[CentOS] Severe VMware slowdown

Thu Nov 29 00:47:57 UTC 2007
Mark Hull-Richter <mhullrich at gmail.com>

In the last few days, I have noticed a drastic slowdown in my VMware
Windows guest OS..  I recently bit the bullet and upgraded it from XP
SP1 to SP2, and that seemed to work fine for quite a few days.

The two major changes I made to the system recently were:

1) The most recent update from CentOS (can't remember which one, but
it was within the last two weekd for 5.0).

2) Adding another VM guest OS, this one a CentOS 5.0 guest.

What happens is, usually when I click the mouse in the Windows window,
the system hangs up completely for some period of time that usually
exceeds four minutes.  Thereafter, once the VM is "running," it will
occasionally just stop when I am transitioning into the VM from
elsewhere.

I verified this using the CentOS system clock - last night it stopped
at 23:01 and still read 23:01 when my cell phone, which is usually
dead on in sync with the system clock, read 11:04pm.

I cut back on the amount of memory allowed to the Windows VM (768MB,
down from 1GB) and that seemed to help a little, but I have 2GB and
I'm thinking that this should not be a problem.

Any input would be helpful.

Thanks.

mhr

P.S.: Now I'm thinking that my earlier remark about applications was a
bit overstated....