VMware fusion and windows 7 64bit - Too slow to use?

[kingjeffrey]

Turn off Syncing Files

I disabled all syncing files for the VM, and things dramatically sped up.

 

[Bill Gates]

I've noticed that a Win 7 x64 VM under VMWare Fusion 3 will be unusably slow if you set the VM type to "Windows 7" instead of "Windows 7 x64". Once I had it properly set to x64, it seems to work fine.

This is on a black Macbook with 1G RAM (2G total) and 1 core allocated to the VM.

On another note, a PICKit 3 with MPLAB work great in this setup. I've already reprogrammed a few chips via ICSP.

Fusion is capable of using several different types of virtualization depending on the guest OS, including binary translation and Intel VT-x. I remember reading on the VMware forums that a different engine is used for 32-bit and 64-bit guest operating systems.

 

[SecretAsianMan]

At my day job as a software development consultant, I run Windows 7 x64 from my Boot Camp partition using Fusion 3. I run these apps simultaneously in Windows:

• Three instances of Visual Studio 2008
• SQL Server 2008 Management Studio
• SQL Server 2008 Profiler (running a quite verbose trace)
• SQL Server 2008 Servers
• IIS 7.5 Server
• Several instances of IE8 and Firefox
• Outlook 2007
• Office Communicator 2007

...all while running Safari, iTunes, and several other apps on the Mac OS X side. This is on my early 2008 MBP with 2.6GHz C2D and 4GB RAM. It's snappy.

To maximize Fusion performance, I did the following:

• Disable Aero and the eye candy. This is the biggie. Set the theme to Windows 7 Basic. Then find the visual effects dialog and turn off everything you don't need. Make sure to turn off "desktop composition". I found that Win7 looks better with the basic theme, anyway.
• Give Fusion access to both cores. It doesn't slow down the Mac OS X side and lets both OSs grab CPU when they need it.
• Give Fusion 2GB RAM. Required for all the stuff I want to run.
• Switch to 64-bit Snow Leopard kernel.
• Disable nonessential Windows features, services, and startup programs.
• If you are an expert, skip the anti-virus or anti-malware software.

(Seriously. I've run Windows since 3.1 and DOS before it. I don't use anti-virus software. I've never had a machine infected. I've seen tons of infected machines, but invariably each was owned by a less-than-savvy user.)

 

[cluthz]

I find having a tinyXP installation in vmware to be the best solution.
It's super quick and since it's not my bootcamp installation I don't have to boot it, just load it.
I still have win7 in bootcamp tho.
Also tinyXP requires so little RAM, but it's a bit limited ofc.

 

[bleepjay]

Check for latest updates on VMWare. I just got an update today. I went from a 2.9 Windows Experience Rating to a 4.1, which of course is due to the 'Gaming Graphics' number, but a jump from 2.9 to 4.1 is a heck of a lot.

Early 2008 MBP, 2GB dedicated to Fusion, Single Core Dedicated

Seems a lot snappier

 

[t0mat0]

Just to recap from what i've heard/read:
- The more RAM you have the better - if you can give it at leat 1GB memory, up to 1.5-2GB if you have 4GB memory great
- If you can, turn off Sharing, and Aero, and other eye candy
- Same goes with the theme
- In the visual effects dialog turn off everything you don't need. Especially "desktop composition".
- Let Fusion access both cores
- Use Snow Leopard under 64 bit (with WIndows 7 under 64 bit presumably also?)

The other issue is that Parallels may like for like configuration run WIndows 7 faster at this point (from the reviews i've read of the initial Snow Leopard, Windows 7 compatible versions of both).

 

[technopimp]

Just to recap from what i've heard/read:
- The more RAM you have the better - if you can give it at leat 1GB memory, up to 1.5-2GB if you have 4GB memory great
- If you can, turn off Sharing, and Aero, and other eye candy
- Same goes with the theme
- In the visual effects dialog turn off everything you don't need. Especially "desktop composition".
- Let Fusion access both cores
- Use Snow Leopard under 64 bit (with WIndows 7 under 64 bit presumably also?)

The other issue is that Parallels may like for like configuration run WIndows 7 faster at this point (from the reviews i've read of the initial Snow Leopard, Windows 7 compatible versions of both).

I bought (stupidly) VMWare Fusion 2 on September 29th to run Windows 7 (I had tried it out and while I didnt' feel it was very fast, I thought it was as good as it was going to get). Two days later they announced Fusion 3 which supposedly made it work much better under SL (of course, with no price consideration for us who had just bought it). I tried Fusion 3 with a trial and found it to be worse than 2. Running 7 x64 w/2GB and 2 cores assigned, it took almost 10 minutes to boot (I had also upgraded to a 7200 RPM drive by the way). Once in Windows, it would work OK, except forget about using SL for anything (Safari would beach ball if you just looked at it, as would just about everything else). I tried Parallels 5 and never looked back. The VM in Parallels boots faster than my PC desktop which is a Core i7 w/6GB RAM and an SSD.

