VMWare authd processor Utilization Windows Vista 64bit

[cozz]

Hi all,

I'm having a problem where VMWare authd is stealing about 8% of my computer capacity when the machine is idle and workstation is not running.

As a test, I disabled authd, and was able to successfully run Workstation as administrator. This solved the problem. However, this workaround isn't good for me as company policy dictates that nothing run as admin unless for testing.

I've verified the workstation is virus/malware free, and the system is sound.

Attached, a little graph of the sawtooth pattern observed.

Is there a solution?

[Scissor]

Are you running the latest version of Workstation ( 6.5.1 ) ?

[bobby32wf]

I noticed the same thing while in the WS 7 beta program - http://communities.vmware.com/message/1399346, bug 483679 was filed to address this. I recently upgraded to 7.0.1 / build 227600, however the issue addressed in the aforementioned thread is still present.

I have since noticed a side-effect of the workaround detailed in the beta thread, Event Viewer shows 6 Errors are reported every 5 seconds by vmwauthd. Details of the errors are:

Event ID 100

General: "Failed to read registry perf object <blah>", where <blah> is:

Memory\Cache Bytes

Process\ID Process

Memory\Page Faults/sec

Memory\Pool Nonpaged Bytes

Memory\Pool Paged Bytes

Memory\Committed Bytes

With 6 errors every 5 seconds my 20 MB application log is overwhelmed with vmauthd related errors in about 14.5 hours (20 MB will hold 62,325 vmauthd errors, 6 errors every 5 seconds is 1.2 errors/second, 62,235/1.2 = 51862.5s, 51862.5/3600 = 14.4 hours).

[mdunn-vmware]

Hi bobby, unfortunately we don't have a solution for this problem yet. I just checked the bug in our tracking system. The bug is still listed as open, and it's being investigated.

[vnena]

Here's a bit more laborious fix but it works great. No vmware services will run on background until you actually launch the workstation, they will also stop running when you exit it. It might not work in some advanced scenarios but in basic usage it's fine and there's no perf penalty to startup I've noticed.

just google "vmware stop polling" and it should be first hit. The polling bit is about AUTHD doing stuff in the background as seen in process monitor.

[rharry]

We have a fix for this now. It'll show up in the next point release of Workstation.

[bobby32wf]

Great news. Many thanks for the update.