0x25 Failed: key 0x2, asc 0x3a, ascq 0x0
- vmx| VIDE: ATAPI DMA 0x25 Failed: key 0x2, asc 0x3a, ascq 0x0
5) When I boot directly to XP in BootCamp, Windows Event Viewer shows the following error:
- Timeout (30000 milliseconds) waiting for the VMware Tools Service service to connect.

Other Notes:
1) My virtual disk shows IDE and is the full size of the OS X volume even though the partition is much smaller. I don't know if this is the way it is supposed to look.
2) I initial had VMWare Server 1.07 on XP, but uninstalled it to see if that helped.

Re: Bug hunt: Extremely slow boot times

sklarsky — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 13:42:18 GMT

I started experiencing slow boot times last night after a couple of things happened.

I am running Windows XP Pro SP3 and Mac OS 10.5.5 with VM Fusion 2.0 on a Mac Book Pro. My Windows partition is a Boot Camp partition and I have experienced the hang at the welcome screen when booting using VM Ware and when booting natively. I had upgraded VM Fusion to 2.0 prior to enabling the Boot Camp partition. Two things occurred last night:

1) Windows Update ran and downloaded 7 updates while I was running the Boot Camp partition through VM ware.

2) Longer story - I have an external USB drive that was showing up in the Virtual Machine Library as bootable (which it isn't). I was trying to remove this option. Still can't seem to get it out when that drive is plugged in no matter what I do...so, I tried doing a few things...I tried copying the com.vmware.plist file to com.vmware.plist.old in Library > Preferences so that the system would recreate a new one (and hopefully remove the"dummy" drive option. I also tried removing the device options in Library > Application Support > VM Fusion > Virtual Machines > Boot Camp (there were two, one for the real one and one for the dummy) After doing this removal, VM ware hung for the first time on the welcome screen when booting, after a while, it re installed VM tools, even though it was already installed in Windows. After a restart or two, it seemed to speed up, but I was also prompted in install McAfee for the free trial upon another login. I said 'don't show me again' since it was already installed. Again, the boot up seemed to not hang as much after the initial one or two restarts; however, I then booted natively into the Windows partition and it hung at the welcome screen for an uncomfortably long time. It played the start up music and instead of going to the desktop, just waited. Once it did get to the desktop, it seemed that everything was already loaded in the task bar by the clock.

So, I'm not sure it was it Windows Update (which I suspected) or my trying to get the "dummy" partition out of my Virtual Machine Library that did it. Both things kind of happened simultaneously. I was working from a pretty clean install and I did my upgrades prior to activating the Boot Camp partition. The only other thing that I can think of that is a little different is that I also recently started to use Time Machine and I have an external drive hooked up to the other USB boot for those backups.

I was very unimpressed with the hanging and as other users commented loved the fact that the Windows boot was very fast up until now. I did not try rebooting natively again or running VM ware again after that happened (it was getting to be very late for me) I also wish I could permanently remove the external USB drive from my Library as it shows up and only shows up when it is plugged into that USB port. It does not show up when it is plugged into the other USB port, but that problem probably requires another posting on another thread.

Thanks.

Re: Bug hunt: Extremely slow boot times

inspiron2 — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 03:34:27 GMT

You were right.

Copied single file VM, which was start off in a couple of seconds when on the Mac Journaled partition, became a dog on FAT32 partition.

Copied multi-file VM from FAT32 to Mac Journed partition, and all problems went away.

BTW, FAT32 was not fragmented at all. It was a new partition, and only contained VM files (copied over from another location). So, in theory, it should have minimal to no fragmentation to start off with. I think it's Mac's (or Fusion's) general disliking of FAT32 drives. One thing to note though that when I copied large number of files to the FAT32 partition, I didn't feel it to be slower in any way.

Mystery????