VMware Fusion 3 runs extremely slow...

[JangMunho]

First, my MacBook Pro:

Core 2 T9300 @ 2.5GHz

4GB memory

250GB SATA HDD

Snow Leopard 10.6.1

VMware Fusion 3.0

When I was using Leopard and VMware Fusion 2.x, the virtual machines ran fast, but now they are extremely slow. BTW, I enabled the 64-bit kernel.

I managed to find the reason, that is because the process "mds" in the host OS, not a problem of the guest os. Everytime I turn on my Windows XP in VMware, "mds" will show up in the Activity Monitor window, and take up about 2%~20% CPU usage, the hard disk becomes noisy at the same time. What I could only do is to wait, after about 1 hour, mds will "calm down", and my MBP returns quiet. But, when next time I turn on my virtual machine, "mds" will show up again...

"Mds" is driving me crazy... I tried to google for answers, but no result.

Anybody is facing this issue too? Or anybody knows how to deal with the problem? Thanks!

[todivefor]

Thank you, but none of those suggestions apply. I will open a support ticket.

[RobNovak]

Eric,

I for one appreciate this message and as the owner of a company that does custom development, understand how complex these issues can be.

Thank you for your dedication to this community.

-Rob

[SAFD1450]

Ok I was having the same problem and I seem to have found a fix. Well it works for me anyways and I hope it helps atleast a few of you. What I did was go to Virtual Machine > Settings > Other Devices > Uncheck Connected (Serial Port)

I am not sure what the root cause for the problem is but for some reason Fusion was trying to connect to a printer that was not connected to my laptop. I have the printer installed but only plug it in when I intend to print something.

Anyways good luck and I hope this helps a few people.

Scott

[SAFD1450]

*Edit

Sorry I was having problems with my internet I didn't mean to post twice.

[fplanque]

It's awfully slow for me too.

Leopard (NOT snow), running XP, no mirroring.

It was all fun with VMware 2.

Now I'm just extremely disappointed that:

1) I paid $40 to upgrade to this

2) No one from VM ware bothered to respond here after all these reports of the problem !!

[MitchM]

Yeah, Me too. After upgrading F3 was really fast running solid works. Now after a slow degrade the mouse is crazy and the VM is running slower and slower. Moved to a newly created Vm (XP SP3) on a different disk and the same thing is happening. It looks like F3 is a bit of a Trojan horse.

Too late to go back to F2, cannot use F3. I guess SUN VB wins the reliability trophy. Shame, shame, shame.

Hurry up with a fix or I am outta here.

[MitchM]

Yeah, Me too. After upgrading F3 was really fast running solid works. Now after a slow degrade the mouse is crazy and the VM is running slower and slower. Moved to a newly created Vm (XP SP3) on a different disk and the same thing is happening. It looks like F3 is a bit of a Trojan horse.

Too late to go back to F2, cannot use F3. I guess SUN VB wins the reliability trophy. Shame, shame, shame.

Hurry up with a fix or I am outta here.

[bna]

I have MacBook Pro (2.5 Ghz, 4GB, 512MB NVIDIA 8600 and just updated to 10.6.2). Last week I installed VMware Fusion3 and Windows7 (32x, ultimate). It is really slow. I don't know it indicates something but windows performance index is 2.9 (graphics:2.9 and gaming: 3.3). Compared to this, I also use bootcamp (Vista Ultimate 32x), and I see the index 5.1 (memory:5.1, graphics: 5.9).

It seems like the poor performance issue is related to graphics. Frankly, I am frustrated. This is the first time I use a virtualization program like VMware, and it is clearly not performing good. Hopefully, they will do something ASAP.

Bulent

[BrazilianJoe]

TO ALL PEOPLE WITH BAD VM PERFORMANCE:

(Sorry for shouting)

I have just updated my Mac OS X to 10.6.2 and it seems Spotlight was having issues with NTFS with 10.6.1 & earlier. Now I booted my non-bootcamp VM and it was really fast. I reenabled Aero and felt no slowdown. Everything is snappy.

Please post your experiences with 10.6.2 and see if the slowness goes away!

