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dataf1sh123
Contributor
Contributor

Slow Win10 performance on OSX 10.11 Fusion 8

Wondering if anyone has very unresponsive and lagging performance running Windows 10 Pro on Fusion 8 with OSX 10.11.

I use a MBPro (Late 2013) 15" Retina with external 4K monitor, resolution is great but the performance of tabbing, moving the mouse, opening & closing programs is crippling.

On Fusion 7 with the same hardware i had Win 7 running perfectly, it did require a vmware hardware downgrade to 10 for it to work.

Have tried the same method on Win 10 but still not running as smooth as i am sure it can, anyone got any advice?

Thanks in advance!

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matmen
Contributor
Contributor

Switching from V12 to V11 was helpful for me.

Has anyone tested V12 with version 8.5.4 of Fusion on macOS Sierra?

Or with version 8.5.5 as released today?

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jdbaum
Contributor
Contributor

Not with Sierra, but 8.5.5 still only allocates 4 MBs of video RAM on El Capitan, so I'm back to version 11.

ErikJormanPoika
Contributor
Contributor

Unfortunately I did upgrade to the latest Fusion at the same time when I migrated to the Win10. Well, it is slow as.. can't describe. I've tried almost every workaround suggested and the problem seems to be that after few hours the vm starts to lag so much that I need to restart the vm to make it usable again.

That being said.. I just migrated to the Parallels which seems to be working just fine even after couple of days uptime.

matmen
Contributor
Contributor

I tried migrating to Parallels too but the network was not working in WIn10 with Parallels.

I uninstalled vmware tools, did the migration, installed parallels tools but the network did not work. Even removing the network adapter completely and adding a new one or a second one did not work as expected.

It is a dilemma ... win7 was running soooo good but I cannot use it anymore. Win10 via Bootcamp works like a charm but I don't want to use it that way.. 😉

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ColoradoMarmot
Champion
Champion

Have to ask - this is real apple hardware, not a hackintosh?

As long as the VM is set to N-1 physical cores, and there's at least 4GB of RAM available for the host, you shouldn't be seeing the performance problems you are.

Is it possible that the hard drive is starting to fail?

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rationull
Contributor
Contributor

Not sure if VMware reads these or if there's a better forum for these complaints, but I've been seeing poor performance in my Windows 10 VM as well which I think started with the upgrade to Fusion 8. I've been using Fusion for a long time (since version 2 or 3) and have bought every version along the way. I've stuck with VMware partly because I don't like some of Parallels' upgrade practices but between problems like this, the issues with sleeping the Mac with a VM running, and the laying off of the UI team it's getting harder to justify sticking on the Fusion path.

I've been using Parallels on a work machine for the past few months -- not a fair comparison exactly because that's a brand new install of Win10 but its performance is pretty much indistinguishable from native. Like I said, getting harder to keep using Fusion...

matmen
Contributor
Contributor

Using Parallels will be my next big move..I have to reinstall my WIn10 for this because migration does not work (no network no matter what I try)..

..meanwhile I have a good to moderate performance on my 2015 MBP 13" Retina using these settings:

Processor: 2 Cores

RAM: 2048

3D Acceleration checked

Use of full Retina not checked (huge performance bump)

video memory 1024

using hardware version 11 instead of the current version.

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shadowland5
Contributor
Contributor

I'm having the same issue on a MacBook Pro with 16G RAM and 4 cores running Windows 10, Fusion 8.5.6. I've allocated 8G to the VM and even with nothing else running, it is unusably slow. I've turned off the 3D accelerator, reverted compatibility to 11 and as another user suggested I unchecked "Automatically adjust user interface size in virtual machine". These made some improvements, but there are still unusable delays. It takes 2 - 3 seconds for the "change window" selection to open. Does anyone have any other ideas on how to fix this? Judging from the comments this appears to be a fair common problem. Is there a solution?

Thanks

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piano_playr
Contributor
Contributor

I see no end in sight for this issue.  This has turned into a lengthy thread with little to offer in the way of solutions.  VMWare surely must be aware of the problems with OSX 10.11 and Fusion 8.  It is a complete bust.  I tried everything.  Disabling hardware acceleration is a no go.  This feature is not available in Windows 10.  Don't see how to do it in Fusion 8 either.  I implemented every suggestion I could find.  Nothing improves the abysmal performance from either piece of software.  I will never recommend VMWare Fusion to any Mac owner wanting to run Windows on their PC.  I am going to the "final" solution.  I am going to buy an Intel NUC to run Windows 10.  Then I am going to uninstall VMWare Fusion 8 from my MacBook Air and free it from this faulty software.  Then I am going to ask VMWare for a refund on the purchase of their software.  This is truly a sad state of affairs.  I believe VMWare should hang their head low in shame for releasing this product.

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ColoradoMarmot
Champion
Champion

4 cores is too many on a MBP - you're likely starving the host for cycles.  Any individual VM should have no more than N-1 physical cores allocated to it.  Try dropping to 2 and see if that helps.

