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Re: Bug hunt: Extremely slow boot times

15. Oct 17, 2008 3:05 PM in response to: etung
Click to view neving's profile Lurker
neving
4 posts since
Jun 27, 2007
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

16. Oct 17, 2008 8:52 PM in response to: neving
Click to view sklarsky's profile Lurker
sklarsky
3 posts since
Oct 17, 2008
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

17. Oct 17, 2008 10:39 PM in response to: sklarsky
Click to view sklarsky's profile Lurker
sklarsky
3 posts since
Oct 17, 2008
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

18. Oct 20, 2008 8:37 AM in response to: sklarsky
Click to view neving's profile Lurker
neving
4 posts since
Jun 27, 2007
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

19. Oct 20, 2008 2:10 PM in response to: neving
Click to view [p]ete's profile Lurker
[p]ete
4 posts since
Jul 19, 2007
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

20. Oct 20, 2008 5:19 PM in response to: [p]ete
Click to view gdd9000's profile Novice
gdd9000
9 posts since
Jul 29, 2008
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

21. Oct 20, 2008 6:19 PM in response to: gdd9000
Click to view [p]ete's profile Lurker
[p]ete
4 posts since
Jul 19, 2007
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

22. Oct 20, 2008 6:29 PM in response to: [p]ete
Click to view gdd9000's profile Novice
gdd9000
9 posts since
Jul 29, 2008
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

23. Oct 20, 2008 7:14 PM in response to: gdd9000
Click to view [p]ete's profile Lurker
[p]ete
4 posts since
Jul 19, 2007
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

24. Oct 21, 2008 8:21 AM in response to: [p]ete
Click to view neving's profile Lurker
neving
4 posts since
Jun 27, 2007
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

25. Oct 24, 2008 12:05 PM in response to: etung
Click to view Gangee's profile Enthusiast
Gangee
87 posts since
Sep 15, 2007
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

26. Oct 24, 2008 12:15 PM in response to: Gangee
Click to view [p]ete's profile Lurker
[p]ete
4 posts since
Jul 19, 2007
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

27. Oct 24, 2008 12:30 PM in response to: [p]ete
Click to view Gangee's profile Enthusiast
Gangee
87 posts since
Sep 15, 2007
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

28. Oct 24, 2008 12:27 PM in response to: etung
Click to view davidliu's profile Enthusiast
davidliu
99 posts since
Jul 31, 2008

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.

Performance Issues identified and fixed in build 125077:

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

Performance issues identified but NOT fixed in build 125077:

  1. 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.
  2. 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

29. Oct 24, 2008 12:29 PM in response to: [p]ete
Click to view gdd9000's profile Novice
gdd9000
9 posts since
Jul 29, 2008
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
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