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VM and MBA - Maybe not a good idea

P

PreetinderBajwa

macrumors regular
Original poster
May 30, 2009
130
0
HK
Hi Freinds,

I have a a separate thread for the issue I was facing to get Bootcamp and Win 7 to happen on my Rev B MBA, 120GB HDD.

My exeprience so far has been that

1. bootcamp Win 7 works superbly smoothly (once you pass the hurdles and get it to install and get bootcamp drivers installed for 64 bit Win 7)
2. OSX on it own works superbly smoothly (no reason why it wouldn't)

a) With VM Fusion 3 ( temprature goes to 75-80 degree and OSX, VM and Win7 all crawl and are jerky. With CPU load at 100% and RAM at 100% utilization all the time ( I see that in the icons of iStat)
b) Parallels 5 , I have not been able to get Parallels 5 to accept the bootcamp and work within it. Some errors and frankly seeing Fusion 3's load on CPUs and RAM I am almost beyond caring.

I am thinking of uninstalling the VMs as I get a feeling that MBA is not the right platform to have the VM ware with Win 7 in it.

But then I might be the minority who did it all wrong and hence am having performance issues. (My bootcamp recognition by VM has not been the best with error prompts like IDD 1:0:xyz not found, load without IDD 1:0:xyz etc by Fusion 3 , but hey atleast Fusion works !)

Are you/ did you face similar issues and if yes, how were you able to solve them ?

Cheers

Preetinder
 
ayeying

ayeying

macrumors 601
Dec 5, 2007
4,547
13
Yay Area, CA
PreetinderBajwa said:
Hi Freinds,

I have a a separate thread for the issue I was facing to get Bootcamp and Win 7 to happen on my Rev B MBA, 120GB HDD.

My exeprience so far has been that

1. bootcamp Win 7 works superbly smoothly (once you pass the hurdles and get it to install and get bootcamp drivers installed for 64 bit Win 7)
2. OSX on it own works superbly smoothly (no reason why it wouldn't)

a) With VM Fusion 3 ( temprature goes to 75-80 degree and OSX, VM and Win7 all crawl and are jerky. With CPU load at 100% and RAM at 100% utilization all the time ( I see that in the icons of iStat)
b) Parallels 5 , I have not been able to get Parallels 5 to accept the bootcamp and work within it. Some errors and frankly seeing Fusion 3's load on CPUs and RAM I am almost beyond caring.

I am thinking of uninstalling the VMs as I get a feeling that MBA is not the right platform to have the VM ware with Win 7 in it.

But then I might be the minority who did it all wrong and hence am having performance issues. (My bootcamp recognition by VM has not been the best with error prompts like IDD 1:0:xyz not found, load without IDD 1:0:xyz etc by Fusion 3 , but hey atleast Fusion works !)

Are you/ did you face similar issues and if yes, how were you able to solve them ?

Cheers

Preetinder
Click to expand...

Okay, you have to understand that running a virtual machine is a very intensive task. No matter what laptop you're on, running a virtual machine will cause the system to heat up and probably make the fans run fast. This is not a specific MacBook Air problem.

For VMWare Fusion, there shouldn't be a IDE 0:1 or 1:0 setting to change, nor is there a reason to change it. If you change it, you're asking for trouble.

I run VMWare Fusion 3 with a Windows 7 Professional Boot Camp, linked as a virtual machine. The first boot up is slow, opening programs is slow, once it's loaded, it's fine. Unless you're planning on playing games, Windows 7 shouldn't be much of a problem. Depending on how you set, dedicate the ram and such, you will run into problems.

I have 2 CPUs dedicated to the virtual machine (boot camp), along with only 896MB of ram (2.0GB - 256MB Video Ram = 1.75GB / 2 = 896MB). My hard drive is partitioned as 60GB for OSX and 60GB for Windows 7.

You have to realize, you have a 120GB 4200RPM hard drive. It's going to be slow for loading.
 
P

PreetinderBajwa

macrumors regular
Original poster
May 30, 2009
130
0
HK
ayeying said:
Okay, you have to understand that running a virtual machine is a very intensive task. No matter what laptop you're on, running a virtual machine will cause the system to heat up and probably make the fans run fast. This is not a specific MacBook Air problem.

For VMWare Fusion, there shouldn't be a IDE 0:1 or 1:0 setting to change, nor is there a reason to change it. If you change it, you're asking for trouble.

I run VMWare Fusion 3 with a Windows 7 Professional Boot Camp, linked as a virtual machine. The first boot up is slow, opening programs is slow, once it's loaded, it's fine. Unless you're planning on playing games, Windows 7 shouldn't be much of a problem. Depending on how you set, dedicate the ram and such, you will run into problems.

I have 2 CPUs dedicated to the virtual machine (boot camp), along with only 896MB of ram (2.0GB - 256MB Video Ram = 1.75GB / 2 = 896MB). My hard drive is partitioned as 60GB for OSX and 60GB for Windows 7.

You have to realize, you have a 120GB 4200RPM hard drive. It's going to be slow for loading.
Click to expand...


Thanks,

I was wondering that, I know HDD speed also has an impact, but my experience has been quite dismal so far, all i achieve in 15 minutes is a VM machine that has booted up Win 7 64 bit and if I click inside it to open anything - I have to wait upto 20secs for the action to actually happen and another 20 secs to use the XL sheet (if that wasthe action).

But on the Bootcamp, booting into Win 7, it is as good as any laptop in perfroamnce and speed and responsiveness !


I am surprised by the IDE thing too, it said IDE not connected, do you want to boot without IDE and I say yes, and it boots abysmally slowly.

Maybe uninstall and re-install Fusion3/Parallels 5 might help ? What do you think ?

Thanks

Preetinder
 
ayeying

ayeying

macrumors 601
Dec 5, 2007
4,547
13
Yay Area, CA
PreetinderBajwa said:
But on the Bootcamp, booting into Win 7, it is as good as any laptop in perfroamnce and speed and responsiveness !


I am surprised by the IDE thing too, it said IDE not connected, do you want to boot without IDE and I say yes, and it boots abysmally slowly.

Maybe uninstall and re-install Fusion3/Parallels 5 might help ? What do you think ?

Thanks

Preetinder
Click to expand...

Windows 7 in a Virtual Machine is just as same as Windows Vista in a virtual machine. Try Windows XP, you'll see an extreme increase in speed. Running Windows 7 in a virtual machine is only about 1/2 the performance of native, even with an SSD.

The IDE warning is not for the hard drive. Because the macbook air doesn't have a optical disk drive, it'll prompt that error. You can get rid of that error by unchecking the "Connected" box in the "CD/DVD Drive". It has nothing to do with the performance.
 
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