VPC 2004 SP1 travelling at relativistic speeds

[Johan Johansson]

Hi,

I've been trying to figure out why my virtual XP SP2 machine appears so
slow even though both host (also an XP SP2 machine) and guest have
plenty of free CPU and memory. Window effects and menues appear very
sluggishly, like on a machine that's swapping really heavily. I then by
coincidence found out that time runs slower on that machine. That's
right, I'm not saying that the machine runs slowly, I'm saying that time
runs slower on it.

By viewing the clock on both the guest and host I found the time
dilation to be about a factor 7. It appears that if you ask for the
current time you will get the right value, as the clock occasionally
jumps a few minutes to the correct time. The problem seems to be timers.
Another indication is that ping sends a packet very rarely, but the RTTs
are "normal".

As my intention is to run tests of our software in a virtual pc and our
software implements protocols which are packed with timeouts, this is
clearly a blocker for that.

If this is a known problem with a known solution I've been googling for
the wrong words. Either way, I'd greatly appriciate some pointers on how
to solve this.

Thanks,
Johan

[Robert Comer]

You can try uninstalling then additions and reinstalling them.

If you have the pre-SP1 additions installed in that VM, XPSP2 can be
extremely slow...

--
Bob Comer

"Johan Johansson" <igeteno...@thankyou.very.much> wrote in message
news:uBEmhKXu...@TK2MSFTNGP10.phx.gbl...

[Johan Johansson]

Ok, now I've tried that, but time still runs more slowly in the VPC.
Again, I'd like to stress that I am *not* having performance problems.
My problem is that time seems to run about a factor 7 slower in the VPC
than where I am, i.e. Sleep( 1000 ) will actually be Sleep( 7000 ) and
timers (as in SetTimer) will expire much much too late.

j

[Robert Comer]

Are you running this on a speedstep processor?

I've never seen this much difference in the clock, maybe someone else has
another idea.

--
Bob Comer

"Johan Johansson" <igeteno...@thankyou.very.much> wrote in message

news:u1MN23fu...@TK2MSFTNGP09.phx.gbl...

[Johan Johansson]

Indeed I am.

j

[Robert Comer]

There are some issues with speedstep processors/chipsets, but usually there
is a performance problem to go along with it. Maybe the same hotfix will
help the situation though.

You can get the hotfix by calling Microsoft Product Support and asking for
KB889677.

--
Bob Comer

"Johan Johansson" <igeteno...@thankyou.very.much> wrote in message

news:OuHDfXgu...@TK2MSFTNGP09.phx.gbl...

[Johan Johansson]

Thanks! Just to make sure we're talking about the same thing, you mean
the one with the symptom below?

SYMPTOMS
Microsoft Virtual PC 2004 and any virtual machines may stop responding
after the computer resumes from hibernation. Virtual PC 2004 and the
virtual machines may not respond for up to one hour.

j

[Robert Comer]

Yep, that's the one. It seems to fix some other issues too...

--
Bob Comer

"Johan Johansson" <igeteno...@thankyou.very.much> wrote in message

news:%23hpAq3j...@tk2msftngp13.phx.gbl...

[Johan Johansson]

Robert Comer wrote:
> Yep, that's the one. It seems to fix some other issues too...

It's a big improvement but still on the order of 10 seconds too slow on
a 5 minute period.

j

[Robert Comer]

I don't think I've seen you mention the VPC additions, have you installed
those?

--
Bob Comer

"Johan Johansson" <igeteno...@thankyou.very.much> wrote in message

news:OKTtAJCy...@TK2MSFTNGP11.phx.gbl...

[Johan Johansson]

Yep. And as per your instructions I've reinstalled them as well:
http://groups.google.com/group/microsoft.public.virtualpc/msg/79e4e220609a5c90?hl=en

j

[Robert Comer]

Sorry about that, I didn't remember and I didn't have that message cached.

I don't know anything else to try.

--
Bob Comer

"Johan Johansson" <igeteno...@thankyou.very.much> wrote in message

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