Slow Performance in Virtual PC

[Frank J. Reashore]

I installed Vista in a Virtual PC with 2G RAM and the performance was beyond
terrible. The CPU was constantly at 100%.

I normally run Windows Server 2003 in a Virtual PC with 2G RAM and have
perfectly acceptable performance.

Unlike Windows Server 2003 it seems to be using a generic VGA driver. Does
it require a specific video driver?

Regards,
Frank J. Reashore, MCSD.net, MCDBA

Vancouver,
Canada

 

[Joerg Jooss]

Thus wrote Frank,

I installed Vista in a Virtual PC with 2G RAM and the performance was
beyond terrible. The CPU was constantly at 100%.

I normally run Windows Server 2003 in a Virtual PC with 2G RAM and
have perfectly acceptable performance.

Unlike Windows Server 2003 it seems to be using a generic VGA driver.
Does it require a specific video driver?

Running Vista in VPC 2004 is rather pointless, as the emulated hardware is
ancient (and AFAIK Vista in VPC 2004 is not even supported).

You'll have to wait for VCP 2007 to get better results, or at least disable
almost all of Vista's flashy features...

Cheers,

 

[Roberto Baggio]

It's horribly slow. I've changed settings to use everything "classic", and
although performance improves, it's still significantly slower than an XP
installation in VPC. I've disabled firewall, defender, windows search,
defrag, etc., and it doesn't help that much.

Too bad, because Vista RC1 is pretty snappy when installed solely on a
machine. And too bad that VPC performance is lacking as VPC is very useful
for certain types of testing.

 

[Tom Porterfield]

I installed Vista in a Virtual PC with 2G RAM and the performance was beyond
terrible. The CPU was constantly at 100%.

I normally run Windows Server 2003 in a Virtual PC with 2G RAM and have
perfectly acceptable performance.

Unlike Windows Server 2003 it seems to be using a generic VGA driver. Does
it require a specific video driver?

I'll assume you have installed the VPC additions. Two things to try,
download the latest beta version of Virtual Server from
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserversystem/virtualserver/downloads/servicepack.mspx.
Don't install, but install the additions from VS in your Vista VPC
installation as those are better optimized for Vista.

If that doesn't offer much improvement, install the full Virtual Server and
run Vista in that instead of VPC.

And yes, VPC 2007 will better support Vista but it isn't available even in
beta yet.

 

[Roberto Baggio]

I have VSRV R2 installed, and have tried the additions from it. The
performance isn't much better, if it is better at all. Same with RC1 on
VSRV. I've disabled most services that aren't required, set it to use
classic folders, etc., but there is still a noticeable lag in operations.

WinXP runs surprisingly fast in VPC - most operations feel like there is no
virtualization. I hope VPC 2007 can deliver similar performance as VPC is
an excellent development/testing tool.