VMWare Fusion and slow system: solution

Having seen few answers to this problem on the Forum and many posts with the same issue, and finally figuring it out myself, I post a solution to the sluggish behaviour of SnowLeopard when VMWare Fusion 3 is running, and the beachball keeps appearing whenever you do anything else outside Fusion.
I had allocated a lot of memory to the virtual machine during installation (with 4 Gb on board I thought let's make it fast) but this turns out to be a bad idea.
• do a restart fo your Mac and wait untill all startup processes have finished (VMWare should NOT be one of the startup processes in this test)
• turn on the activity monitor and open the tab System Memory.
• now fire up your virtual machine and check how much memory is set to INactive. In my case this was a lot, reducing free memory to almost zero
So for any other activity that is going on behind the scenes (emails, dropbox syncs, TimeMachine etc etc), memory swaps are necessary which take time (and may lead to crashes sometimes).
To solve this issue
• shot down virtual machine (not VMWare Fusion
• select Virtual Machine > Settings > Processors & RAM and trigger the help file to get instructions depending on your requirements.
e.g. virtual Windows XP, running only Office or a browser, requires no more then 1 processor, 512 Mb RAM.
• now start your virtual machine again and check the Memory usage in the Activity Monitor. Your system should be a lot snappier now.

Sijmons wrote:
Having seen few answers to this problem on the Forum and many posts with the same issue, and finally figuring it out myself, I post a solution to the sluggish behaviour of SnowLeopard when VMWare Fusion 3 is running, and the beachball keeps appearing whenever you do anything else outside Fusion.
I had allocated a lot of memory to the virtual machine during installation (with 4 Gb on board I thought let's make it fast) but this turns out to be a bad idea.
There's a free electronic book (because of sponsorship by VMware): Take Control of VMware Fusion 3" (http://www.takecontrolbooks.com/vmware-fusion-3) that has advice on RAM allocation with VMware Fusion 3 and many other topics. You might find it useful.

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10.4.11, VMware Fusion and Windows XP (Home Edition) works just fine

OK, so I'm through the installation of VMware Fusion and Windows XP (Home Edition) and I have to say that it was pretty much point and click as advertised. All network services seem to be working and I'm running both OS side-by-side with out a hitch.
Haven't put the system through any rigorous test yet, like VPN, network printing or rending large graphic files, but the installation, setup and normal operation went smoothly taking about an hour in total.
Machine: MacBook Pro, 1.8Ghz with 1G of RAM memory and dual monitors.
Host OS: MacOS 10.4.11

I now have installed XP Pro into a Boot Camp Partition. Basically point and shoot. Then while booted in XP I used PC Mover to migrate my old PC to the Boot Camp partition. With the exception of one program and my virus and firewall programs all went well, almost point and shoot. Then I installed VMWares Fusion and used my Boot Camp partition as the source. If you follow instructions from VMWare things work relatively problem free.
After posting questions on VMwares site about processing video and compiling DVDs in Windows using Fusion I decided that such processor intensive requirements are best handled in the Boot Camp (native) mode.
The biggest problem I have encountered is that Microsoft Office constantly asks to be reactivated when switching between Boot Camp startup and Fusion. No solution I know of, except not to use Office in Boot Camp Mode. Secondly XP Pro required a re-authorization from Microsoft so I could run it in both Boot Camp and Fusion modes. Obtaining the authorization (activation code) from Microsoft was not a problem.

I am using laptop hitting and slow system not working

i am using laptop hitting and slow system not working and very late opan file browser every think . plez help me

Hi,
Shut down the notebook. Tap away at the esc key as you start the notebook to enter the Start-up Menu. Select the Bios option ( usually f10 ) and under the Advanced or Diagnostic tab you should find the facility to run tests on both the Hard Drive and Memory. Post back with the details of any error messages.
Note: If the option to run these tests is not available in the Bios Menu, use the f2 diagnostic menu instead.
Can you also post back with the following details.
1. The full Model No. and Product No. of your notebook - see Here for a guide on locating this information.
2. The full version of the operating system you are using ( ie Windows 7 64bit ).
Regards,
DP-K
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VMWare Fusion and Parallels Desktop Benchmark Comparison

