Why is VMware Fusion so Unstable?

[drisley]

I am still in my trial period of VMware Fusion. I really want to buy it, however I am putting it on hold simply because it seems so unstable.

I am a new convert to Mac and and running Fusion on a Mac Pro. While I can start up Fusion and start Windows XP fine, subsequent uses seem to get really unstable and then lock up. It is almost as if Fusion is leaking memory bigtime. When I am in Windows, I am using it to run Quickbooks and sometimes Paint Shop Pro. I have 1 gigtabyte of memory dedicated to the virtual machine.

These lockups cause VMWare Fusion to completely freeze. I have to Force Quit Fusion to get it to stop hanging. Sometimes even Force Quit does not work at first attempt. This morning, it closed the program and yet it was still running and in the Dock. In other words, a complete freeze. It seems the only way to get Fusion to run properly after this occurs is to restart the entire computer.

I am running Leopard.

Would appreciate any feedback on the powers that be. Can I hope for a quick update to the product so that I can rely on this software? Anything I can look for as a potential cause?

[WoodyZ]

What version of Fusion are you using?

If your not running the one below, I would download and install the following:

VMware Fusion 1.1 Release Candidate Build 61385 | 10/25/07

http://www.vmware.com/beta/fusion/

[admin]

Are you using Time Machine? Time machine does not play well with some programs, including Fusion; if you use it, you need to exclude your virtual machine files from being backed up (Time Machine would not be able to do this in a sensible way anyway, so you're not losing much). The final version of 1.1 (not currently available) will do this for you.

[drisley]

Yes, I am using the latest build of Fusion.

I will try turning off Time Machine. I know I can make an exception for the virtual machines, but truthfully this machine has been a tad shady since I began using it a couple weeks ago. Vmware seems to have been the biggest problem, but as an experiment I am just going to disable Time Machine and see how she runs for awhile.

Might this be an issue of Time Machine being really buggy?

[rcardona2k]

Apple is working to rush OS X 10.5.1 out quickly. Judging by the traffic at Apple's Leopard Discussions board Time Machine is the third most trafficked topic.

[dsteed]

I excluded my VM images directory a while back. After the 1.1.1 update XP was fine but Solaris 10 freezes regularly for 10 to 18 seconds. I reinstalled Solaris- nothing yet helps. I can reproduce it by typing in a terminal window in the guest OS, and erasing back to the prompt, where the bell or visual error would occur. At that point the OS completely freezes. There seems to be a related error message from OS X which says "vmmon: host clock rate change request 152 -> 0" and the numbers vary. I can't find corresponding messages in the vmware logs. HELP... I don't like the idea of having to revert to Parallels because I can't do what I need to with VMware. : (

[dsteed]

I think I found the solution- it appears to be the audio bell setting in Sound preferences from the Solaris guest. Sound was already turned off (in VMware settings and the guest) and the audio was on. Turning the bell off appears to have solved the issue. In any case I can't reproduce the problem now. This is interesting because I never use/touch those settings and didn't see the issue in the previous Fusion version.