VMware Fusion slowing Mac OS X down

How much RAM does your system have and how much are you giving your Windows 7 VM?

B

Also many CPUs did you give vmware. Giving 2 cpus from a dual core system will have a negative impact on OSX's performance

Catastrophe. said:

I give it 800MB of Ram and I'm not too sure about the CPU, whatever was default :/

Click to expand...

Which Mac, and which version of OS X? Again, how much physical RAM do you have in it?

B

Hi All,

I want to add that I am having the same problem. I have a 2010 mbp i7-2.66 w/4GB RAM and 500GB HD running Lion 10.7.1 and Win7 Pro in VM. Fusion settings are 1 core/1024 mb RAM.

When VMware Fusion is running, my Lion apps are VERY slow. I have encountered slow scrolling in Safari, longer load times, and general laggy UI behavior.

What can I do to improve Lion performance while running Fusion?

Any recommendations will be appreciated.

Thanks.

For both of you, my guess is that it is actually W7 that is starved of RAM. For your iMacs, RAM is cheap and easy to add. You should be able to add 4GB of RAM for ~$35 without removing the stock RAM.

Then give W7 2 GB or more to play with.

In my experience W7 64 bit hits the sweet spot for performance at 2 GB and 64 bit prefers 4 GB in a VM.

B

I run Windows 7 using Parallels on my MBA (i7) and give it 1GB of RAM and 2 CPUs. Now granted I don't really push it to the limit, all I run is MS Office, Quicken, and a couple of other Windows apps, but the performance in both Windows and Lion is fantastic. I am running Windows 32 bit. I saw no advantage in running 64bit Windows with my RAM (4GB max on my system) and not having any apps that needed it or benefited from it, I decided not to run it. I have Win7 64 bit on my desktop PC and even MS Office 2010 has some quirks running on Windows 64 bit that I ended up running the 32 bit version of Office. Runs a lot better. I only have one program that actually takes advantage of the 64 bit Windows (Panorama Factory), but other than that I haven't really seen much benefit. There are apps that take advantage of it, but I don't seem to be running any of them...

The biggest problem is not really RAM although 8GB of RAM will be nice.

It's the hard disk.

You are running Mac OS X, VMWare Fusion with Windows from same hard disk. Coupling with 4GB RAM that triggers heavy swap to disk, your hard disk is basically stressed out slowing down your Mac.

My Macbook Pro with 4GB and 2.53Ghz C2D was a crawl when running both OS'es. Upgraded to 8GB helped reduced the swapping but still slows down the MBP.

Only noticeable improvement came when I upgraded to dual HDD in my MBP, moving the virtual machine to the 2nd hard disk, eliminating contention with Mac OS X.

My MBP has no hiccup or heavy beach ball now when running both OS'es.

I was having the same issues, and came looking for an answer...and I may have figured out one solution on the way over

I have a 2010 Mid Summer I7 macbook pro, and had been running windows 7 in fusion with zero problems since last fall. I upgraded to lion when it came out, and like you...everything began to crawl...I hadn't thought much about until this afternoon because I only use windows for a few programs for school, and I was trying to use it today for the first time this fall.

Anyways, check to see if you have auto graphics switching checked in energy saver under your system preferences...as soon as I unchecked it things started to speed back up in about 10 seconds, and now it seems to be acting as it should! It's not a perfect fix, but it may help speed things back up for you! (RAM is dirt cheap too now, and might be another solution)

Downgrade to Windows Vista or XP, i have an Intel iMac running windows XP and i dont get any loss of performance.

Raider33 said:

I was having the same issues, and came looking for an answer...and I may have figured out one solution on the way over

I have a 2010 Mid Summer I7 macbook pro, and had been running windows 7 in fusion with zero problems since last fall. I upgraded to lion when it came out, and like you...everything began to crawl...I hadn't thought much about until this afternoon because I only use windows for a few programs for school, and I was trying to use it today for the first time this fall.

Anyways, check to see if you have auto graphics switching checked in energy saver under your system preferences...as soon as I unchecked it things started to speed back up in about 10 seconds, and now it seems to be acting as it should! It's not a perfect fix, but it may help speed things back up for you! (RAM is dirt cheap too now, and might be another solution)

Click to expand...

Thanks! I'll give this a try. Now one question -- doesn't this reduce the battery life if you are running the faster GPU?

Bunker said:

The biggest problem is not really RAM although 8GB of RAM will be nice.

It's the hard disk.

You are running Mac OS X, VMWare Fusion with Windows from same hard disk. Coupling with 4GB RAM that triggers heavy swap to disk, your hard disk is basically stressed out slowing down your Mac.

My Macbook Pro with 4GB and 2.53Ghz C2D was a crawl when running both OS'es. Upgraded to 8GB helped reduced the swapping but still slows down the MBP.

Only noticeable improvement came when I upgraded to dual HDD in my MBP, moving the virtual machine to the 2nd hard disk, eliminating contention with Mac OS X.

My MBP has no hiccup or heavy beach ball now when running both OS'es.

Click to expand...

What you mean upgrade your MBP to dual HD? You can install two HD in MBP?

----------

Raider33 said:

I was having the same issues, and came looking for an answer...and I may have figured out one solution on the way over

I have a 2010 Mid Summer I7 macbook pro, and had been running windows 7 in fusion with zero problems since last fall. I upgraded to lion when it came out, and like you...everything began to crawl...I hadn't thought much about until this afternoon because I only use windows for a few programs for school, and I was trying to use it today for the first time this fall.

Anyways, check to see if you have auto graphics switching checked in energy saver under your system preferences...as soon as I unchecked it things started to speed back up in about 10 seconds, and now it seems to be acting as it should! It's not a perfect fix, but it may help speed things back up for you! (RAM is dirt cheap too now, and might be another solution)

Click to expand...

This may not be a good idea. I tried to uncheck that option. But the CPU temperature overshot 80 degree C for the first time on my Mac when I opened photoshop and Fusion at the same time.

realchimera said:

What you mean upgrade your MBP to dual HD? You can install two HD in MBP?

Click to expand...

http://www.mcetech.com/optibay/ among others.

B

I had the same problem and solved it with more RAM

Hi.

I just bought a Mac Pro 13inch (mid-2012) and was also facing that problem of my mac becoming too slow when running vmware fusion.

After investigating I found that my problem was lack of RAM. My mac came with only 4gb RAM and only my OSX and programs were consuming 3gb. The 1gb left was not enough to run win7 64bits in the VMWare.

So I bought 2 x 8gb (total = 16bg) at amazon and my problem is solved. With 16gb RAM I am running the win7 64bits in the vm pretty well. (I separated 2-cpu and 8gb for OS x and 2-cpu and 8gb to the Win7).

So, if you are facing that problem of a slow machine, I suggest you to look at your activity monitor (Finder->Applications->Utilities->Activity Monitor) when you are running the vmware and see if you are without enough RAM

renatosc said:

So I bought 2 x 8gb (total = 16bg) at amazon and my problem is solved. With 16gb RAM I am running the win7 64bits in the vm pretty well. (I separated 2-cpu and 8gb for OS x and 2-cpu and 8gb to the Win7).

Click to expand...

@renatosc,
thank you. I have the same hardware and I suspected the ram was being over taxed and you've confirmed it. I appreciate your post.