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WhiteKnight
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

Using EFI instead of BIOS in VM = slow ... why?

I have reinstalled a VM and used EFI this time instead of BIOS.

EFI is said to be faster than BIOS when booting. But in EFI mode the VMware logo is displayed for approx. 5-10 seconds, thereby deducting the rapidity of EFI.

Why is the VMware boot logo displayed for such an utterly long time? Is there some option available to speed this up?



[VMware]: Workstation 17 Pro; --
[host]: Windows 10x64 host; --
[guests]: Windows 10x64, Windows 8x64.
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dariusd
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

EFI is said to be faster than BIOS when booting.

It depends heavily on the configuration of the system, and won't be true for all EFI implementations.

The architecture of EFI theoretically allows for a faster boot than BIOS on systems with large numbers of peripherals, because EFI can theoretically skip initialization of the bits of hardware that are not going to be used during boot.  We've observed that this causes problems for various OSes which depend on the hardware having been initialized before the OS is launched, such that the OS might fail to boot or might fail to properly initialize a peripheral if it is still in the uninitialized "cold boot" state.  We're working on speeding up boot times, but we won't deliver the full performance improvement promised by the EFI architecture until we're confident that it won't cause things to break.

But even then, 5-10 seconds is a looooong time.  Maybe we're checking an empty physical CD/DVD or floppy drive for media?  (If so, try unselecting "Connect at power on" and it should speed things up).  Another thing that happens sometimes is that the installed operating system will explicitly configure a boot delay.  If that's the case, you'll see a dotted bar creeping along the bottom of the screen during the big pause.  Is that what you're seeing, or does it look like absolutely nothing is changing on screen during the pause?

Cheers,

--

Darius

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WhiteKnight
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

Hi Darius,

thanks for sharing your valuable thoughts with me.

Here's a small screencast demonstrating the issue:

EFI booting slow.gif

As you can see from the screencast I have disabled the virtual DVD drive. But the VMware logo still is getting displayed for 5 seconds.



[VMware]: Workstation 17 Pro; --
[host]: Windows 10x64 host; --
[guests]: Windows 10x64, Windows 8x64.
dariusd
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

Hmmm, yes, that's actually a pause while we're initializing devices, not an OS-configured boot delay, and it seems very unusually long unless you're running a nested virtual machine.

There's one device icon in the lower-right that I don't immediately recognize (hard drive 1, hard drive 2, CD/DVD, network, sound, mystery)... is it a USB device that's passed through to the VM?  (Edit: It's a USB mass-storage device.  Some mass-storage devices can take a moment to respond to a reset.)

Any chance you could attach a vmware.log from a run showing the delay?

Thanks,

--

Darius

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WhiteKnight
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

Sure, but there's pretty much personal information in there. Is there a private channel where I might post it to?



[VMware]: Workstation 17 Pro; --
[host]: Windows 10x64 host; --
[guests]: Windows 10x64, Windows 8x64.
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dariusd
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

Is it slow to boot if the USB Mass Storage Device is not being passed through to the VM?

--

Darius

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WhiteKnight
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

Oops, sorry, I forgot to answer your last question:

I coincidentally had the USB hard disk drive connected to another VM to copy some files while I was taking the screencast. The drive did not have any influence on the delay. It occurs with or without that drive.

Cheers,

Axel



[VMware]: Workstation 17 Pro; --
[host]: Windows 10x64 host; --
[guests]: Windows 10x64, Windows 8x64.
WhiteKnight
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

I just upgraded to Workstation 14.

UEFI boot still is remarkably slow. The VMware logo is displayed for almost a minute before the VM is actually booting. Even replacing the networkdriver "E1000" with "E1000E" doesn't show much effect. The VMware logo is still getting displayed for almost half a minute.

Isn't is possible to significantly speed this up?



[VMware]: Workstation 17 Pro; --
[host]: Windows 10x64 host; --
[guests]: Windows 10x64, Windows 8x64.
digibat
Contributor
Contributor

I have exactly the same problem with UEFI and Workstation 14. The VMware logo is displayed for more than 30 s before VM operating system starts booting. Another VM installed with the same parameters is not affected by delayed boot in case BIOS is used instead of UEFI.

WhiteKnight
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

I noticed that sometimes I can read "Clearing 4 GB" for quite a while while the "VMware" logo is getting displayed. Perhaps this may ring a bell?



[VMware]: Workstation 17 Pro; --
[host]: Windows 10x64 host; --
[guests]: Windows 10x64, Windows 8x64.
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dariusd
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

Does your virtual machine have a virtual TPM device?  With a TPM and Memory Overwrite enabled, we will clear the VM's memory during boot, and that can take quite some time in a large VM... we'll display a progress message so that the user can tell what's happening.  It sounds like that could only explain part of the problem though... particularly since Workstation 12 doesn't support TPM.

The expected time for the VMware logo to be displayed during VM boot is roughly 2-3 seconds for a typical EFI VM.  Something is clearly going wrong here to make it so slow on your system(s).

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digibat
Contributor
Contributor

I did not enable TPM device in my VM's (except it is enabled by default?). The problem is on both the clear new Windows 10  and the Linux Ubuntu 17.10 virtual machines. Workstation V.14 waits for 30 seconds before Windows boot and approx. 15 s before Linux boot is initiated. The VMware logo is displayed during waiting and no disk or processor or RAM activity is registered by host task manager. Delay is not seen if BIOS boot  is set during the VM installation.

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WhiteKnight
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

I switched to VMware Workstation 14.1.1 meanwhile.

I didn't intentionally activate TPM, too, just like digibat​.

When I launched the support request on this issue I also added a screencast showing how I created a VM, one time using BIOS, another time using UEFI. From that screencast it becomes apparent that I didn't change any settings except for using two HDDs.



[VMware]: Workstation 17 Pro; --
[host]: Windows 10x64 host; --
[guests]: Windows 10x64, Windows 8x64.
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Scillonian
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

I'm also seeing this long pause on EFI firmware VMs on Workstation 12.x and 14.x.

Are there any files I can provide to help diagnose this problem.

Skokie
Contributor
Contributor

Same issue for me... also, each time the VM is started the Boot Manager is displayed.  This might have been of my own doing but I am not able find a way to configure the VM so the Boot Manager no long appears.

The VM runs fine once it has booted up.  I would like the VM to boot faster and by-pass the boot manager.

- Windows 10 PC

- Workstation 14

- VM loaded on a USB drvie

- the VM is Windows 7

Thanks.

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Scillonian
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

Are you seeing the EFI boot manager or the Windows boot manager?

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