Unhappy Switcher

[ZorroAMG]

You still haven't fully answered our question - are you using Virtual PC or are you using VMWare Fusion. They are two very different products...

What are you guys talking about? He answered those questions in his original post. Read it.

 

[DaFlake]

What are you guys talking about? He answered those questions in his original post. Read it.

Umm no he didn't? They asked him a bunch of questions regarding what software he was running and where he was seeing the slow performance. The OP seems to be throwing hardware at the problem and it may not actually be that. It may simply be that he has VMWare (or other program) configured incorrectly or another problem with the machine. These questions have yet to be answered which is why they said it.

 

[Oneironaut]

In the first post he says he has VMWare Fusion installed, but in his next post he mentions Virtual PC.

 

[Nethfel]

What are you guys talking about? He answered those questions in his original post. Read it.

He actually hasn't answered any of my questions - read my posts.

I stated he needed to check his settings for how many processors were being used, although not a direct question, it is an implied query that he should check the setting and if it was set to one processor say it was, if it wasn't change it and come back and state if that improved things.

I stated he needed to check how much ram he was dedicating to the virtual machine and SPECIFICALLY asked how much he had allocated - not answered.

I asked him if he was using VMWare Fusion or Virtual PC - they are TWO DIFFERENT PRODUCTS, and he has referenced both while talking - never answered

I also suggested he do some basic troubleshooting and mentioned the sticky in the other forum, and suggested he look into using Onyx - he has not commented back about ANY attempt at troubleshooting the issue.

It was suggested by others that he uninstall Kaspersky at least on the Mac side and see what happens - so far no response to that request

His comments have been centered around:

His being upset that it doesn't operate as well as he expect
He has trouble with a virtual machine, but references two different products
He has installed Kaspersky in his windows virtual machine, and apparantly also installed the Mac version in OSX

Our questions - both direct and indirect haven't been answered to be able to help him

And please don't think that I, or anyone else that has posted, doesn't want to help the OP - we do, certain things need to be looked at and checked to fix any computer problem - especially when running in a VM. For example - if the VM hogs too much ram, it could slow down the Host OS and ultimately slow down the system; if he has a VM set to use 2 CPUs on a dual core system it can slow down the system as there will be periods where the host and the guests will be fighting for resources more then they should; Onyx or at least checking the permissions should be done (check perms was suggested earlier in another post) because if something has the wrong permissions on it, it can cause problems. The OPs system should not be running slow or beachballing just because he has 4 or 5 tabs open in a browser (unless they are all doing something in Flash, or some in flash and he has his virtual machine open at the same time). The VM may be slow because he's comparing it to what a standalone system is - but not being sure which product he's using (VMWare Fusion or Virtual PC) it's hard to comment on where exactly the problem lies. I have a feeling he's referring to his Virtual Machine as a "Virtual PC" but I don't want to guess what he's referring to and give bad advice.

 

[DaFlake]

I think the point is that we want to help but need to know what we are dealing with.

 

[EndlessMac]

OK, my main concern is with the virtual PC side. The Mac side is "OK..." but it does get "hung" up at times if I have four or five web pages or files open. The virtual PC is the absolute slowest to open and run.

I needed the virtual PC in order to access all my wife's Print Master 18 Platinum projects which were made on PC's. She is a school teacher and we have made hundreds of projects for her class use. This program also uses the internet to access their picture data base.

I thought my problem may have been related to a printer ( HP laser 1012) so I ditched it and switched to a new Brother laser. It did not resolve the issue. It takes forever for the virtual PC to open, and an equal amount of time once it is open to open my file folders. Then I have to open a project and it takes even more time.

I still think part of your problem is related to the anti-virus. Just doing a quick reading on some of the review for Kaspersky antivirus has people complaining that it slows down their computers. A lot of antivirus nowadays has something called active monitoring which in simple terms means that it will try to monitor everything you are doing.

This can greatly slow down your computer if the software you are using is not efficient at doing this. You can also limit some of the active monitoring so that it doesn't slow down your computer too much.

Things you can do:

1. Uninstall Kaspersky from your Mac side. You really don't need it for your Mac. Since you bought it you can always reinstall it later if you want but uninstall it to see if it improves performance.

2. Uninstall or turn off Kaspersky from your Windows side. This is just to test if your antivirus is the problem. Just like above you can always reinstall it later but most antivirus will allow you to turn it off if you right click it in the bottom right icon tray in Windows and select exit or something similar.

3. Since you said you have VMware Fusion you have to use the right settings for it. Open up Fusion and click on the Settings icon at the top. Once there click on "Processors & RAM" icon and choose 1 processor core and for RAM choose 1,000 MB of RAM. If it is currently at 512 then that could be the source of your problem in Windows because 512 MB of RAM is barely enough to run Windows smoothly especially if you have an antivirus running in the background. If you give Windows too much RAM then it will slow down your Mac side. Since you have 4 GB RAM then you should not give Windows more than 2 GB which is half. 1 GB RAM is the sweet spot for me and I like you also have 4 GB RAM on my Mac.