This is a quickie benchmark of VMWare Fusion and Parallels Desktop using Super PI, PC Mark 05, and Passmark.
VMWare Fusion 36932
Parallels Desktop 3094 Beta 2
Notes:
Both virtual machines were allocated with large 10+ GB virtual disks and 640MB of RAM. The VMWare CPU was configured with two processors. The Parallels CPU was configured with 1 (two is not available). VMWare reported the CPU as 1 physical, 2 logical processors running at 2.66 GHz while Parallels reported 1 physical, 1 logical processor running at 9.6 GHz (the combined speed of all four cores on the Mac Pro). The max observed CPU utilization in activity monitor when running under VMWare was 200% and max under Parallels was 173%.
I chose not to compare 1 VMWare CPU vs. 1 Parallels CPU. While Parallels does not support SMP or multithreaded processes on multiple processors the CPU utilization on the Mac went well above 1 core (173%). For this comparison, I wanted to see results of max processing based on what the two vendors have delivered, as opposed to benchmarking the underlying "virtual or hypervisor cpu" on a 1:1 basis. This explains why VMWare was 2x faster than Parallels on some CPU tests.
Both of these products are beta. VMWare is running in debug mode (can not be turned off in this beta).
Caveat emptor on these stats. This was an unscientific exercise to satisfy my curiosity. Some of the extraordinary differences are highlighted with <--.
Platform:
Mac Pro 2.66 GHz, 2GB RAM, Nvidia 7300GT
Disk 1 - OS X, 73GB Raptor
Disk 2 - dedicated disk where each virtual machine image was created separate from the OS or any OS-related virtual memory files.
VMWare and Parallels guest OS: Windows XP Professional, SP 2
Comparison Benchmrk
VMWare Fusion 36932 and Parallels Desktop 3094 Beta 2
Super PI Parallels VMWare
512K 8s 9s
1M 20s 21s
4M 1m 57s 2m 03s
PC Mark 05 Parallels VMWare
CPU Test Suite N/A N/A
Memory Test Suite N/A N/A
Graphics Test Suite N/A N/A
HDD Test Suite N/A N/A
HDD - XP Startup 5.0 MB/s 19.54 MB/s <--
Physics and 3D Test failed Test failed
Transparent Windows Test failed 69.99 Windows/s
3D - Pixel Shader Test failed Test failed
Web Page Rendering 3.58 Pages/s 2.34 Pages/s
File Decrypt 71.73 MB/s 67.05 MB/s
Graphics Memory - 64 Lines 179.92 FPS 111.73 FPS
HDD - General Usage 4.82 MB/s 42.01 MB/s <--
Multithread Test 1 / Audio Comp N/A N/A
Multithread Test 1 / Video Encoding Test failed Test failed
Multithread Test 2 / Text Edit 152.85 Pages/s 138.48 Pages/s
Multithread Test 2 / Image DeComp 5.91 MPixels/s 35.4 MPixels/s <--
Multithread Test 3 / File Comp 3.22 MB/s 6.03 MB/s
Multithread Test 3 / File Encrypt 19.0 MB/s 33.26 MB/s <--
Multithread Test 3 / HDD - Virus Scan 27.91 MB/s 25.49 MB/s
Multithread Test 3 / Mem Lat - Rnd 16MB 5.34 MAcc/s 6.63 MAcc/s
File Comp N/A N/A
File DeComp N/A N/A
File Encrypt N/A N/A
