Slow vmware player after update to 12.5.4

[ClaudePalm]

Hi,

Running Widows 7 pro 64bit with Win XP as guest.

vmware just updated the player to 12,5,4 and the performance dropped drastically. It used to take 3-4 seconds to load a medium size program, now3 over 20. Seems mainly to affect disk reads as shutdown is still fairly fast.

Any ideas?

Thanks, Claude

[wila]

Hello Claude,

Welcome at the VMware community forums.

Are you perhaps using Avast antivirus?

If so then please have a look at the following thread:

XP VM suddenly slow, Win 7 fine

--

Wil

[ClaudePalm]

HI, Thanks for your reply. I solved the problem last night and just posted my findings as follows:

Hi.

I had the same problem, Very slow after last VMWare update to 12.5.4. (XP guest, Win 7 pro 64 host)

I use AVG antivirus. Disabled it but no difference

I finally solved it.

When I checked the Task Manager I found one of the xvchost.exe was using 98-99% which explained why slow. I went to Services and shut down various services until I got to Automatic Updates. That brought CPU usage to 0% for that service. Back to fast operation. I re-enabled it and then stopped Automatic Updates from the Control Panel. Still all OK.

But I have another XP Guest that also went the same way but stopping Auto Updates did not help it. Back to Services and when I set Windows Installer to Manual instead of Automatic It came good.

Claude Palm

[wila]

Hi,

Ah OK.

Btw, that's both the same issue.

Starting/stopping services doesn't always immediately stop the process that is running.

Just setting windows updates to manual and rebooting the guest should have done it.

Having Windows updates run wild is a common issue nowadays.

The only Windows version not suffering from this issue is Windows 10, I wonder why.

--

Wil