Try that out and let us know the results.

 

[DaFlake]

Probably a great place to start.

 

[baggss]

I'm just gonna throw this out there:

If it looks like a troll, and acts like a troll....

I could be wrong.

 

[blackmac11]

I'm just gonna throw this out there:

If it looks like a troll, and acts like a troll....

I could be wrong.

I'm quite sure you are correct

 

[gotham]

you see the route of your problem is BILL GATES!!!!

 

[Mac SK]

I'm just gonna throw this out there:

If it looks like a troll, and acts like a troll....

I could be wrong.

Thank You..End of Story..Again

 

[Mac SK]

you see the route of your problem is BILL GATES!!!!

WOW..Even Better..

 

[mcsmiley]

Thank you for all your suggestions and help. Working two jobs makes it hard to respond quickly.

Sorry for not answering all your questions yesterday because I did not know all the stuff you folks were throwing at me. I did not set the computer up, I had the dealer do all this and when the techie they sent out to fix my problems did not solve all my concerns, I was not really interested in returning my machine to their store.

Hopefully after reading all your ideas I will be able to answer your inquiries. To begin with, the use of the term virtual PC was what the techie from the dealer used to describe what VMWare Fusion was. I bought the Mac in January 2010, they installed Microsoft Office 8 for Mac and the only other programs I installed on the Mac were Firefox and Thunderbird.

I went back to the dealer about a week later and purchased VMWare Fusion and XP Professional and had them install these. We needed to be able to use a number of PC programs for my wife’s work. As to why I did not purchase another PC, after three times having to reinstall Vista, save and reinstall data and programs I looked to Mac as a solution. Meanwhile when I got home I installed Print Master 18 Platinum, Quick Tax 2009, Kaspersky 2010, Jasc Pro Paint Shop 8, plus Microsoft Office 2003 and Microsoft Works 4.0 and our printer drivers onto the PC side.

Why did I install an antivirus on the Mac you ask. I was concerned that since we were using the “virtual PC” on the Mac that we needed protection on the pc end and the Mac. That is why I purchased Kaspersky for both.

Have I repaired disk permissions or cleaned out cache was one question? No I have not. This is all new, I am still learning, slowly finding out where everything is and what it does. I thought from what I read before my purchase and from other friends who had Macs, that there was no need for tweaking on Macs. I guess I was wrong. Besides, I do not remember my old Apple II GS having to be tweaked.

OK What is ONYX? I change the settings for VMWare Fusion from dual core to a single and cut back the ram to 1000. I ran a speed test and got 23.92 download and .95 upload. I can not seem to uninstall Kaspersky from the Mac. There seems to be no uninstall file for it under applications and there is no icon on the dock and when I put the mouse over the icon in the top right of the screen it just turns to a colour wheel. As a result I can not test to see if the antivirus program is the problem.

And yes I am quite often have both the Mac side and the PC side open at the same time. I hope this helps and I will now try some of the rest of your suggestions.

Thanks again.

 

[Oneironaut]

First off, you don't need anti-virus software on your Mac HD. Even if a virus were to infect your Windows partition, it will not affect the Mac side of things. All anti-virus software will do is muck up your Mac.

What kind of technician are you consulting? From the dealer? I wouldn't trust anyone but a certified Apple technician. While Fusion is virtualization software, I think an experienced Apple technician would know not to confuse it with Virtual PC.

Onyx is a maintenance application for your Mac, but before you get all involved with that you can just try repairing permissions with Disk Utility. It should be in your Utilities folder, but if you have trouble finding it, just start typing it in Spotlight and it will be revealed. Open it up and select your Macintosh HD in the pane on the left, then follow the directions on the right.

Also keep in mind that running Fusion from your Mac HD will make things work a lot harder, and you may experience some slowing down on one or both sides.

 

[6string]

Without confusing things to much and letting all the rest of the advice settle in a little, which there is a lot of in this thread.
OnyX Apple - Downloads - System/Disk Utilities - OnyX is a nice little utility for basic or extreme maintenance. The advise I would have for you is to first uninstall Kaspersky, before running it.
To find the uninstaller, you may need to right click (option click) on the Application in the application folder to show package contents, or it may be in user/library/application support, or see Installation / Uninstallation
As for running OnyX once you have Kaspersky uninstalled, I would use the automation tab for basic clean up.... repair disk permissions and clean out clogged caches.
I don't know how often you use these PC apps for your wife's work, or what they are, but if you don't need to be booted into OS X at the same time, BootCamp may be a better solution for you. Apple Bootcamp Tutorial video

 

[DarkestRitual]

All you have to do to uninstall Kaspersky on the Mac I believe is drag that icon to the trash and hit empty trash. Or open a new finder window (click finder on the dock, hit command N) and type Kaspersky into the search field - delete all the files that it finds.