File Decrypt N/A N/A
Image DeComp N/A N/A
Audio Comp N/A N/A
Multithread Test 1 / File Comp N/A N/A
Multithread Test 1 / File Encrypt N/A N/A
Multithread Test 2 / File DeComp N/A N/A
Multithread Test 2 / File Decrypt N/A N/A
Multithread Test 2 / Audio DeComp N/A N/A
Multithread Test 2 / Image DeComp N/A N/A
Memory Read - 16 MB N/A N/A
Memory Read - 8 MB N/A N/A
Memory Read - 192 kB N/A N/A
Memory Read - 4 kB N/A N/A
Memory Write - 16 MB N/A N/A
Memory Write - 8 MB N/A N/A
Memory Write - 192 kB N/A N/A
Memory Write - 4 kB N/A N/A
Memory Copy - 16 MB N/A N/A
Memory Copy - 8 MB N/A N/A
Memory Copy - 192 kB N/A N/A
Memory Copy - 4 kB N/A N/A
Memory Lat - Rnd 16 MB N/A N/A
Memory Lat - Rnd 8 MB N/A N/A
Memory Lat - Rnd 192 kB N/A N/A
Memory Lat - Rnd 4 kB N/A N/A
Transparent Windows N/A N/A
Graphics Memory - 64 Lines N/A N/A
Graphics Memory - 128 Lines N/A N/A
WMV Video Playback N/A N/A
3D - Fill Rate Multi Texturing N/A N/A
3D - Polygon Throughput Multiple Lights N/A N/A
3D - Pixel Shader N/A N/A
3D - Vertex Shader N/A N/A
HDD - XP Startup N/A N/A
HDD - Application Loading N/A N/A
HDD - General Usage N/A N/A
HDD - Virus Scan N/A N/A
HDD - File Write N/A N/A
Processor Intel Core 2 9653 MHz Processor Unknown 2661 MHz
Physical / Logical CPUs "1 Physical, 1 Logical" "1 Physical, 2 Logical"
MultiCore 1 Processor Core Multicore 2 Processor Cores
HyperThreading N/A N/A
Graphics Card Generic VGA Generic VGA
Graphics Driver Parallels Video Driver VMWare SVGA II
Co-operative adapters No No
DirectX Version 9.0c 9.0c
System Memory 640 MB 640MB
Motherboard Manufacturer N/A Intel Corporation
Motherboard Model N/A 440BX Desktop Reference Platform
Operating System Microsoft Windows XP Microsoft Windows XP
Passmark Parallels VMWare
CPU - Integer Math (MOPS) 112.35 230.31 <--
CPU - Floating Point Math (MOPS) 280.46 588.33 <--
CPU - Find Prime Numbers (OPS) 446.37 676.99 <--
CPU - SSE/3DNow! (MMPS) 2118.56 4737.13 <--
CPU - Comp (KB/s) 2994.16 5952.34 <--
CPU - Encrypt (MB/s) 18.09 36.27 <--
CPU - Image Rotation (IRPS) 598.21 1184.41 <--
CPU - String Sorting (TPS) 2118.81 3672.59 <--
Graphics 2D - Lines (TPS) 220.71 25.15 <--
Graphics 2D - Rectangles (TPS) 189.74 61.8 <--
Graphics 2D - Shapes (TPS) 39.54 13.71 <--
Graphics 2D - Fonts and Text (OPS) 190.39 75.88 <--
Graphics 2D - GUI (OPS) 439.77 63.72 <--
Memory - Allocate Small Block (MB/s) 2533.83 2526.21
Memory - Read Cached (MB/s) 1960.5 1906.27
Memory - Read Uncached (MB/s) 1871.79 1826.08
Memory - Write (MB/s) 1687.81 1545.43
Memory - Large RAM (OPS) 60.99 46.37
Disk - Sequential Read (MB/s) 102.11 76.45 <--
Disk - Sequential Write (MB/s) 58.33 50.9
Disk - Rnd Seek + RW (MB/s) 51.4 40.4
CPU Mark 711.08 1432.72 <--
2D Graphics Mark 743.31 176.5 <--
Memory Mark 599.94 580.38
Disk Mark 766.11 606.7
PassMark Rating 557.27 637.35<br>

