.vmdk = slow and .vmwarevm = FAST! Help??

[swich2mac]

Pat, or any other vm genius for that matter.... I now have two virtual machines in fusion. The .vmwarevm machine I basically built with a windows xp cd, installed all apps, etc. I have been using this machine since Fusion 1.0 went GA. It is a screamer.

I had to build another VM due to an employment change and I basically used the converter tool to create a VM from the physical laptop that was issued to me. Everything worked just find during the conversion process except I noticed that it created a folder with essentially 75 .vmdk files instead of 1 large .vmwarevm file. I am ok with this because I pointed to one of the files within the folder and the VM cranked right up. However, it seems to be a lot more sluggish on the load, startup, and shutdown than my existing .vmwarevm machine. I also noticed that when I change settings for the .vmdk machine, I get the spinning beachball everytime I change a setting and hit apply. Does anyone know why the new VM is much more sluggish than the legacy?

Is there a way to combine all of these .vmdk files into one .vmwarevm file?

BTW, I checked the settings (ram, proc, 3d graphics, etc.) on the .vmwarevm machine and applied to the .vmdk machine and it is still sluggish with many spinning beachballs. Once the guest OS loads, everything within it appears to be snappy until I go to shutdown.... SLOW as well. HELP!!

Scott

[admin]

All a .vmwarevm bundle is is a specially named folder. I seriously doubt this contributes to the speed difference. If you want to, you can rename the folder containing the .vmx, .vmdk, etc. files to end in .vmwarevm.

I think it's more likely that the speed difference is due to differences between the virtual machines. I would expect a freshly-built virtual machine to have less accumulated baggage than a converted existing install, especially if since that converted instance probably has a bunch of drivers and programs that might not be used anymore. Also, someone reported that large split disks (such as the case for your converted virtual machine) cause a noticeable delay at startup; changing to a monolithic disk (such as the default for a new virtual machine created by Fusion) improved startup time.

[swich2mac]

Hmmm... Anyone else?

[rcardona2k]

If you want to combine your 75 VMDKs into one monolithic file use the GUI tool in . Select the Convert tab and leave the split and pre-allocated boxes UNchecked. Pick the first part of the your split VMDKs and a provide new output VMDK disk name. This will make a merged copy of the input disk. Move the 75 VMDK disk parts out of the way, rename the merged copy back to the original disk name and try to run your machine with that version.

[Pat_Lee]

I use a split disk VM and it works great and pretty fast. The biggest challenge between an imported VM and a newly built VM is that the imported VM likely has a lot more junk running in the background on it that you don't realize. I have seen this with multiple people.

Before I imported my wife's physical PC, I went through Add/Remove programs to get rid of almost everything that she didn't run directly. I wanted to bring it over lean and mean. That has worked well for her.

While you can combine into a single VMDK and maybe get a small speed up, I would focus on drivers and third party apps installed in the converted VM that are more likely the cause of most of the slow down.

Best of luck getting that running better.

Pat

[swich2mac]

Pat, the physical machine that I converted was a brand new corporate issued laptop with only MS Office 2007, VPN, and AV installed. That is it outside of sound, video, and other drivers, etc. There are no other 3rd party apps or utils installed on that Thinkpad.

[Milton21]

did you remove all the think pad apps. Think pad apps are based on hardware. Look at your event logs on that system see if you are getting a lot of errors.