100% CPU and 17 minutes starting VM - is this normal?

[JohnSays]

I installed VMware Player yesterday and installed my user programs and everything seemed to work great but for one thing: Each time I start the VM my hex core Core i7 is pegged at 100% CPU usage and it takes 17 1/2 minutes to load. This is on a 4Ghz machine with 64Gb DDR3 and a PCI-e SSD that can hit 5,000mb/s. One up and running everything is fine. I have allocated 12 of my cores to the VM, 8Gb RAM,and 60Gb disk space. So it has resources available. Is this considered a normal start time for a VM? (btw, my computer takes about 90 seconds from Off to logon.). Installing updates and rebooting is prohibitive due to the boot time being 17 minutes.

If this is not a normal boot time, can someone point me to an article on how to fix it?

From the log file I see a huge time gap (from 14:38 to 14:51) as seen below. I have attached the log file.

2014-04-25T14:33:37.421-04:00| vmplayer| I120: cui::MKSScreenWindowCoordinator::HandleGuestTopologyChange: main UI rect: 1920x1200 @ 1920,0

2014-04-25T14:33:37.421-04:00| vmplayer| I120: cui::MKSScreenWindowCoordinator::HandleGuestTopologyChange: Found 1 present screens

2014-04-25T14:33:37.421-04:00| vmplayer| I120: cui::MKSScreenWindowCoordinator::HandleGuestTopologyChange: Windows for extra guest monitors will be shown

2014-04-25T14:33:41.999-04:00| vmplayer| I120: PlayerFrame::UpdateActivePlayer: mActive=1

2014-04-25T14:34:07.708-04:00| vmplayer| I120: PlayerFrame::UpdateActivePlayer: mActive=0

2014-04-25T14:38:02.708-04:00| vmplayer| I120: PlayerFrame::UpdateActivePlayer: mActive=1

2014-04-25T14:38:12.972-04:00| vmplayer| I120: PlayerFrame::UpdateActivePlayer: mActive=0

2014-04-25T14:51:30.459-04:00| vmplayer| I120: cui::MKSScreenWindowCoordinator::HandleGuestTopologyChange: main UI rect: 1920x1200 @ 1920,0

2014-04-25T14:51:30.459-04:00| vmplayer| I120: cui::MKSScreenWindowCoordinator::HandleGuestTopologyChange: Found 1 present screens

2014-04-25T14:51:30.459-04:00| vmplayer| I120: cui::MKSScreenWindowCoordinator::HandleGuestTopologyChange: Windows for extra guest monitors will be shown

2014-04-25T14:51:33.846-04:00| vmplayer| I120: cui::VMBindingUnityMgr::OnGuestCanRunUnityChanged: OS is not old Windows, checking Tools status. Version status: 3,

Machine:

Win 7 Pro 64bit - latetest updates

64Gb DDR3

Intel hex core Core i7 @ 4GHz

512 Gb OCZ Revo-2 3x PCI-e SSD

VMware Player 6.0.2 build 1744117

[WoodyZ · Accepted solution]

JohnSays wrote: ... I have allocated 12 of my cores to the VM

That's probably why... because you're starving the Host for CPU cycles.

BTW The vmware.log file from the folder containing the files that comprise the VM would be a better log to look at.

[JohnSays]

Thanks WoodyZ. What is the relationship of the cores specified in the VM to the physical machine? The software I run in the VM is multi-threaded and I want to give it as many threads as feasible. Obviously 12 was too many! With 4, the VM boots very fast.