Thanks for posting these numbers - it's an interesting comparison.
I would expect the final VMWare fusion performance numbers to be quite a bit better than that of Parallels - they have almost a decade's worth of experience more than the Parallels folks in this arena, and a much larger development team to boot.
Once VMWare Fusion is released to the public, I think that you'll see a clearer distinction between the two products. VMWare will continue to appeal to the professional customer, with a more robust feature set and corporate-friendly features (and a correspondingly higher price tag); Parallels will fall more into the consumer/VirtualPC-replacement market. It will be interesting to see how Parallels will be affected when (and if) VMWare player is ported to OS X.
Interesting about the Parallels performance stats on a native partition - looks like almost enough reason to avoid the bootcamp partition approach altogether. Sharing a native windows installation with a VM in parallels is a pretty scary situation in any case, as the two environments have entirely different hardware configurations. Do-able, but there is some black magic involved (if you want to see an example of what I mean, try to move a windows installation from one machine to another w/different hardware sometime - it ain't pretty); I wouldn't try this in a production scheme unless I had REALLY good backups.

My iMac desktop and McBook Air laptop run on Mavericks, but desktop has VMWare Fusion and runs Windows 7 too. Can I transfer this capability to my McBook Air?

My iMac desktop and McBook Air laptop run on Mavericks. The laptop also runs Windows 7 via VM Ware Fusion. Can I transfer this capability to my McBook Air, so I can run the same plus the Windows programs on my laptop?

Thanks Kappy, but I should add that my desktop runs VMWare Fusion and Windows 7. My laptop and desktop basic operating systems are Mavericks. When I travel, I take my laptop with me. My desktop runs a Windows investment program I like, and I'd like to be able to use this program in my laptop when I'm on the road. VM Ware said I could do this, but would have to make and then transfer a "file" of the programs in question. How would this be done, since it would involve 3 files: Fusion, Windows 7 and the investment program? Maybe Apple should do this at the genius bar? Appreciate any comments...Thanks again, Patrick

I have a 160GB Hard Drive in my MBP and use VMWare Fusion and had a 60GB Virtual Machine running Windows XP. Deleted the Virtual Machine and CANNOT find the 60GB space I desperately need! Anybody out there with a similar problem? Help!

I have a 160GB Hard Drive in my MBP and use VMWare Fusion and had a 60GB Virtual Machine running Windows XP. Deleted the Virtual Machine and CANNOT find the 60GB space I desperately need! Anybody out there with a similar problem? Help!

Thanks - Of Course the first thing I checked and did.
Disc Utility reads as follows:
Capacity : 159.18 GB (159,182,127,104 Bytes)
Format : Mac OS Extended (Journaled) Available : 11.47 GB (11,472,896,000 Bytes)
Owners Enabled : Yes Used : 147.71 GB (147,709,231,104 Bytes)
Number of Folders : 139,540 Number of Files : 511,832
Activity Monitor(Disc Usage) shows something quite interesting. Mac HD and Ramanan (Main User) - My hard drive is only 160GB! Would the retired engineer gentleman please note as well. Many thanks. Rams

I'm running VMWare Fusion, and will need to install MS Project. Do I need Microsoft Office as well to run MS Project?

I'm running VMWare Fusion, and will need to install MS Project. Do I also need to install Microsoft Office to run MS Project? I already have MS Project for MAC.

Microsoft Office is typically a separate product from Project. You should not have to install Office to get Project.

VMWare Fusion and Windows (any version)

Hey everyone, first of all I'm new to Macs so please don't flame me.
I recently bought VMWare Fusion 2.0 for my Macbook so that I can run my Windows XP Home Edition virtually from my BootCamp Partition without having to reboot in order to switch back and forth between the 2 operating systems.
However, I noticed that I cannot open files from Windows XP with Mac exclusive applications such as Garageband, iMovie, or even Preview without having to copy it to my Mac Partition and opening it from there. Is this feature available on VMWare Fusion? I know that for Parallels Desktop 4.0, which my brother uses, you can right-click on a file on the virtual Windows operating system, go to "Open with," and then there will be options to open the file for Mac exclusive applications in the list of recommended programs.
Thanks a lot for any help, feedback, or suggestions you guys can provide!

Consult the Fusion user guide, or post questions regarding Fusion on VMWare's own forums for Fusion:
http://communities.vmware.com/community/vmtn/desktop/fusion

Mac Mini with VMWare Fusion and Vista

I recently bought a Mac Mini 2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 2GB with a 160GB Hard Drive. Thinking of using VMWare Fusion to run Vista Business. Is this configuration advisable as it looks like Vista itself needs a minimum of 2 GB memory? Or should I just use Bootcamp.
Is anyone running Fusion with Vista on a Mac Mini? How is the performance..

