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Environment: My computer is a PC with Intel i7 CPU @3.4G, 8G memory, The OS is win8.1(64bit), VMware Player is V6.04(the latest version), the virtual machine OS is win7(32bit) which I assigned 4G memory for it.
Problem: Every time, when I close the VMware-Player, the computer lags to respond for 6-10 min. During that period I find the hard disk utilization rate has remained at 100% all the time.
What is the problem? How to solve it?
David
Posted 2014-11-05T19:41:13.987
Reputation: 23
0
The problem is as Ramhound states - the VM has to update changes to the image when it is closed, suspended, or hibernated and it writes a large volume of data to disk.
You can get an SSD which will dramatically speed up the read/write speeds of the system.
Either get 1 SSD for the main OS or the VM, get 1 that is large enough to host both, or really any combination of off-setting the disk load with an SSD.
I personally am using just one SSD for both and never run into slowdowns when opening/closing a VM.
You could also just put the VM on another HDD that the main OS isn't installed on but I like SSD's :)
Alternatively you could get more ram and keep it running almost all the time provided it doesn't do a lot of processing. I can leave multiple VM's running in the background while playing intensive games if they aren't doing too much.
Enigma
Posted 2014-11-05T19:41:13.987
Reputation: 3 181
Thanks for answer, But I think maybe there is another reason, Because In the same PC, when I use VirtualBox, Above situation don't happen, So I think VMware player surely has some problems – David – 2014-11-05T22:38:48.623
virtual box likely handles power down writes differently. you could convert the vmware vm to a virtualbox vm if it works better for you. – Enigma – 2014-11-05T22:58:00.673
Thanks again. But I have still another two question: 1、If this is the inherent nature of VMware Player, How can it be released? Won't it cause a lot of complaint from users? 2、Some of my friends don't encounter this issue. So, I still think there are some mistakes in my PC environment. – David – 2014-11-06T01:54:43.397
I'm not having any issues after having done what I mentioned above. Before doing that I was getting the same slowdown due to 100% HDD utilization. Are you confident that you know your friends situations as fully as your own? Perhaps they have a better HDD or have their VM on a separate HDD. If you really think there is something wrong with your current setup, reformat Windows and start fresh to find out. Maybe your HDD is starting to show it's age and doesn't perform as well as it used to or maybe you have too many other things running that are conflicting. – Enigma – 2014-11-06T15:03:23.043
Try copying your VM to another storage medium and see if you still get the same slowdown. (external USB, 2.0 or 3.0, etc) – Enigma – 2014-11-06T15:04:48.567
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If so, how to solve? – David – 2014-11-06T16:16:36.080
That is to be expected. The VM maxes out the capabilities of your hardware (desired). As for the size difference, you could try shrinking the VM image to see if it makes a difference. His may just have less changes to make being a lighter OS. You could also try optimizing your VM disk image from within the VM properties panel. – Enigma – 2014-11-06T17:58:03.683
100% hard drive utilization is not a bad thing. It could be bad in the event that it is unintended (which it isn't) ie. a virus or something. Granted, this can cause a conflict with the primary OS if the OS is unable to get reads/writes done in a timely manner due to another process hogging all the I/O. VMPlayer could strive to provide an option that reduces HDD Utilization to ~70-80% providing a buffer for other processes to use I/O without delay but there are several easy ways around this (as you've figured out). – Enigma – 2014-11-06T18:01:17.757
It's VMWare saving the changes to the hdd – Ramhound – 2014-11-05T19:46:34.323