Windows Virtual PCs Frequently Stop Responding For Short Periods

I have recently upgraded my computer from Vista to Windows 7 and from Virtual
PC 2007 to Windows Virtual PC. I have migrated all my Virtual PCs by
"Upgrading Integration Components".

But I am experiencing problems which I did not had before. The VPCs
frequently (once or twice a minute) stop responding for 3 - 5 seconds. This
is exhibited by the screen stops refreshing and it does not respond to mouse
or keyboard. When it starts responding again, it typically catches up to
whatever was being done while it was down.

The hardware is more than capable (Intel quad core with 8GB RAM), so I don't
believe its a hardware issue. I have tried running both with Integration
Feature disabled and enabled, but it doesn't seem to make a difference.

Has anyone else experienced this? Is there a workaround? This is bad
enough to drive me back to VPC 2007 which I really don't want to do.

 

I've never seen this on a quad core machine, but it's a power
management issue. You can try setting the power management to highest
performance but it might not help.

The only thing I've seen that can effect it is to run a low priority
task in the background that forces the CPU to stay in the full
performance state. I use [email protected] Boinc project on my laptop when
I'm running a VM...

No other workaround at present. Apparently the one's who programmed
the BIOS on some machines turn off bits in a power management state
that WVPC rely on.

 

Thanks Bob. I appreciate the help. I am running the BOINC Manager in one
Virtual PC and it seems to do the trick. More than that, if I have multiple
Virtual PCs running, it actually seems to eliminate the problem in all open
PCs at the same time.

I do hope this is an issue that's being worked by the Virtual PC team.
While this does work, it's a pretty cheesy work-around.

 

I do hope this is an issue that's being worked by the Virtual PC team.

Agreed.

 

Just thought I would post a followup here for anyone who has experienced the
same issue.

Running a low-priority task did not fix the problem as I originally thought.
Rather, this is an issue that seems to vary with time, sometimes worse,
sometimes better. After watching things for a while, I decided that the
low-priority task was not making a difference in my performance.

I finally ended up abandoning Windows Virtual PC and returning to Virtual PC
2007. It saddens me to lose some of the nice features in the newer software,
but I had no choice because the loss of productivity was becoming
significant. Rolling back immediately sped up all my virtual machines.

I will say that going back was fairly painless. I just had to reinstall the
Virtual Machine Additions.