I've used WinXP with Fusion on a MacMini and it was fine (but faster in BootCamp). I'm currently running Vista Business on a MacBook Pro in Parallels and while it isn't slow, it certainly is slower than in BootCamp. I expect Fusion would run Vista a bit faster - Fusion does tend to be a bit faster than Parallels but Parallels seems to get along better than Fusion with one of the applications I'm using.
There are advantages to BootCamp and BC isn't incompatible with virtualization. I suggest that you go ahead and install Vista in BootCamp. If you haven't already bought Fusion, download the demo and see how it runs using the BootCamp installation and compare that to BootCamp itself. Then decide.

If I use Time Machine to back up my internal hard drive will it back up VMWare Fusion and Windows Xp?

Apple tells me I need to back up my Seagate 1Tb HD so they can replace it I have just spent several days getting stuff onto it and don't want to re-install XP if I don't have to. VMWare Fusion is running XP (NOT on boot camp). Does Time Machine back up the whole thing?

I am assuming when you refer to the Seagate 1tb drive, you are referring to an internal drive on your Mac?
Time Machine will automatically back up your virtual machine if it is running on your Mac hard drive, unless you have excluded it in Time Machine Preferences. However beware, it will back up an entire copy every time you do anything with your virtual machine, and will rapidly eat up your backup drive space (I lost 6 months of backups doing this) so it is usually better to backup from within Windows to a separate drive.
Presumably you just want to do a one-off backup of the Virtual machine so you can restore it after the drive is replaced. If so, go to the Time machine Preferences pane in System Preferences and click the Options button. If your virtual machine is not listed in the excluded files list it will be automatically backed up. If it is listed, remove it from the list and run a manual backup (it will probably take quite a long time and you will need to make sure you have enough disk space on your backup drive). Then check your backup disk to ensure it is there. Then if you don't want it to backup lots of copies of the VM, go back into preferences and exclude it again.

Problem with VMWare Fusion and OS 10.6.8 and Safari

when i try to open Safari from say a tracking number or even if i try to install an extension for safari from a download by double clicking it in my downloads folder instead of my mac version of safari opening it opens safari in vmware fusion this just started a few days ago i haven't updated anything i'm using safari 5.1 on my mac and this is a imac intel 2.8ghz intel 2 dual processor
please help as this is causing me a lot of problems
thanks Mike

It's not a big concern, apparantly the assocaition what program opens that file when you click on it is off kilter.
It's surely a VMFusion issue as they tweak things a bit in OS X as to be able to merge OSX and the guest operating together for a more seamless experience.
Perhaps you opened the file once in Safari in VMFusion and now it has that association, or when there was a menu selection you picked the wrong one by accident.
Register on get on the VM forums and post your question there and they can assist, it's a easy fix but it escapes me.
I run VMFusion too and noticed this ability once when I had OS's merged, but I don't merge operating systems anymore, rather I prefer to keep each one seperate.
Good luck, ask on VM's forums and you'll be fine.

Using VMWare Fusion and Vista for NetFlix Watch Now

Hi, I have installed Fusion and Vista in order to use NetFlix's Watch Now feature on my MBA. The installation was easy and Vista seems to be working fine. However, I can't get the Watch Now movie going. The film will start (after NetFlix determines my internet speed, etc.) and alternate between play and pause. Has anyone used this combination with success? Would a downgrade to XP work better? Or I should just use Boot Camp? Thanks.

I've used WinXP with Fusion on a MacMini and it was fine (but faster in BootCamp). I'm currently running Vista Business on a MacBook Pro in Parallels and while it isn't slow, it certainly is slower than in BootCamp. I expect Fusion would run Vista a bit faster - Fusion does tend to be a bit faster than Parallels but Parallels seems to get along better than Fusion with one of the applications I'm using.
There are advantages to BootCamp and BC isn't incompatible with virtualization. I suggest that you go ahead and install Vista in BootCamp. If you haven't already bought Fusion, download the demo and see how it runs using the BootCamp installation and compare that to BootCamp itself. Then decide.

Help! Vmware Fusion and windows vista suck up memory fast.

