windows 7

Solving VMware Fusion 6 and Windows 7 VM performance issues

by

I have been struggling along with various VM performance issues over the last couple of months using VMware Fusion 5.x, as well as the latest 6.0.3. I just didn’t get the time to dedicate to find a fix for the performance degradation I was seeing until just recently.

I have the following specifications on my Macbook Pro Retina which I use for development purposes:

macspec1

I have a Windows 7 Professional VM running in VMware Fusion, with a spec that I had tried all kinds of different configurations on – mainly 2 vCPUs, and 4GB RAM though. This VM is running on the built-in 256GB SSD.

Nothing seemed to fix the performance issues I was seeing, which was that by at least half way though a typical work day of using Visual Studio and a few tabs of Chrome/IE/Firefox, the VM would slow down to an absolute crawl. I knew it was the VM though, as everything in OSX Mavericks, the host OS was perfectly normal. Most of the time just restarting the Windows VM itself would not help though – I would have to reboot the whole macbook.

The other week I decided enough was enough, and spent a bit of time googling and looking around the VMware Communities forums for a fix. Here is the combination of settings that seems to have resolved my issues now.

  • Settled on a VM spec of 3 x vCPUs (helpful for Visual Studio), and 4GB RAM.
  • Disabled app nap for VMware Fusion (Applications -> Right-click, Get Info on VMware Fusion, and tick the box that says “Prevent App Nap”.
  • Added 3 x new entries into my VM’s configuration file (.vmx file). To edit the .vmx file you’ll need to right-click your VM and select “Show Content”. This will allow you to browse the file content of the VM, and you’ll need to locate your VM’s .vmx file. Right-click this file and open it in your text editor of choice. I added the following lines to the bottom of the file:
MemTrimRate = "0"
sched.mem.pshare.enable = "FALSE"
prefvmx.useRecommendedLockedMemSize = "TRUE"

Don’t forget to disable App Nap for Fusion.

prevent-app-nap
Disable app nap for Fusion

Accelerate your Windows 7 migration workshop – London

by

With Microsoft withdrawing support for Windows XP SP3 in April 2014, do you have a strategy in place to deal with the inevitable migration? How about adding value to your end-user app portfolio?

 

Xtravirt and IBM will be holding a half day workshop, where best practises and experiences around accelerating migration to Windows 7 can be discussed and shared. The following tasks and objectives are also on the cards for discussion:

  • Application compatibility and migration
  • Rapid Windows 7 deployment
  • Achieving security and compliance
  • Supporting BYOD and flexible working

 

Another great opportunity for delegates who attend will be the chance to throw their questions at a panel of industry experts during the session. So, if you are looking for some great discussion, and are looking for ways to develop and optimise your existing EU desktop estate, be sure to sign up for the event!

The workshop will be taking place on the 12th September 2012 in London. For more information and details, or to sign up, be sure to check out the event page over here.

 

This is the official agenda:

1pm: Registration & Coffee
Introductions & Session Objectives
W7 Migrate or Transform
IBM Methodology
Case Study/Lessons Learnt
4pm: Closing – Next Steps

 

How to pin an application on a network / mapped drive to your Windows 7 or 2008 R2 taskbar

by

So here is something that has been annoying me lately. On my work machine I use a couple of applications that are stored on mapped network drives. When you try and right-click the .exe to select “Pin to taskbar” there is no option to do this. Here is a work around that will allow you to get these network stored applications / exe files pinned to your taskbar in Windows 7 or Server 2008 R2.

1. Copy the .exe file of your application on the network drive to a temporary location on your local machine or server’s drive.

2. Make a shortcut to this .exe on your desktop.

3. Right-click on this shortcut and then select the “Pin to taskbar” option which will now be available.

4. Right-click the pinned icon on the taskbar and then right-click the shortcut in the list of options that appears – select Properties.

5. Edit the “Start in” and “Target” fields to point to the actual location of the original application on the network location.

6. You can now remove the temporary shortcut and .exe that you copied as these are not needed anymore.

You’ll now have your network location application pinned to your Windows 7 or 2008 R2 taskbar.