Is a VM supposed to be this slow??

[lisaha]

I bought a Mac several months ago and installed Fusion 4 so that I could use my Serif PC-based desktop publisher. It's incredibly slow. It can take up to 20 minutes just to start my VM, open Serif and then open a document -- not to mention the slow place of doing anything in my app once I get my doc open. McAfee and other Windows updates often hang up my VM. Anything I do on the VM is slow, and it slows my Mac down to a snail's pace as well, so it's not like I can jump to a different session to wait while my VM does its thing. I just can't believe it's supposed to work like this.

[weinstein5 · Accepted solution]

Welcome to the Community - It sounds like you might have overcommitted resources - How do you have you VM configured? Numner of vCPUS? Memory?

What is the configuration of your MAC?

[lisaha]

Hi. I'm only semi-technical. I just loaded VM Fuision4 with defaults. Sorry, I don't know how it's configured. Same goes for my Mac. It's not as if I have all kinds of apps running on the VM  or Mac either. Are there some adjustments I can make?

[ColoradoMarmot]

click the apple, then about this mac and post back the processor and memory information.

[lisaha]

Sorry, I feel stupid:

Processor 2.2 GHz Intel Core i7

Memory 4 GB 1333 MHz DDR3

I called a tech professional about my problem, and he said I need more RAM and processing power. Sound right?

Thx.

[ColoradoMarmot]

No worries 🙂

More RAM would be the first place I'd start.  Depending on the Mac model, it's either easy or challenging to do yourself.  www.owcomputing.com is a good source to find what specific memory you need, and www.ifixit.com has step by step instructions (and tools for sale) to actually do it.

[arang]

How much memory have you assigned to your virtual machine?  To find this:

(a) Start VMware and open your virtual machine.

(b) Choose "Settings" from the "Virtual Machine" menu.

(c) Click on "Processors & Memory".

If the virtual machine is set to use more than about 2048 MB of memory, then lower it to that and see if it helps.  You’ll need to shut down Windows first.

The virtual machine should be configured to use less memory than your Mac has, because it’s running at the same time as other activity on your Mac, even if you aren’t running other applications at the same time.