Rockwell Software on Virtual Machine

Hello Friends

I have gotten a new Laptop 2 months ago, It has Windows 10, so I use Virtual Machines for all my programming software (VMWare Workstation).

Laptop specs:
Dell Inspiron 15 5000 Series
Intel Core I7-7500 @2.7GHZ
2TB HDD 5400 RPM
16GB Ram
AMD Radeon R7 M440

If the guest is WinXP normally Works fine, also, I know the software is different.
The problem is when the guest is Win7 64, with the actual settings works "fine" but frequently, the virtual machine freezes or the response is too slow and I have to restart the VM.

The VM setting are:
Win7 64 Pro
Memory 8GB
Number of processors 1
Cores per processor 4
Hard Disk (SCSI) 100GB

The software that i have installed is Studio 5000 v29 and v30, FactoryTalkView 9.0, RSLogix 500 v10

Also I have another VM with Studio 5000 v24, FactoryTalk View v8 with the same specs and problems.


I have tried another setting, but the above are the best response that i have noticed for both VMs.


What do you recommend to improve the performance?

Thanks in advance.

From the specs, I'd say that the hard drive is not the best to run anything that uses the file system. Although big, it is fairly slow hard drive.

Perhaps it would be possible to replace it with a smaller HDD for the system and use the larger hard drive in a caddy instead of the DVD-ROM?

asteroide said:

Hello Friends

I have gotten a new Laptop 2 months ago, It has Windows 10, so I use Virtual Machines for all my programming software (VMWare Workstation).

Laptop specs:
Dell Inspiron 15 5000 Series
Intel Core I7-7500 @2.7GHZ
2TB HDD 5400 RPM
16GB Ram
AMD Radeon R7 M440

If the guest is WinXP normally Works fine, also, I know the software is different.
The problem is when the guest is Win7 64, with the actual settings works "fine" but frequently, the virtual machine freezes or the response is too slow and I have to restart the VM.

The VM setting are:
Win7 64 Pro
Memory 8GB
Number of processors 1
Cores per processor 4
Hard Disk (SCSI) 100GB

The software that i have installed is Studio 5000 v29 and v30, FactoryTalkView 9.0, RSLogix 500 v10

Also I have another VM with Studio 5000 v24, FactoryTalk View v8 with the same specs and problems.


I have tried another setting, but the above are the best response that i have noticed for both VMs.


What do you recommend to improve the performance?

Thanks in advance.

Click to expand...

A couple of things that I notice, not that I am at all the leading expert...

-Your laptop processor, I7-7500u, is a dual core processor but you say your VM is set to use 4 cores.

-Your HDD's speed is 5400 RPM, which is very slow. That is why everybody says to use an SSD. I myself am also guilty of not going SSD YET, but my HDD is a 7200 RPM drive. A 2TB drive sounds great, but at 5400 RPM you would be much better suited just making it an extra storage drive. Small SSD's (120GB for instance) go for around $70, or less depending on brand, and would make a huge difference in your performance.

-Windows XP is not such a hardware performance hog as compared to Windows 7, especially if you are using Aero themes...

-Is your host OS also 64-bit? I am not familiar with VMWare, but I know Virtualbox will not let you create a VM that is 64-bit if your host is 32-bit. Performance affect I'm sure. (This may have changed with newer releases...)

-Is your VM hard drive set to be dynamic or fixed?

-Since you are using a conventional spinner for a HDD, do you defrag it regularly? An already slow hard drive searching for data that has been sprinkled everywhere takes a lot longer to complete tasks...