[JangMunho]

This issue has nothing to do with the graphics. Of course you'll face a slow graphic, because VMware just emulates a video card, so the video card you're using in a virtual machine is not a real one. Neither VMware nor Parallels will give you a full-speed virtual video card.

Don't compare a virtual video card with your real one...

[JangMunho]

10.6.2 won't help, I've tried that.

And I've found out a strange thing, that is, closing the Virtual Machine Library window when using VMware will do the job, mds disappears and the system goes fast again. So you don't have to exit the application, just close the library window.

[smicale]

How do you enable the 64-bit kernal?

[todivefor]

I see no difference with 10>6.2. Everytime Fusion (not the VM) is started MDS runs amok for 5-10 mins.

[RobNovak]

Maybe this explains why my performance was fine after turning off Spotlight on the VM folders AND 10.6.2 (actually was OK before). I don't use the VMWare library window - well rarely. I have a link to my main two VMs in the dock and start them from there. So if closing the window helped you, never having it open at all may have helped me.

[TheLoneVM]

MitchM: "After upgrading F3 was really fast running solid works"

Does this slowdown you are talking about only happen after running Solid Works? Does the problem clear up after you exit, or if you reboot and do not run Solid Works? Please provide details on what version of Solid Works you are running, and what kind of workload you are using in the app. Also please provide hardware specifications on your system. Fusion Version 3 added OpenGL functionality, and you may be hitting some issue that was overlooked during our basic Solid Works compatibility testing.

[MitchM]

LoneVM,,

Good to hear from you.

iMac 9,1. OSX 10.5.8. NMF 3.0. SW 2007.

Now the story:

After upgrading to F3 with FT3.0 loaded the VM was FAST! I started up SW and took it out of SWOGL mode. I brought up one of my larger designs. perfect.

Now the OGL mode is very slow, SWOGL is slow and there are missing lines in OGL mode.

So it is not just slow. It now has problems drawing correctly.

I made a new VM from scratch on a different disk and loaded SW2007. Same thing!

I do not know if the rest of the system is slow or not because SW is the only application I use under XP.

Hope this helps. I really was excited when I thought I could dump SUN's VB for Fusion. - I know you will fix it.

-MM

[admin · Accepted solution]

We just found a bug where in some cases Fusion 3 will do a spotlight search on every launch (this is only supposed to happen once), which seems to be exactly what this thread is describing. You can work around this bug by opening Terminal.app and running

defaults write com.vmware.fusion PLLibrarySpotlightSearchDone -bool YES

Please let us know if this fixes things (or if it doesn't).

[leafy7382]

Actually updating to OS/X 10.6.2 already fixed my slowness while suspending/resuming. This one got rid of the mds too. Thanks for the tip

[francis_carden]

I set this and re-tried the resume on my slow VM (that's taking minutes to resume). It made no difference to how long the VM was taking to come up (I emailed you today about).

So, I have still have one VM, XP, Running fine, mostly, all good.

The other VM, I have kept suspended in case you want to debug it. Each time I try to bring it out of resume, it takes forever so I am just closing it (stopping the resume). I thought this fix might fix it and it would go back to doing a resume 2.0 fast, it doesn't! I know once it's out of resume, it will go like a dog with the 100% CPU etc.,

I know a reboot of the XP and the VM will likely fix the performance problem for a few days and eventually, a resume from suspend and it will be dog slow again.

As I repeat, the fact it's going slow, coming up through the resume process still confirms to me, that whatever it is, is happening the instant I press resume so isn't XP itself and must narrow it down for you guys. The fact the other VM, running XP is running fine must also help!

Good luck,

[kthacher]

My problem seems to be worse when I run Unity, but yes, I have seen the very same issues as everyone else. On top of that, I get all kinds of goofiness happening in a two monitor configuration in Unity especially when combined with Spaces and Expose. Fusion does not even properly display the tiled windows in Expose. In short, Fusion 3 is a huge mess and is getting in the way of getting my job done.

In contrast, I use Parallels at home and Version 5 is outstanding. It is a painful thought, but I may be forced to put myself through the pain of switching my work machine over to Parallels and giving Fusion the boot entirely. VMWare really screwed up this "upgrade"