Vista - VPC/WMPlayer comparison?

I'm new to VPC ... downloaded it, installed on XPSP3 (2.66 GHz Core 2
Quad Dell, 2GB RAM), made a Vista Ultimate VM with a 25 GB VHD. It
works fine but it seems to be slow. This test (using JPSofts 4NT
command processor) gives interesting comparisons:

timer & for /L %i in (1,1,10) %comspec /c exit & timer

Run on the host (real) machine: 1.1 sec.
On the virtual Vista in VPC: 5.6 sec.

I also tried VMPlayer. I don't know if it simply loaded, or
converted, the MS VM, but it ran fine and the test above, in Vista in
VMPlayer, gave 1.6 sec.

I have repeated the tests many times with similar results.

Is this to be expexted? Is VPC just that slow? Are there any
suggestions for speeding it up (drastically)?

Thanks.
--
- Vince

On Wed, 13 May 2009 14:36:32 -0400, Vincent Fatica <abuse@xxxxxx>
wrote:
Install the Additions and it will speed up a bit.

--

Bo Berglund (Sweden)

On Wed, 13 May 2009 20:58:14 +0200, Bo Berglund
<boberglund@xxxxxx> wrote:
They are/were installed.

On Wed, 13 May 2009 15:58:28 -0400, Vincent Fatica <abuse@xxxxxx>
wrote:
Too bad, then you have done all you can. :-(
Except of course if you have not yet enabled hardware virtualization
for the guest, this is said to have profound effects. Can't vouch for
this myself since my PC:s all are not equipped with VT options...

Personally nowadays I most often use VMWare Workstation 6.51, which
works very well indeed....

BTW: When you used Player, how did you create the virtual machine
(since Player does not have facilities for creating a guest)?
Exactly what did you do to start it?

Maybe you could get even better performance by *creating* the guest in
VMWare (Workstation)???

--

Bo Berglund (Sweden)

"Bo Berglund" <boberglund@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:3fdm055tmi6qtspihjp1tgbg5tjjdfkb65@xxxxxx
Not natively - that's what this is for: http://www.easyvmx.com/


--
Mark Rae
ASP.NET MVP
http://www.markrae.net

On Wed, 13 May 2009 23:10:03 +0200, Bo Berglund
<boberglund@xxxxxx> wrote:
I guided VMPlayer to the VPC virtual machine (in MyDocs) ... (had to
fiddle with the drop-down box showing allowable extensions) ... and
simply opened it. The first time VMPlayer took 3-4 minutes
(converting/interpreting?) but thereafter, it was remembered in
VMPlayer's UI and would start immediately.

I gather from your comments (and the lack of others) that the slowness
of VPC is well-known and accepted as a fact of life.

My only gripe about VMPlayer is the fact that merely installing it
gives you 7 new processes running all the time.

On Wed, 13 May 2009 17:37:08 -0400, Vincent Fatica <abuse@xxxxxx>
wrote:
Yep,
VMWare puts a number of services into your system when it installs. It
is a much larger footprint than VPC2007. You could figure this out by
comparing the installer sizes:
VMWare Workstation 6.5.2 = 473 Mb installer package
VPC2007 SP1 = 32 Mb installer
More than an order of magnitude difference!

Right now I have my software development machine running in the
background in VMWare Workstation and TaskManager shows 8 processes
active.
In my Services display I see 5 VMWare services installed.

I guess it does take some software to have this running...

--

Bo Berglund (Sweden)

On Wed, 13 May 2009 17:37:08 -0400, Vincent Fatica <abuse@xxxxxx>
wrote:
VPC VMs in general run just as fast as VMWare ones do for me. I run
VPC almost exclusively for Windows VMs.

Running timers in VMs doesn't really give you an accurate idea on
speed. Depending on how the VM software handles timers, they could be
jumping or skipping to keep up.

some of these you can disable with no ill effects. You don't need the
agent for a lot of things. Also, if you're not going to be using the
built in NAT and DHCP you can turn those off.
When I set up VMWare on a system, I always use the network based DHCP
so I disable the other 2 VMWare adapters also.

--
Cheers,
Steve Jain, Virtual Machine MVP
http://vpc.essjae.com/

On Wed, 13 May 2009 15:06:23 -0700, "Steve Jain [MVP]"
<noreply.-@-.essjae.com> wrote:
The timers were just a form of "hard evidence". **Everything** is
**obviously** a lot slower with VPC. It wouldn't surprise me if the
nearly 4:1 speed difference seen with the timer experiment was "across
the board".

You say "not so" for you. Have you any tips?
Perhaps you can tell me if this is possible, with VPC, VMPlayer, or
both. I have two NICs. NIC1 is dedicated to the internet (DHCP,
RoadRunner). NIC2 is dedicated to a home LAN but most of the time
there are no other machines on that LAN. Can I "export" the raw NIC2
to a virtual machine, say Vista, and configure Vista to (also) do DHCP
to RoadRunner (I'm allowed 2 RoadRunner IPs)? As it stands, I'm just
doing the NAT thing and have basic internet connectivity but I can't
get in from the outside.

Thanks!
--
- Vince

On Wed, 13 May 2009 19:32:39 -0400, Vincent Fatica <abuse@xxxxxx>
wrote:
I'm just saying that using timers won't necessarily give you an
accurate respresentation. Generally VMs will skip cycles to keep up.
Also, without syncing with the host, their clocks will fall behind.
No secrets. I give them plenty of RAM and run them on a disk that
separate from the host OS. Most all of my systems were purchased with
VMs in mind, so they have hardware VT also.
You can simply remove the TCP/IP components from NIC2 on the host
side, then the VM would get your 2nd IP from RoadRunner. I've never
tried it on VMWare Player, but I'd assume you could do something
similar by assigned the NIC to the VM directly.

--
Cheers,
Steve Jain, Virtual Machine MVP
http://vpc.essjae.com/