VMware Tools cause slow Windows 10 boot

[DrakeofAvlee]

Host machine details:

Core 2 Quad Q9650

7GiB DDR2-800

GeForce GTX 750 2GiB GDDR5

WD2003FZEX

Windows 7 SP1 Ultimate x64

Guest machine in VMware Workstation Player 12.5.7:

4 CPU cores

2,5GiB RAM

Windows 10 Enterprise N 2016 LTSB x64

Fast boot disabled

With installed VMware Tools, VM takes long time to boot. More precisely, very long time is "Welcome" screen before showing desktop which last about a minute. Looking in host Task manager I can see that all four CPU cores are at 100% and thing I've noticed VMware Workstation Player GUI is constant HDD activity. After boot, VM is responsive and runs smooth (for scaled workload). When I uninstall VMware Tools, VM boots very fast. On VMs with 7 x64 and 8.1 x64 I haven't experienced such slowdowns during boot.

I know that this machine is well outdated but it is not so outdated that VMware Tools makes boot so slow. Does anyone what is exactly cause of this issue?

[wila]

Hi,

Welcome at the VMware communities forum (I mean welcome back, you've been here for a while )

With that CPU your guest should not have more as 2 cores.

You really should leave some CPU cores for the host OS too.

--

Wil

[DrakeofAvlee]

Number of cores assigned to VM doesn't matter becausae result is the same during Welcome screen with VMware Tools installed.

[bluefirestorm]

In case you are running either AVG, or Avast or Bitdefender 2017, that could be the cause of the slow boot. These 3 antivirus programs has some virtualization features that causes slow VMs and/or consume high CPU cycles.

For Bitdefender 2017, there seems to be no way to disable that feature. So workaround is to go to an earlier version of Bitdefender or another antivirus program.

For AVG have a look at this on how to disable Re: XP VM suddenly slow, Win 7 fine

For Avast have a look at this on how to disable Re: XP VM suddenly slow, Win 7 fine

Both links are from the same post, but I try to give to the direct link onto the part on how to disable.

[DrakeofAvlee]

Only 3rd party software I have installed in that VM is VMware Tools and Windows Defender is disabled by group policy. On host OS  KAV is installed but he is not culprit (tested when KAV was uninstalled and no of its remains was present). Problem is VMware Tools because when I uninstall it, VM boot is very fast. I'm trying to find cause of this strange problem.

[bluefirestorm]

I think you already provided a clue as to where to look at

Windows Defender is disabled by group policy

My best guess is domain policy restrictions on services and/or devices might be the cause. You might have to enable logging of the GPO to see where the bottleneck(s) lie.

There are many device drivers and services that are installed with VMware Tools: video driver, services/drivers for USB device sharing just to name a few.

You can try having a limited set of features/functions of VMware Tools instead of the full or typical installation when you install it.

You could also extract the VMware Tools by running setup64 /a from the command line and it will ask for a folder location to extract. This could come in handy, for example, if you just want the video driver to have better video performance and install the video driver via Device Manager manually but leave out the rest of VMware Tools.

[DrakeofAvlee]

When I do custom install of VMware Tools where only thing not installed is SVGA driver there is no slow boot and there is no 100% CPU during Welcome screen.

I've extracted setup64 contens with /a switch and on clean system installed only VMware SVGA driver using Device manager. And... Problem with slow Welcome screen and 100% CPU usage is back. So I can say we've found culprit and it is VMware SVGA driver.

[DrakeofAvlee]

Problem with slow Welcome screen and 100% CPU usage

100% CPU usage during Welcome screen.

[bluefirestorm]

That is strange. It is now hard to tell whether it is GPO or some other cause(s).

Does it make any difference if the Display Setting 3D Accelerated graphics is checked/unchecked with the SVGA 3D driver installed?

Looking at Intel ARK website the Q9650 does not have integrated Intel graphics, so the GTX 750 should be the DX11 render device that Workstation Player uses when the 3D accelerated graphics is checked; unless the motherboard has another graphics adapter and somehow Workstation Player uses that instead of the GTX750.

You could try adding the line

mks.dx11.vendorID = "0x10de"

to the vmx file of the VM. But this line will only be useful if there are multiple graphics adapters from two vendors and 3D acceleration is checked and that line makes it choose the Nvidia.

