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AnswerWindows 7 and Virtual PC Running extreamly slow or not at all.

  • Monday, November 02, 2009 5:04 PMrommel543 Users MedalsUsers MedalsUsers MedalsUsers MedalsUsers Medals
     
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    I am attempting to run my VHDs with the Virtual PC included in Windows 7 Enterprise.  The VHDs that have XP installed are slow but manageable with a little patience, however I have two VHDs with Windows Server 2005/Sharepoint 2007 installed.  These two I am unable to run at all, graphics are not rendering, the mouse pointer takes 10-20 seconds to travel from one side of the screen to the other. Attempting to execute a program is an exercise in futility.  These VHDs are for client work, that thankfully have not requested work at the moment, but I NEED to have working ASAP. I've upped the available memory to the VHDs to 2 gig but is hasn't changed the performance issues at all.

    I've read the suggestions regarding installing Virtual PC 2007 SP1 (as suggested here), which I've done, and I get compatibility warnings when attempting to execute the program ("This Program is Blocked Due To Compatibility Issues", "Virtual PC 2007 SP1 is not supported on this version of Windows").

    In addition to the performance issues I have found that I've lost the ability to drag and drop from my host desktop to the running VHD.  Attempting to transfer a 300 mb file from the VHD to the host through a captured drive takes up to 10 minutes or longer. 

    Has anyone had any luck in fixing these types of problems with Window 7 and VHDs?

    My Machine:
    Dell Latitude D820
    4 gig ram
    Intel Core2 Duo 2.0 GHz x64

    Edit:  I installed the intigration features into one of the Server 2003 VHDs and the image is runnable now, although the performance is exceeding slow.

     

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  • Monday, November 02, 2009 5:44 PMartiste1 Users MedalsUsers MedalsUsers MedalsUsers MedalsUsers Medals
     
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    Hi, Extra Ram would help. I have W7 RC with 6GB Ram installed and when running just Xp with 512mb Virtual machine my ram usage is 2.4GB.

    When also using Xp & Win 2008 with 2gb . My usage is 4.11 GB.

    If you can not add more ram try using a usb stick in readyboost

    Slan go foill, Paul 
     
  • Monday, November 02, 2009 6:37 PMrommel543 Users MedalsUsers MedalsUsers MedalsUsers MedalsUsers Medals
     
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    Thats excessive amount of Ram usage.  Is a constant usage of that's what it can get up to?   I'm currently running one of the Server 2003 VHDs with 2 gig memory enabled and it's running at 24,665k.  It should only access what it needs.

    Still having problems with file transfers and drag and drop though.

     
  • Monday, November 02, 2009 8:04 PMsmjainMVPUsers MedalsUsers MedalsUsers MedalsUsers MedalsUsers Medals
     
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    Windows VPC uses RDP, so there is no drag and drop functionality.  You still have the shared clipboard and access to the host's drives.

    What is your power scheme set to?  If it's not at high-performance, set it to that. 
    Are your VMs on the same hard drive as the host OS?  If so, this will cause a hit on overall performance.  I have a 2nd hard drive in my e6500 where I run all my VMs from to prevent hard drive contention between the guest OS and host OS.

    Also, too much RAM can cause a hit in performance in a VM.  I have  a W2k3 test VM with 512MB and it's quite snappy.  I'll up the RAM and try and install SharePoint and see what happens.
    • Edited bysmjainMVPMonday, November 02, 2009 8:10 PMadditional info
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  • Monday, November 02, 2009 8:21 PMrommel543 Users MedalsUsers MedalsUsers MedalsUsers MedalsUsers Medals
     
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    I'm running on a laptop, although my power scheme is set to high-perf. 

    I have all my VHDs on an external drive.  @ 30 gig + each they tend to fill up the internal HD quite quickly.  When I first set-up the VHDs after going to Window 7 the ram was set to 1 gig.  I couldn't open applications because it ran so slow.

     
  • Monday, November 02, 2009 8:34 PMartiste1 Users MedalsUsers MedalsUsers MedalsUsers MedalsUsers Medals
     
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    Hi Rommel543, That is correct but the host gives the VM the Ram set in VM  (ie. in my case 512mb for Xp even if it only using 128mb ) 
     
  • Tuesday, November 03, 2009 1:12 AMBill GrantMVPUsers MedalsUsers MedalsUsers MedalsUsers MedalsUsers Medals
     
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      Hosting the vhds on a external drive will probably slow you down, especially if both vhds are on the same drive. Windows OSs hit the system disk pretty hard. What sort of external disk is it?

     
    Bill
     
  • Tuesday, November 03, 2009 1:48 AMsmjainMVPUsers MedalsUsers MedalsUsers MedalsUsers MedalsUsers Medals
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    What kind of laptop?  Some have issues with speedstep and even though you're set at hi-perf, the CPU is actually throttling back.  It seems that this bug may have reappeared in this version of VPC.
    You may be hitting this: http://blogs.msdn.com/virtual_pc_guy/archive/2005/09/19/471612.aspx
    There's been a couple other posts here with similar perf issues.