Having to set Priority in Processes list with VMware Workstation, or program is extremely slow

[Thresh]

Hey folks, I got WinXP Pro SP3 running on my Win7 64-bit machine with VMWare Workstation v9. I have an i5-2500k CPU with "I believe" about 1.5Ghz and 2GB memory assigned to it. Anytime I multitask, the entire VM slows down and only runs the program in the foreground smoothly. Even the OS slows down if you work with anything else. The trick, I've found, is to set an above Normal Priority to every program you start up. This resolves working between programs, but then the OS remains extremely slow. When I say slow, I mean about 5+ seconds just to get the Start menu opened. I'd imagine setting explorer.exe's Priority would be a temporary work around, but at this point the bandaid maneuver is getting old. Does anyone have any idea just what the heck is going on? Thanks everyone!!

 

[Reckless]

1.5Ghz is simply not enough to run a proper virtual machine. An actual PC would crawl with a 1.5ghz processor.

Assign it two full processors to allow it to manage it properly.

 

[Thresh]

I'm not sure I understand. If that's the case, why does everything run so smooth as soon as I assign it an above normal Priority?

I also use to game on an XP Pro machine that had 1ghz speed back in the day. How is 1.5 not enough to run XP? Do VM's need more processor power?


edit: I just installed a couple games, Diablo 2 and Age of Empires 2. I set them both in window mode and after assigning priority, I can switch between the two without any slowness. So why can't I switch between IE and Firefox like that without it being dog slow?

 

[Apokalipse]

You could use this to permanently save the priority:
Prio - Process Priority Saver. | O&K Print Watch

otherwise, I always give my virtual machines access to all available cores.

 

[patonb]

A 2500 is 3.4Ghz, not 1.5 so you should be just fine.

It's most certainly a setup issue verse a hardware issue.

How much ram do you have over all?

Did you install the vmware guests/tool stuff?