Seriously, just give Parallels a try. They have a 15 day trial. If it's anything like my situation you'll never try Fusion again.

 

[thesmoth]

OK i'm going to install the new update to VMware fusion 3, and i've got two copies of windows 7 ultimate on the way (one for my mac and one for my GF's). I was using the windows 7 RC before, which may have not been ideal.

I'll make the changes everyone suggested above and also try it in 64 bit snow leopard.

Do you guys find any problems using 64 bit snow leopard with compatability?

 

[akauppi]

64-bit has things

Yes but we are talking about installation in a virtual machine here.



Isn't the leopard kernel 32 bit? So even if a 64bit OS runs in the host, it communicates with the hardware through Leopard which is 32bit. I could be wrong here.

Snow Leopard kernel on Mac Mini is still 32 bit, by default. But 64bit really has technical advancements, all over. One of them is hardware support for virtualization, which should seem useful here.

Anyways, I'm still stuck with this issue, so none of those goodies apply.

 

[akauppi]

I disabled all syncing files for the VM, and things dramatically sped up.

What are syncing files? In VMWare, or in Win7?

UPDATE:
I got things to be a bit better. Biggest change so far was due to disabling "Hard disk buffering" from the Fusion 3.0.1 Advanced / Other settings. With less than 4GB physical RAM, that seems like a good thing to do.

Other things I did:
- restart the host (really - do VMWare maintenance on a freshly started OS X with no other apps running. At least if you've been in the ditch earlier.
- removal of VMWare tools (from Control Panel) -> restart -> reinstall -> restart
- disabled "restore points" (here's how)
- turned off SuperFetch service (and quite some others, too...)

Turning off services by hunch seems like a bad idea. I now get blue screens occasionally, but I don't think any of the above cases are the reason. Anyways, it's a Win7 RC so I'm not too worried.

Funny thing was, when I ran Win7 without the VMWare drivers, it was actually snappier than after installing those drivers. Maybe I'll take in only some next time - like display and shared folders.

Done, for now. Computing shouldn't be this hard...?

p.s. Using the 32-bit version of Win7 for virtualization now makes perfect sense to me. The benefits I've wanted are largely there because the host is 64-bit. When RAM is scarce, 32-bit version may well run better.

 

[maflynn]

Snow Leopard kernel on Mac Mini is still 32 bit, by default. But 64bit really has technical advancements, all over. One of them is hardware support for virtualization, which should seem useful here.

Snow leopard boots up to 32bit by default on all macs and the 32bit kernel also includes hardware support for virtualization provided the chipset is compatible to virtualization.

 

[Gabriel GR]

Snow leopard boots up to 32bit by default on all macs and the 32bit kernel also includes hardware support for virtualization provided the chipset is compatible to virtualization.

How can I check that? I think mine is 64 bit.

 

[akauppi]

How can I check that? I think mine is 64 bit.

Google: booting mac to 64 bit kernel

http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/checking_32_or_64-bit_kernel_boot_mode_in_snow_leopard/

 

[ayeying]

I've noticed that a Win 7 x64 VM under VMWare Fusion 3 will be unusably slow if you set the VM type to "Windows 7" instead of "Windows 7 x64". Once I had it properly set to x64, it seems to work fine.

This is on a black Macbook with 1G RAM (2G total) and 1 core allocated to the VM.

On another note, a PICKit 3 with MPLAB work great in this setup. I've already reprogrammed a few chips via ICSP.

If youre using a 64-bit OS, then why are you setting vmware to 32-bit?

 

[weblink95]

working fine

I currently have a 2008 unibody mbp with 320gb of hard disk space and 4gb of ram and mac osx installed. I am currently running VMware 3 with Windows 7. I've partitioned 60gb of hard disk space and 2gb or ram to windows 7. I am able to use Acid Pro 7 with no lag or other problems on windows 7 just fine. I can do this while simultaneously listening to iTunes, editing on photoshop on mac os, and surfing safari (playing movies on youtube as well). when i first installed vmware 3 and windows 7, it was extremely slow and froze every once in awhile. this was when i had windows 7 running with only 20gb of hard disk space and 1 gb of ram. once i gave windows 7 more disk space and ram, problems were solved. windows 7 and mac osx have been running smoothly together ever since. if anyone is having problems, i would suggest giving your vmware virtual machine more hard disk space and ram.