Windows 7 Home so slow after running XP in VMPlayer.

[bazz2004]

XP is booting up OK in VMPlayer and I suspend it when returning to the host OS.  In XP the programs run fast but when I return to Windows 7 everything is so sluggish I have to reboot the computer. That also takes ages - about 2 minutes before it starts the log-off.  On rebooting Windows 7 flies again.  There're no viruses and Task Manager doesn't showing anything which might be running in the background. I visited The VM entries in the Contol Panel Services section for Windows 7 and played around with setting Automatic Start delayed start and Manual Start but that didn't help.  I don't want to reinstall VMPlayer because things work well otherwise.

[bazz2004]

I used the suggested defaults when setting up VMPlayer so 512Mb was allocated. I just had Outlook and Firefox open in Windows 7 when I opened up XP and this time it was XP which became so slow as to be unuseable. The minimum recommended ram for 32bit Windows 7 is 2GB which is what I have so, yes, I’m suspecting there is a ram issue too. I’m not sure what info to look for in Task Manager or which one (XP or W7). When VMPlayer was crawling along with two programs running in W7 I looked at Task Manager for XP. Figures that stuck out were :

svhost.exe 33300kb

MsMpEng.ex 52000kb

explorer.exe 19760kb

[continuum]

I see you still use VMplayer 3.0.1 - that was one of the buggy versions
I would consider to switch to 3.1.4

[bazz2004]

Can you perhaps answer this one then, continuum?  Is it possible to update to the latest version without going through all the hassle of having to reinstall XP Home again? At least things work at present. Apart from this problem VMPlayer is adequate for occasional use.  Maybe, extra ram is needed above the recommended Microsoft minimums which rather dents the attractiveness of this virtual machines solution.

[continuum]

512 Mb for a XP VM is good enough - I dont assign more here either

Yes - just keep the directory of your VM - then changing to a newer version will not be an issue at all.
After the version change just doubleclick the vmx-file of your existing VM

[gszoniec]

bazz2004 wrote:

... I’m not sure what info to look for in Task Manager or which one (XP or W7)...

I meant on host system. Even if you set recommended amount of memory you could exceed total memory and system will use

disk memory, which slows performance. On host system, look at task manger's tab - performance, there is a chart

showing memory usage. When you run guest how close to 100% of memory you are (or far, I'm trying to exclude/confirm

lack of memory issue).

[gszoniec]

bazz2004 wrote:

... Is it possible to update to the latest version without going through all the hassle of having to reinstall XP Home again?...

VM file(s) is(are) standalone runnable on another Player instance/computer. For many free of charge operating systems

e.g. Linux distros, BSD, Solaris... you can download ready-to-use vmdk file from various websites,

you can redistribute such the VMs etc. (if you have any doubts look at particular licenses).

[bazz2004]

I'll get that info if I can, gszoniec, although there are only a couple of programs to run under XP and they should be light on resources.  I've downloaded the latest version of the player but don't understand about saving the directory.  Is there an idiots' guide to upgrading to a later version somewhere on the forum?  Usually running the new installation exec tidies things up  and installs the latest version but I've a feeling that that's not the case in this instance.

[continuum]

VMs are the documents created by the application "VMplayer"
upgrading the application does not delete or remove the documents

[gszoniec]

Continuum user has already answered, if you still have no clear view:

virtual machines are like MS Word files .doc, after creating you

can move them to another directory, copy, delete... and it doesn't

act on MS Word application, does it?

[bazz2004]

Firstly here are figures from Task Manager :

With Windows 7 only, after a restart

0.97Gb memory usage      cpu usage under 4%

With VMPlayer running 4 programs in XP

1.57Gb memory usage      cpu usage under 20%

After closing VMPlayer but not restarting Windows 7

1.19Gb memory usage      cpu usage 30-40%

That should hopefully throw some light on this problem.

I appreciate the analogy with Word and word documents. So, can I just run the new version 4 installation that I downloaded or will it end in tears?

[gszoniec]

Ok, thanks for memory usage info, it's not memory problem.

After installing new version of VMware Player, run it and from

main window select "open a virtual machine" then select

your xp vm's directory->file

[bazz2004]

I ran the installation and was pleased that there wasn't anything to worry about.  It uninstalled the existing version and after a few restarts I had the VMPlayer window with XP already there and ready to go. After updating VM Tools I checked things out.  Within XP mode things were more efficient.

301Mb memory usage had dropped to 270Mb  and cpu usage from below 20% to zero.

When I closed XP and checked in the Host's (W7) Task Manager it showed

758Mb of memory usage and 1% cpu usage. (Previously 1.19Gb memory usage and 30-40% cpu usage.)

I exited VMPlayer and tried Firefox.  At first I thought nothing had changed but after Firefox opened everything seemed to be much faster than with the earlier version.  I'm posting this and have not needed to restart Windows 7.  It seems likely that after a short lag the performance of the Host is back to an acceptable level.  Touch wood we have a successful outcome.  Thanks, everyone.

[bazz2004]

It's another day and I've compared V4 with the earlier version.  In respect of the need to restart Windows 7, while that is no longer necessary in that the Host OS returns to an acceptable speed, that lag I mentioned is rather long.  We are talking around two and a half minutes so it's not much different to simply restarting the computer.  XP loads up better because previously there would sometimes be an error message and I'd have to reselect XP.  That tended to occur if I was in a hurry to launch XP so waiting a few seconds was adviseable.  Within XP there doesn't appear to be much difference.  It runs fast but when it first opens the cursor is a hand which changes to an arrow when I left click the mouse.  There's also a box asking me if I'm sure when closing VMPlayer.  Quite what is going on between closing VMPlayer and the Host (W7) getting control back is puzzling.  A two and a half minute lag is too much but at least Windows 7 does now pick up. Maybe V5 will be eventually clear up such gliches.

[bazz2004]

The problem is finally identified thanks to RDPetruska.  The culprit is Daemon Lite -  a virtual CD drive I have on both host and XP OS's.  Exiting that on  W7 and XP has wiped out that two and a half minute lag before Windows 7 gets going.  VMPlayer gets XP up and running much quicker too.

There's a conflict between the 2012 version of PCTools security software and Daemon Tools Lite.  Spyware Doctor will hopefully put this right.