Another possibility is to try using EFI as the firmware for the VM. The difference I see between EFI and BIOS VM, the SVGA 3D driver does not use the memory range A000-BFFF when using EFI.

If you are willing to try EFI for the Windows 10 VM, before installing, add the lines

firmware="efi"

bios.forceSetupOnce="TRUE"

If you have a bootable Windows 10 installation on USB stick, you can connect and boot off the USB installation from the EFI boot menu after you connect the USB stick from the Removable Devices menu.

As to why it does not happen for Windows 7/8 VMs that you have, if these VMs have been created using a version earlier than 12, it won't be trying to support DX10 within the VM as opposed to this newly created Windows 10 VM with 3D acceleration checked.

If you don't mind, attach the vmware.log of the slow VM startup on your next reply.

[DrakeofAvlee]

Only GTX 750 is active and it is used as DX11 device. Log file is attached and now I will try with UEFI installation.

[DrakeofAvlee]

Tested right now with UEFI installation and result is the same. I've also tried multiple options for Graphics memory but no success.

[bluefirestorm]

Looking at the log, it looks like the boot time is around one minute which is roughly the same if I boot up a Win10x64 VM on a 5400rpm disk but the CPU usage does not go 100%.

Does it make any difference in the 100% CPU usage if the 3D acceleration is turned off with the SVGA 3D driver installed? I am suspecting that it might just be the case the processor cannot cope as even the GTX 750 is several years younger than the processor. Maybe it is better to give less processor but more RAM to the VM such as 2 processor 4GiB instead of 4 processor 2.5GiB.

As for the long delay between Welcome logon and desktop appearing, as you mentioned there is some GPO, it might be the GPO settings that is causing it. I don't know if this will help if you add the line to the vmx

devices.hotplug = "FALSE"

Without that line, devices like the Intel 82574L adapter and even the boot SCSI disk will appear as Ejectable inside the VM. I don't know if GPO settings on removable storage devices will cause a long delay from Welcome screen logon to desktop.

[DrakeofAvlee]

Group Policy is not culprit because same thing happens on clean installation after installing VMware SVGA driver.

With disabled 3D acceleration, problem with long delay on Welcome screen while CPU usage is 100% is still present. I doubt my CPU cannot cope with GTX 750 but I don't doubt it cannot cope with VMware SVGA drivers. And again, 100% CPU usage is during Welcome screen and its duration is not affected by number of assigned CPU cores. After boot, everything runs smooth.

Thanks for the help but it seems I will have to wait until new version of Worsktation Player comes out or retire this old machine.

[bluefirestorm]

It is the Intel Q9650 that I think that is having a hard time coping. The VMs in Workstation Pro/Workstation Player cannot directly use or take advantage of the graphic card. From what I can make out of the log files, VMware will make use of DX11 of the Windows host machine (OpenGL in Linux hosts), this would thus make use of the graphic card that is present/capable/selected (in your case the GTX 750). I think the GTX 750 is powerful enough to handle this without problem. Perhaps it is simply setting up of the initial environment such as to mimic DX10 within the VM that causes high CPU usage during boot up.

The CPU you have right now does not have the Extended Page Table (EPT) feature. From what I read, EPT greatly improves performance of VMs with a 64-bit OS.

Anyway, it is good to know that the 100% CPU usage is only during boot and everything runs smooth thereafter.

[wila · Accepted solution]

Hi,

As you've isolated your problem to the VGA card, it might just be due to a different rendering engine that is being used since Workstation 12.

If the virtual hardware of your VM is set to 12, then you can try to change it back to virtual hardware 10 and see if that helps.

You can actually also keep it on version 12 and tell the rendering engine to fall back to the old one.

Before Workstation Pro 12， the VMware grapics engine used D3D render, it might work better with your machine.

.

Modify your vmx file by adding the following lines:

mks.enableD3DRenderer = TRUE 
mks.enableDX11Renderer = FALSE 

--

Wil

[DrakeofAvlee]

i've added following lines

mks.enableD3DRenderer = TRUE

mks.enableDX11Renderer = FALSE

and it didn't solved "problem".

Changing virtualHW.version = "12" to "10" solved delay at Welcome screen while assigned CPU cores are at 100%. However, in guest GUI responsivness is much better with virtualHW.version = "12" than with "10" on my old machine or maybe it is just placebo.