Hi,
I'm running windows Vista x64 Edition through vmware fusion (v2.0) on my macbook (intel 2.4 ghz) and its sucking up memory really fast. I don't have any snapshots and for the moment the virtual machine takes up about 26 gb of my memory. Everytime I start windows with vmware I immediately lose about 1gb of free space on my macbook, which I then recover after closing down vmware, so I guess that's normal. However my memory keeps on decreasing constantly when using vista, without me doing anything else than using internet explorer (no gaming or downloads) and I never get that memory back. I can't seem to understand what causes this constant and rapid memory loss (it can go up to 2gb of memory loss in an hour). (I also get an error message when starting vmware stating :"serial0: Failed to connect to the Virtual Printer daemon after 25 attempts.", but I think its irrelevant).
Here are some specifics on how i set the settings for vmware:
* Processor: 1 virtual processor - RAM: 1084 MB -Autoprotect:disabled -Hard Disk: SCSI Bus type, 40GB disk size, pre-allocate disk space unchecked, Split into 2GB files checked.
I also tried entering the windows Vista x64 Edition in my virtual machine library by right-clicking and selecting "show package content". I noticed there were files named "Windows Vista x64 Edition-s0xx.vmdk", ranging from "Windows Vista x64 Edition-s001.vmdk" to "Windows Vista x64 Edition-s021.vmdk" and files named "Windows Vista x64 Edition-000001-s0xx.vmdk" ranging from "Windows Vista x64 Edition-000001-s001.vmdk" to "Windows Vista x64 Edition-000001-s021.vmdk". These files take up most of the 26GB of memory of my virtual machine.
I would be grateful for any suggestions as my vmware fusion is rendered useless by this problem (under 2,2GB of free space on your computer you can't even start the virtual machine so I've had to delete tons of stuff to keep it running) and I badly need vista for my studies.
Thank you for your help!

Please post questions regarding Fusion on VMWare's own forums since this forum is for troubleshooting Apple Software Update for Windows, a software package for Windows designed to update Apple products that run on Windows, and not related to Fusion
http://communities.vmware.com/community/vmtn/desktop/fusion

VMware Fusion and Apple LED Cinema Display

I have a 2008 MBP and a 27" Apple LED Cinema Display. My OS is 10.7.2.
I am running Windows 7 with the latest updates in VMWare Fusion 4.1.1. I have several issues.
1) When I go to chose my monitor it say Apple LED Cinema Display but "Generic Non-PnP Monitor." I downloaded and installed the boot camp drivers as I understood those contained the drivers for the monitor, but that didn't seem to help. Do I need to have the Boot Camp drivers?
2) When I try to access the Boot Camp Control panel in Windows 7 in Fusion I get "An error occured while tyring to access the startup disk settings. You may not have privileges to change the startup disk." My guess is this is because the Boot Camp drivers are only needed if you actualy run Boot Camp.
3) In Windows I cannot choose the native resolution of the Apple display (2560 x 1440).
4) The resolution ia 1277 x 1234. That is weird.
5) If I minimze the Fusion window and then immediately open it, it looks fine. But if I wait for awhile and open it, the window will be black until I click inside of it.
Something is wrong, Any help in fixing this would be greatly appreciated.
Bryan

you have to separate out what is Fusion and what is Windows native.
Even doing updates to Windows sometimes should not or cannot be done properly in VM.
And there is no way to change the default boot drive - a VM doesn't have access and that is the host OS's job, not the guest's.
Install the latest AMD driver for mobility - and dont' use the "auto detect" - that is not going to work on Apple hardware.
You dont' run Boot Camp. But the Apple drivers and serives needed for hardware support, yes, they aren't running or loaded.

VMware Fusion and Windows Vista

I've installed fusion and vista for work purposes, but now it is restore state and the only way to turn it off is to hold power button down until entire computer shuts off. If I open fusion it automatically begins restoring the "frozen" vista. I have uninstalled Fusion but same issue. I cant figure out how to uninstall Vista because of the immediate open and freezing of the restore state.
ANy ideas?

Hi and welcome to Discussions,
since Fusion is not an Apple product, you might wanna try the Fusion Support site
http://www.vmware.com/support/
Regards
Stefan

VMWare Fusion and slow system: solution

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