Fix Slow Boot/Close VMWare; Host:Ubuntu 8.04

After the first install, my virtual WinXP took ages to boot up. The hard disk activity was really intensive for unknown reason. After a quick search, here’s a quick fix. Add to the /etc/vmware/config for always running the following script, or into individual vmx files:

mainMem.useNamedFile = “FALSE”
prefvmx.useRecommendedLockedMemSize = “TRUE”
prefvmx.minVmMemPct = “100″

The main hero seems to be the edit of mainMem. My boot and closing speeds up significantly, but it is still slow to start up. After loading, performance is good, and the HD is quiet too. Still finding out why the VM is slow on starting up (and so noisy for a long time).