Onyx runs some system maintenance tasks that will keep your mac performing snappily. You don't usually need to run it, but once every month or 2 will keep things nice and quick. Just run the recommended checks. It will ask you to verify smart status and your start up disk every time you open it (download the one for 10.6 if you do use it btw), do this stuff. Then go to the automate tab and perform all the prechecked boxes.

VMWare Fusion you can do a couple of things. If you are using Windows programs that need access to the internet and you're sharing private data over these programs, then I'd probably keep AV installed. If not, I'd make a fresh installation of XP with all of your programs, and then make a copy of that installation. Don't use antivirus on it. If you ever do catch a virus, you can always revert to your fresh image of a clean installation.

Cheers!

 

[baggss]

Thank you for all your suggestions and help. Working two jobs makes it hard to respond quickly.

Sorry for not answering all your questions yesterday because I did not know all the stuff you folks were throwing at me. I did not set the computer up, I had the dealer do all this and when the techie they sent out to fix my problems did not solve all my concerns, I was not really interested in returning my machine to their store.

Hopefully after reading all your ideas I will be able to answer your inquiries. To begin with, the use of the term virtual PC was what the techie from the dealer used to describe what VMWare Fusion was. I bought the Mac in January 2010, they installed Microsoft Office 8 for Mac and the only other programs I installed on the Mac were Firefox and Thunderbird.

I went back to the dealer about a week later and purchased VMWare Fusion and XP Professional and had them install these. We needed to be able to use a number of PC programs for my wife’s work. As to why I did not purchase another PC, after three times having to reinstall Vista, save and reinstall data and programs I looked to Mac as a solution. Meanwhile when I got home I installed Print Master 18 Platinum, Quick Tax 2009, Kaspersky 2010, Jasc Pro Paint Shop 8, plus Microsoft Office 2003 and Microsoft Works 4.0 and our printer drivers onto the PC side.

Why did I install an antivirus on the Mac you ask. I was concerned that since we were using the “virtual PC” on the Mac that we needed protection on the pc end and the Mac. That is why I purchased Kaspersky for both.

Have I repaired disk permissions or cleaned out cache was one question? No I have not. This is all new, I am still learning, slowly finding out where everything is and what it does. I thought from what I read before my purchase and from other friends who had Macs, that there was no need for tweaking on Macs. I guess I was wrong. Besides, I do not remember my old Apple II GS having to be tweaked.

OK What is ONYX? I change the settings for VMWare Fusion from dual core to a single and cut back the ram to 1000. I ran a speed test and got 23.92 download and .95 upload. I can not seem to uninstall Kaspersky from the Mac. There seems to be no uninstall file for it under applications and there is no icon on the dock and when I put the mouse over the icon in the top right of the screen it just turns to a colour wheel. As a result I can not test to see if the antivirus program is the problem.

And yes I am quite often have both the Mac side and the PC side open at the same time. I hope this helps and I will now try some of the rest of your suggestions.

Thanks again.

As I said, I could be wrong....

 

[chas_m]

All you have to do to uninstall Kaspersky on the Mac I believe is drag that icon to the trash and hit empty trash.

Bad advice. Anything that works on the system like (like an anti-virus) is not going to be a self-contained app. At the very least it will have daemons that work in the background. No, an anti-virus is one of those things that have to be UNINSTALLED rather than just removed.

Better advice: Kapersky itself will have uninstallation directions on their web site.

EDIT: here you go, straight from page 12 of their manual:

To remove Kaspersky Anti-Virus from your computer,
run the installation file (*.dmg) and select the Kaspersky Anti-Virus Uninstaller assistant.
The uninstallation assistant is a sequence of steps. You can switch between them using the Continue (go to the next step of installation) and Go Back (go one step back) buttons. Let us take a closer look at the application uninstallation procedure:
1. It is recommended that you process all objects stored in quarantine and backup, before starting the uninstallation procedure. All stored objects that have not been processed will be deleted without any opportunity to restore them in the future.
To start the uninstallation procedure, click the Delete button and enter the administrator's password to confirm. The application will then be uninstalled.
2. Completing the uninstallation procedure.
The last window of the uninstallation assistant displays the information about the successful completion of the uninstallation process. To exit the uninstallation assistant, click the Finish button. The computer does not have to be restarted after the uninstallation.

 

[the8thark]

you see the route of your problem is BILL GATES!!!!

Actually I find this bloke from MS a lot more disturbing.

 

[6string]

I have officially been disturbed/unsettled/rattled/shaken..... freaked out!