Frequent performance "hitches" while running Windows 7 under Fusion 6

[exbuzz]

I am having a hard time finding an appropriate word to describe this behavior.  So apologies if this has been asked before, but I couldn't find anything in my searches.

My host OSX UI will occasionally seize up for input while I'm running Windows 7 Professional under Fusion.  The most noticeable issue is that I'll be typing text, and letters will stop appearing on the screen for a brief instant.  And then the characters I've queued up will start flowing.  This only happens when I'm running the guest OS under fusion.  If I shut fusion down, it doesn't happen. 

In case it's not clear, here's a sequence that describes it.

1. I'll start typing text (MS Word, Outlook, browser window...doesn't matter.).  Like this: "The quick brown fox jumps"
2. My cursor stops advancing, and I continue to type "over the lazy dog" but nothing appears on screen.
3. At this point I'm usually caught off guard by this behavior so I stop typing.  Then, after a second or so, "over the lazy dog" will get typed out on the screen in quick succession

I'll usually try to reproduce the issue by typing a lot of characters but it will be several minutes or even hours before I see the behavior again.  From what I can tell, the display or OS isn't actually "seizing up".  Things continue to happen on the screen.  It just stops typing out my characters.

On a given day, I have several Safari browser tabs, iMail, Outlook 2011, Skype, iChat, spottily, eclipse, evernote, cisco vpn client and cornerstone open on the host os.  On the windows box, I a small number of applications running (I only use it for development of .NET applications, so I run Visual Studio 2010 pretty much all the time, as well as Fiddler, powershell and maybe one Chrome window.)  I have 1.50 GB (out of 2047MB total) memory used in the VM; processor is 0%. 

I am happy with the performance of windows in the VM, just not with the impact it is having on my host OS.

Here is my configuration:

iMac 2103

Processor  3.1 GHz Intel Core i7

Memory  16 GB 1600 MHz DDR3

Graphics  NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M 1024 MB

Software  OS X 10.9 (13A603)

Hard drive: 1TB fusion drive

VMWare Fusion 6.0.2 (I had this problem in Fusion 4 as well).

• Windows 7 Professional 64 bit
• 2048 MB ram allocated (recommended setting)
• 2 processor cores
• Image is about 200GB in size at the moment

I typically run VMWare fusion full screen on a second external monitor.

-BC

[wila]

Moved JoachimDV's reply to his own thread 'Frequent performance problems with running Windows 7 under Fusion' as his problem is about the guest OS while this thread is about OS X.

@exbuzz What happens if pause the guest VM? So not suspend as then the guest gets unloaded, but clicking the pause button? Does that make OS X behave normal again?

--

Wil

[exbuzz]

I ran in the state you described (VM paused) for most of this afternoon and didn't observe the problem. 

[wila]

Hmm.. that's interesting.

Are you by any chance running the autoprotect snapshots? (Under Snapshots -> Autoprotect settings)

If you do use that, turn it off and see if it is resolved.

If you're not using that then please attach a vmware.log file of the VM and let me know the time frame on when the problem happened. So if you see it happen, wait a few minutes, write down the time/date, copy the vmware.log file from your VM bundle and attach it to your reply here as a file. The "attach" button is in the "advanced editor" section.

If that's too technical then go to Help menu -> Collect Support Information and attach the full support bundle.

--

Wil

[exbuzz]

I will do that.  In the meantime, I have a theory.  I turned off the McAffee tools I was running on the guest and so  far today...no issues.  This is not the first time I've seen issues with these file-system watcher type virus scanners.  Symantec is the same way.  I almost always have to end up shutting them off because they wreak havoc on my CPU in one way or another.  I was running McAfee McShield, McAfee Task Manager and McAffee Validation Trust Protection Service, now all shut down.  I don't even remember installing them, I think my IT guy did that. Hopefully, this is the cause.  If not, I'll post the logs when it happens.