Really slow Windows 10 in Fusion

[RickCAZ]

I am running Windows 10 inside Fusion 8.5.6.  Everything about it is really slow.  The host iMac has 8 GB RAM, and a 1 TB fusion drive.  It is a very fast machine.  So why is Windows so slow?  The patches can take hours to down load.  A reboot to install a patch can take 30 minutes or more.  Even updating the definitions for Windows Defender takes 10 or 15 minutes to download, if it even successfully downloads.  Where to start diagnosing the slowness?

[RickShu]

Hi RickCAZ,

Would you please inform about your configuration (CPU core#, Memory Size...) of Windows 10 virtual machine?

Also, is the slowness occurs only when Fusion is running?

Regards,

-Rick

[RickCAZ]

Rick

Slowness is Win 10 virtual machine running inside Fusion.  Win10 won't run on my Mac without Fusion.  So yes, Fusion 8.5.6 is running.

As for configuration, Processors and Memory shows 1 core and 2 GB RAM.  That is recommended per Fusion.  It seems a little low to me.  The HD is 60 GB virtual disk.vmdk.  That also seems a bit small.  I let VMWare set itself up, since I know zero about it. 

What settings would you recommend?

Rick

[RickCAZ]

I shut down Win 10 and doubled everything (2 cores, 4096 MB RAM, 120 GB HD).  That had no effect.  Just booting into Win 10 took about 5 min, then another 2 min to log in.  I checked Activity Monitor and found VMWare-vmx using about 25% of CPU (on average as it was bouncing around) with Fusion using very small amount.  VMX used 135 MB RAM and Fusion about 125 MB.  Those numbers are well within the sizes (core, RAM, HD) before doubling. 

[RickCAZ]

Rick

When I doubled the virtual HD, Win 10 won't let me resize the partition.  The added 60 GB shows under Disk Management.  However Extend Partition is grayed out.  So the guest has 60 GB unallocated.  Any suggestions?

Rick

[RickShu]

Hi Rick,

Thanks for the feedbacks.

Would you please try the following steps and see if it helps:

Operations on your Host OS

====================

1) Open a Terminal in Mac OS.

2) Run the command in Terminal: sudo nano /etc/auto_master

3) Find the line starts with /net  -hosts ..........

4) Comment out this line by adding # prior to /net. (e.g. #/net -hosts    -nobrowse.........)

5) Save your change and quit. (In case you encounter any other problems with your Host OS, please change it back)

6) Run command in Terminal: sudo automount -vc

Operations on you Virtual Machine

=========================

1) Open VM settings panel while your VM is powered off.

2) Click General icon, Click 'Clean UP Virtual Machine'.

2) Back to Settings panel, set 2 CPU cores for you VM

3) Set 4GB RAM for you VM

4) Power on your VM and see if the performance is better now.

Regards,

-Rick

[RickCAZ]

Thanks Rick

Before I modify that file, can you please tell me what I am modifying?  Also, what other problems could that produce in the Mac?

Also, do you have any ideas how to get Win10 to extend the HD partition I created?

[RickShu]

Hi Rick,

Sorry for the late response.

Regarding your questions:

1) Commenting out the /net line will disable the auto-mounting of file systems elsewhere on the network which are exported by NFS.  There are some Mac Fusion Drive users who reported the slowness with Finder and other applications in OS X and some of them have solved the slowness problem by commenting out this line. Please refer to this link.

2) I think some one has replied your question about extend partition in another thread. So would you please give it a try?

Regards,

-Rick

[drewrobi]

Commenting out the entry in the hosts file greatly improved my Win 10 VM issues. This had not been an issue in the past, but seems to be related to OSX 10.12 / Sierra