Preface: I have no expertise in VMWare, I bought it so I could manage a bunch of virtual machines where I do my real work. I have no idea how to troubleshoot VMWare, and didn't find related issues/solutions via websearch before deciding to post this here.
I have a host running Windows Vista Ultimate 32 bit with all the flashy graphics options turned off, 4 GB RAM (originally purchased in the hopes of running 64bit, which I never got working). Host is a quad-core Intel. The host doesn't have a whole lot on it (I'm mostly interested in the VMs) but it does have Daemon Tools Pro so I can mount ISOs that are then accessible to the VMs as needed. This has been in place and working for a couple of years now.
VMWare workstation 6.5.5 build 328052
about 10 VMs; I have maybe 3 that are used regularly, and another three seldomly. The other 4 haven't been used in over a year. There aren't more than 2 VMs per partition on my HD, and all HD partitions have at least 30GB free so snapshots, etc aren't running out of room or anything. I've also been checking each partition for disk errors (setting up one per night when I go to bed) and so far, no issues.
I only had one clone machine (the rest are all individually installed with OS, software, etc) and recently I had noticed the clone seemed to be opening slower and slower, while the other machines still seemed to be ok. I figured maybe it was corrupt. By the time it was bad enough that I felt the need to investigate, I had several other things happen within about a week:
(1) I had to replace my video card. I used the drivers that came with the card as part of the install. It is a EVGA GTX550Ti.
(2) Because of a related promotion, I installed Steam on the host machine. I have since uninstalled it.
(3) I have the host machine set up to auto-install windows updates, but I have no idea what updates have come through lately (again, my focus is on the VM's and their setups)
I deleted the clone's files, and cloned (not linked) one of the other VMs that had been opening ok before. I tried opening two of the VMs yesterday, and now all of my VMs have tanked. It takes more than 6 hours to fully load a VM, and even then it is incredibly unresponsive even to mouseclicks. Host CPU doesn't show any unusual activity (and other than the recent Steam install/uninstall, I don't use the host for anything, so very low chance of malware/virus/etc). Host has up-to-date Microsoft Security Essentials and Windows firewall.
So, where do I start? Are there settings that need to be addressed due to the new video card? Is there anything else in the description that triggers ideas of what to check? Are there any type of logs (even though I'm not seeing actual error messages) that I should be checking?
I appreciate all you advice, and look forward to VMWare Workstation being a productive tool again on my PC soon.
Thank you!!
Keith