Also, is this is converted physical machine or a clean build?  If the former, try the latter.  Converted machines always result in bloated, buggy, unstable VM's.

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ColoradoMarmot
Champion
Champion

A Macbook air is probably underpowered to run a Windows 10 VM, particularly if you haven't disabled things like windows update running automatically in the background (that sucker pegs CPU's on my MBP).   I can sort of run one (if little else runs on the host) win10 VM on my 2013 13" (8GB dual core), when it handled Windows 7 just fine.  That's not a Fusion issue, it's just that win10 puts a much heavier load on the CPU than 7.  VMWare can't work magic on outdated hardware, and unfortunately, Apple hasn't produced a meaningful MBP or Air upgrade since 2013 - performance has essentially been flat since then, so it's all out of date.  Rumors are for a 'performance' focused model this fall, so we might finally catch up to the premium price with at least decent performance, but right now Apple's price/performance curve is way way out of whack - both on the CPU and on the GPU (the latter is particularly poor).

Boot camp is better, but Win10 still runs much slower than Win7 on identical hardware.  Hopefully the rumored 'performance' upgrades from Apple due this fall actually give us modern performance instead of ultra thin machines with gimmicky touchbars and worse battery life, but we'll have to wait and see.

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bigpete
Contributor
Contributor

Moving to VMWare Compatibility 11 worked for me. Thank you!!!!!!!!!

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Fozzie_Bear1
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Sorry Newbie question here!! What is VMWAre Compatibility 11?

John

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wila
Immortal
Immortal

Hi John,

Sorry Newbie question here!! What is VMWAre Compatibility 11?

Each virtual machine has virtual hardware that it runs on.

The virtual hardware gets improved upon over time, so there are multiple versions of this virtual hardware.

You can change the version of that virtual hardware when the virtual machine is shut down.

Go to Virtual Machine -> Settings -> Compatibility

and follow the steps on that screen.

--

Wil

| Author of Vimalin. The virtual machine Backup app for VMware Fusion, VMware Workstation and Player |
| More info at vimalin.com | Twitter @wilva
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matmen
Contributor
Contributor

Did anyone try Fusion 10?

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BMcGroarty
Contributor
Contributor

I'm using VMWare Fusion 11 on an 18 core iMac Pro. I get this same constant stuttering and pausing with a fully default VMWare and Windows 10 Pro install.

I don't get these pauses with Parallels, but sadly I've got a couple apps that only work under VMWare, and not under Parallels.

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tparker
Contributor
Contributor

Ditto... and to think I naively upgraded to Fusion 11 thinking it would solve my problems. Can't believe that after all these version, after all these years, these fundamental issues still exist.

VMWare people do read these forums, but they choose to ignore the problems (like this) for which there appear to be no solutions. Hence there may never be an official response to this thread.

I run Parallels on my other computer and it works a charm. I've been loyal to VMWare for many years for their other products, pre Mac-virtualisation, and decided to hang onto Fusion "just because". I'm starting to realise perhaps i'm now being stubborn. VMWare have some great products, but for Parallels, it really is their one core competency - and I must say they do it very well.

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greasyrainbow
Contributor
Contributor

Okay, so this same exact problem has been driving me insane, and I think I fixed it. I'm on an old Mac Pro 2,1, OS X 10.11.6, dual socket quad Xeon, 32GB memory, and an SSD. There should be no problem running Windows 10 in a VM (4 cores, 8 gigs dedicated), but it was unusably slow. So I did the following:

- Shut off 3D acceleration as recommended.

- Converted back to hardware version 11.

- Removed the NIC, sound card, USB controller

- Changed the disk to SATA

None of those made any change in performance, so I put them all back and booted up. I then uninstalled VMware tools and rebooted. Windows 10 was flying again, but only at 1024x768, so I reinstalled the VMware tools. After the install, but prior to the reboot, the machine was still moving as fast as I'd expect it to, but at full graphics resolution. Awesome! So I reboot... the machine is dog slow again. I think it's driver-related, but not graphics driver because obviously that loaded fine.

- Removed the NIC

- Removed the Sound, USB, etc...

- Reboot

Dog slow still! But it has to be something with the VMware tools, so I start checking out Windows services. There's about 6 VMware tools services, so I start shutting them down. Turns out soon as I shut down the "VMware Alias Manager and Ticket Service" the system speeds right back up, so I changed that service from Automatic to Manual, rebooted, and now this VM runs great!

TL;DR: Go into the Windows services on the Windows 10 VM, set "VMware Alias Manager and Ticket Service" to Manual, and reboot.

greasyrainbow
Contributor
Contributor

Just ran the same fix on my MacBook running macOS 10.14.3 and it also improved performance. Both of these systems are running Fusion 8.5.10.

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olivierha
Contributor
Contributor

Doing this - preventing the "VMWare Alias Manager and Ticket Service" (a.k.a VGAuth) from starting - works beautifully in that Windows 10 is not sluggish anymore (I'm using Fusion 11.5.1 on macOS 10.14.6) but I'd be curious to understand what it is we may be disrupting by getting rid of VGAuth. Any idea, anyone?

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