vmware & breezy

[Steve]

On 10/27/05, chris dunn <chris at tropictc.com> wrote:
>
> Thanks for the inputs.
>
> You lucky guys with adequate memory. I only have 256mb on a reasonably
> fast cpu but unfortunately the box is a Dell one. VMware and WXP did
> used to run happily (if fairly slowly) under Slackware though, so it
> seems unlikely to be the box alone that is creating the problem.
>
> If it is a memory problem I suspect video memory more than cpu. The
> screen takes for ever to redraw, and when WXP is running under VMware,
> any operation in X, such as a simple change of desktop takes forever. So
> when VMware is trying to run WXP I'm completely unable to work.
>
> The video memory is a cheap onboard Intel 845 chip.
>
> Any suggestions would be welcome.
>
>
> Chris Dunn

Chris,

You didn't mention if you were able to install VMware Tools in the
Guest OS... they say that helps video performance. Also there is a
VMware preference or option setting called something like "Disable
Video Acceleration in Guest OS" that they also say will help
performance.

I will assume now that you are allocating something like 128MB RAM for
the Guest OS (1/2 your memory). You can try to tinker with that a
bit... see if 160MB is better (hoping your Host doesn't get squeezed
too much!)... that's about all I can suggest, as I've never had
performance problems like you are having! :-(

Another thing to check is to make sure your hard drive is not too full
or badly fragmented. During the excruciating slowdowns is you hard
drive CONSTANTLY spinning? Even though you will undoubtably experience
pagefile swapping due to your low memory situation, the drive should
not have to spin for several minutes every you click something.

If the slowdowns for you are not due to hard drive activity, then it
may very well be your video card and/or CPU (compounded by relatively
low RAM). (ie. during your very slow screen refreshes if the drive is
not going berserk...)

You'll want to make sure of what the real problems are before you
decide to upgrade a part... RAM, Video, CPU.

Tonight I may try to run my XP virtual machine with different memory
settings (lower than my current 192MB... 160, 128, 96) to try to
reproduce what you're experiencing. I'll let you know if I can
discover any ways to make performance improvements.

-Steve.
--
Ubuntu :: Linux for Human Beings :: ubuntulinux.org