Speed up performance/troubleshoot slow virtual machines.

Hi there.

One of the BEST ways of improving VM's is to ensure that HARDWARE ACCELERATION and 3-D is enabled AND WORKING.
(Of course things like sufficient RAM allocated to the VM and not running too much on the HOST while the VM is running obviously help).

SLOW HDD's also will KILL any system real or virtual. Laptop 5400 HDD's are notoriously SLOW -- 7200 RPM one's were a lot better but are as rare as hens teeth these days -- if using a laptop and you want decent VM performance use an SSD - even as an external device for your VM. An external SSD even on a USB2 port will perform very well indeed - on a USB3 port - will probably be as fast as you want.

If you use VMware ensure also that VMware tools is installed (I think for VBOX users there is a similar package called VBOX ADDITIONS -- or something like that). These also enhance graphics, sound, mice etc.

The whole idea of Disk defragmentation is another area which some people swear blindly by. I can honestly say in over 35 years of using PC's I have NEVER had to defrag a disk on the HOST and on machines I've seen where disks have been de-fragged it doesn't seem to have made any difference.

With SSD's the whole issue is an irrelevance anyway. If a VM needs a defrag there's a separate utility in the vm program that will do it in a few minutes. The VM will probably issue a message if the virtual disk needs it.

Cheers
jimbo