Vmware Fusion VERY slow!

[n8236]

I don't know if it's just me, but VmWare Fusion runs Vista very slow when over Boot Camp.

I would say it runs only at 1/2 to 1/3 of the normal speed of a regular boot camp reboot.

Is anyone experiencing this? And is there a fix?

[tersono]

Running Windows in a virtual machine is always going to be slower than running it natively via boot camp. However, I wouldn't call it 'very' slow - I use Fusion + XP on a 2Ghz iMac at work and it's not really any slower than some of the older PCs we have around (mostly 2Ghz+ P4s with 512mb) - certainly it's plenty usable for regular business applications - even stuff like DreamWeaver and Fireworks.

The trick to good Fusion performance, however, is plenty of RAM. 4Gb in the Mac with 1gb allocated to Windows is about optimal.

[n8236]

I've ran Fusion w/ a virtual XP and it runs very close to native speeds. But I'm guessing booting off Boot Camp doesn't give the same performance? Or is it just Vista?

I only have a MacBook Pro w/ 2gbs of ram, so it's no speeding bullet.

I'll try more ram and report back.

[phillipjfry]

It has to be the fact that vista, IMHO, is one of the most resource hungry OS's I've played with in...quite a long time. Maybe that's why vmware (which is already borrowing resources from your machine) is runnin slower than with xp. I haven't tried running vista yet through vmware.

[webgoat]

ideally you want 2 gb for mac os x and 2 gb for vista for optimum performance... i run my xp pro boot camp partition with 1 gb and the other 3 gb set to mac os x and it runs fantastic

[nekcih]

I had the same problem. I narrowed it down to a slow external hard drive running over USB 2. It's a 1TB Western Digital. I moved my hard drive image off to a firewire 800 drive and now everything is smokin' fast. :)

[touchdownjesus4]

I've ran Fusion w/ a virtual XP and it runs very close to native speeds. But I'm guessing booting off Boot Camp doesn't give the same performance? Or is it just Vista?

I only have a MacBook Pro w/ 2gbs of ram, so it's no speeding bullet.

I'll try more ram and report back.

I use VMware fusion and I installed more RAM (4GB instead of 2) and changed the settings for the bootcamp partition to allocate more RAM to the virtual machine and it made a huge difference. The virtual machine boots faster and the speeds are faster than my old RAM set. I would recommend getting the most RAM you can for your MBP (I believe it's 4GB max) if you are going to be running VMware a lot. Also when you boot into windows the RAM upgrade helps vista run faster natively as well.

[Darth.Titan]

What the OP is saying is that Fusion is much slower running a Boot Camp (native windows) partition than it is running an actual virtual machine file.

In my experience, I would say that his observation is correct.

[MVApple]

I run Vista in VMware Fusion as well and what I noticed is that the machine is very slow for about 15 minutes, then things settle down and they run at a pace that is still slow but borderline acceptable. If I have work I have to get done in Microsoft Office, it works. I have a laptop that runs Vista on 1GB of ram and I don't have any speed issues. This makes me think that the sharing of the hard drive is a huge bottleneck.