High CPU utilization when running browser on host

[boennhoff]

I have a show stopping problem with VMware Workstation for which I did not find any solution yet -- and I looked around more than once for several weeks if not months now...

The Environment (if necessary I will provide more details)

Hardware: Thinkpad Notebook with Intel i7 Quadcore, 12GiB RAM, 1TiB SSD

Host: Arch Linux using XFCE or GNOME with VMware Workstation 11 (same game with 10)

Guest: Windows 7 64bit, 2 Cores, 8GiB RAM, 150GiB Fixed VMDK, Hardware Compatibility 11 (same game with 9 and 10), heavy software usage (Visual Studio, MSSQL Server), VMWare Tools installed (of course)

FYI: All software is current!

The Problem

Under some (yet unknown) circumstances I experience a high CPU utilisation when using the Browsers Opera (the new one, with the Google/Blink Engine) and/or Mozilla Firefox on the host while the guest VM is running (doesn't matter if idle or not). If it happens each guest CPU is fully saturated (which means 50% host saturation here) but the whole system/host is nearly unusable, the only chance to get back to normal is either shutdown the VM or close the browser -- which takes minutes since the system is unresponsive...

The Observations

• It makes no difference if I turn on/off the Hardware Acceleration within the host browsers
• It makes no difference if I turn on/off the GPU Acceleration for the VM
• When using Process Explorer instead of standard Taskmanager, I can observe that most of the guest CPU is burned for the Interrupts "Process"
  • This observation lead to some (unsuccessful) tests with drivers, deactivating/deleting virtualized hardware like USB, Audio, etc...
• I am unable to reproduce/trigger the problem reliably, but sometimes it is too obvious that the problem is related to Opera running on the host (closed: okay, started: problem, closed: okay again, ...)
  • BUT, right now I am using Opera to write this post, and the VM is running without problems in the background...
• Before switching to Opera I used Firefox and had the same problem there, or even worse (Firefox totally hanged like every couple of seconds for several seconds)

Links to similar/related problems which either do not mention a solution, or do not solve my problem:

• Running Worksation and Firefox (on host) - High CPU usage.
• VMware KB:    High CPU utilization of inactive Windows virtual machines‌
• Gentoo Host high CPU usage - Windows 7 x64 Guest

Anybody any idea?

[boennhoff]

I want to bump this question/discussion again... i can't imagine that i am the only one with that problem!

[ffhaddad]

Same issue here.  Didn't think it was the browser. When I get home, I'll try running my Windows 7 guest w/o starting the browser.

System: Arch Linux 4.1.6, Gnome 3.16, VMWare Workstation v12

[ffhaddad]

Confirmed: if I don't start Firefox on the host machine, the Windows guest and host OS perform as expected.

[boennhoff]

Good to know that others also suffer Maybe that brings more interest into solving this problem to VMware...

I also have to add that I experienced the same problem using NuvolaPlayer, which uses an Webkit-Engine -- The problem seems to be related to something that all browsers have in common... Maybe Javascript? I am lost here...

[ffhaddad]

I had another issue where I couldn't connect to the internet from within the guest os (Unable to access internet from Windows Guest on Linux Host).  After resolving this issue, the high cpu utilization problem went away also. As I type this, I realize most likely one has nothing to do with the other, but at this point it's worth a try.  Although it does somewhat make sense that an interface you are using from within the guest OS could be conflicting with an interface to access the internet in the host OS.

[Ochse]

TL;DR Launching with "vblank_mode=0 vmware" worked for me.

I was having the same issue with High CPU on an Arch (4.1.6-1-ARCH) host and Windows 10 guest, but it was not related to Firefox or any browser being open.

I found another discussion suggesting Worksation be launched using "vblank_mode=0 vmware" and so far I've gone 15 minutes without any CPU issues.  I was previously having to kill my vmware process after a minute or two to even get my host to start responding in any timely manner. I'm not sure if this is specific to Nvidia cards, but I have a 560Ti.

Things that did not work for me:

1) Using NAT or Bridge mode made no difference.

2) Forcing Intel VT-x or Binary Translation made no difference.

3) Changing from 1CPU/4Core to 1CPU/1Core or 1CPU/2Core made no difference.

4) Host or Guest applications running or not running seemed to matter.

From this post: Vmware player totally freezing Ubuntu

[Charles]

Adding a "Me too" with 2 additional notes:

1. Thunderbird does the same thing.  If I have FF & TB running, it's TB that usually takes the hit.  Typically both VMWare (vmx) and Mozilla processes will show elevated CPU when it's happening.  Often other programs will stay responsive, but sometimes the entire X display will hang for a while before it's released. Often Compiz CPU% rises too, but not as dramatically.  It seems to be a lot worse with an EduBuntu server VM than a W2k machine (both of which are running most of the time).
2. This was really bad for a while last year, then it got better, now it seems to be a lot worse again after upgrading both  VMWare Ubuntu .  Not certain it's related. Canonical also pushed out an updated nvidia driver around the same time, IIRC.

Current versions:

Ubuntu 15.10 w/ Unity

Workstation 12

nVidia 352.63

[Charles]

Sometimes khugepaged gets involved too (which seems to be a commonly-reported problem by itself w/ VMWare), but that may be coincidental and not be directly related to the Mozilla conflict.

[10101]

I am having the same problem.  Ubuntu 16.04, vmware 12.1.   Sometimes CPU of vmware and firefox goes through the roof when running at the same time for no apparent reason...  things remain stuck for 10-20s then it seem to clear up.

[leaanthony]

Just adding a "me too".

My specifics are Linux Mint 17.3 (ubuntu 14.04) host, Centos 6.6 guest, Chrome, Nvidia + Workstation 11.

I'm going to try the "vblank_mode=0" option and see what happens.