Running: VMWare Player 5
Host specs:
Win 7 64-bit, 12 GB RAM, Core i7 CPU
Guest specs:
O/S: Win 7 64-bit
Memory: 4 GB
Processors: 2
HD: 200Gb Preallocated (used to be a dynamically-growing disk - only 50 gigs used)
Shared Folders: Enabled
VMWare Tools: Installed, Time sync off
Everything else at default settings
Now, when I first set up this VM, it was running pretty well. It started to get sluggish after a while. Then I moved it to another hard drive (same system), and suddenly it was lightning-quick again, like new. And then it gradually got back to its slow performance over the course of a few days.
I figured it was a disk I/O issue, so I converted it to a preallocated disk and moved it onto a dedicated, WD Black hard drive (nothing else uses this drive - it just hosts the VM files). To be safe, I bumped up the memory from 2 GB to 4 GB. Again, it was fast for a while, and then after a week or so, it was back to slow performance again.
When I run process explorer on the guest, it shows spikes of CPU usage whenever a process does anything. If I switch between tabs on a browser, open Windows Explorer, etc... the CPU spikes and it takes several seconds to complete the task. CPU usage on the host machine is consistently low. Any CPU spikes on the VM seem to cause the host VMware player process to hit around 5% - 6%, so the host barely notices anything while the guest is just chugging away as if it had nothing but an Atari underneath the hood.
The guest isn't loaded up with tons of things. It's a barebones Windows dev/testing setup with a VPN client.
Any thoughts?