Post-setup Performance Tweaks for VPC

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Lot's of people ask me what they can do to increase VPC performance on their machine besides having the right hardware. I came accross a nice document that described a few steps that could help the perfomance of your machine when running Virtual PC.

Tasks

Detailed steps

1. Defragment all host drives

This is quite possibly the most important single thing you can do to improve performance!

a. Open Windows Explorer, right-click on the C: drive icon, and choose “Properties”

b. Choose the Tools tab and click on the “Defragment Now” button

c. Confirm that the C: drive is the chosen volume, and click on the “Defragment” button

d. Wait for the defragmentation to complete. This may take anywhere from a few seconds to a few hours depending on the size of the drive and how fragmented it is. You may need to run this multiple times for full effect.

e. Repeat for all other host hard drives

2. Set the host video resolution

a. Right-click on the desktop à Properties à Settings

b. Confirm that the resolution is at least 1024x768 and the color depth is at least 16 bit

3. Confirm that the system date and time are correct

a. Open the Control Panel à Date and Time

b. Confirm that the date and time are accurate, if not correct them

4. Disable System Restore(Demo-only systems)

a. Right-click on My Computer and choose Properties

b. Choose the System Restore tab

c. Check the “Turn off System Restore” checkbox

d. Choose Ok

5. Disable Virus Scanning

a. Follow the procedures for your antivirus software to disable any “real-time” scanning of the folder where you unpacked the VM files