Windows VMs are very slow – What's the cause for this?

[WhiteKnight]

I just created a brand new VM. It's running extraordinarily slow.

I'm not running Hyper-V on the host, and I have plenty of free RAM available. The Task Manager on both, host and guest, are displaying mediocre workload.

What is causing this extreme sluggishness of the VM?

Attached please find the VMs log file. Perhaps this can shed some light to the issue?

[miladmeh8]

How is the cpu ready time?

[WhiteKnight]

I can't tell. My host has 16 cores and the VM has been assigned 4 of them.

It's the only VM running at that time. So, there should be plenty of resources available to run smoothly.

[louyo]

For test purposes, I would start with:

1. turn off 3D acceleration.

2. Cut back to 1 core.

That said, I run on a linux host so that may not be the same for you. 

[RDPetruska]

Downgrade to Workstation 16... possibly 16.1.2 as the latest working version.  You aren't running Win 11 as either host or guest, and don't appear to need any of the so-called features of version 17.  Your log file shows you are running with CPL virtual machine engine, so it is using VMware's layer not Hyper-V.  Nothing obvious jumps out.

[_Phobos_]

I had the same problem. Alle the usual fixes you see did not help me a lot!

I found out that within VMware workstation pro 17 there may be problems with the guest Hardware for version 17.

While creating a new virtual machine you can choose the hardware compatibility.

Now I use (on a win11 host) win10 and win11 installed within VMware WS 17 but I created the guests with hardware compatibility version 16.2.x.

For both win10 and win 11 this speeds up my guests with a factor of 6-7!

see my earlier posts:

https://communities.vmware.com/t5/VMware-Workstation-Pro/Vmware-17-Pro-very-slow-on-Windows-11-22H2/...

https://communities.vmware.com/t5/VMware-Workstation-Pro/Windows-10-slow-and-laggy-in-VMware-Worksta...

I hope this helps you.

as for the answer to your question. I think the cause is the VMware guest hardware V17! It is much slower than V16.2.x

[WhiteKnight]

Gee, that a very intriguing piece of information!

The reasons you provide sound very reasonable to me: By now, my hardware is about 10 years old. NVIDIA GeForce 980-GTX or Quadro 5000 graphics cards. VMware Workstation regularly complains about these graphic cards not supporting 3D support. So, my hardware may actually be "out of support without notice".

I am going to try your suggestion soon.

Thanks a lot for sharing this information! 👍👍👍