Performance problems using Visual Studio 2003 in WS6

[Chillz]

We are running WS6 (Host XP Pro / Guest XP Pro) using our vm's as isolated development environments. Our machines have 3GB ram with the virtual machine configured to use 1.5 GB. We always only run one VM at a time. While this configuration works reasonably well, many of us experience hangs when VS is trying to close a solution. The hard disk starts thrashing and VS can take 4 or 5 minutes to close a solution. Has anyone else noticed this or have a solution? This issue is really beginning to affect our ability to work effectively.

[KevinG]

When was the last time you ran defrag & shrink on the virtual disk if using growable virtual disks.

You may want to commit the snapshots if any and if using a growable virtual disk, run the defrag & shrink

[Chillz]

I ran defrag on both the guest and host OS according to the vmware performance tips document. Actually, I used PerfectDisk, instead of XPs built-in defrag. While that seemed to bring some minor performance gains, it did not eliminate the slow store problem.