Virtual Machine tweaks for a better performance
June 20th, 2008
Over the last couple of months I gathered the following tweaks for a better performance insight the virtual machine, besides disabling / uninstalling useless services and devices:
- Disable the pre-logon screensaver:
Open Regedit
HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Control Panel\Desktop
Change the value of “ScreenSaveActive” to 0. - Disable updates of the last access time attribute for your NTFS filesystem, especially for i/o intensive vm’s this is a real boost:
Open CMD
fsutil behavior set disablelastaccess 1 - Disable all visual effects:
Properties on your desktop
Appearance -> Effects
Disable all options. - Disable mouse pointer shadow:
Control Panel -> Mouse
Click on the tab “pointers” and switch “enable pointer shadow” off.
So if you’ve got an addition, please post it and I’ll keep updating this blog post!
June 21st, 2008 at 23:57
Another way to do step two is in the registry itself:
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem]
Value Name: NtfsDisableLastAccessUpdate
Data Type: REG_DWORD (DWORD Value)
Value Data: 1
… but your command line way is “safer”!
Quick question on steps 3 & 4: The methods that you outline only affects the current person logged in; do you know of a way to set this for the entire machine? I haven’t found an obvious group policy setting to do as such.
June 23rd, 2008 at 08:40
I usually copy the administrator profile to the default user profile.
June 25th, 2008 at 13:34
Can you document the useless drivers and services?
June 26th, 2008 at 14:10
If it’s Active Directory using Group Policy is the best approach.
July 9th, 2008 at 18:36
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August 6th, 2008 at 17:23
With Virtual Consolidated Backup and Backup Exec you can only do incremental or differential backups based on a file’s last modified date because you cannot change the files archive bit during the backup. Will step 2 of these tweaks cause any problems with this kind of backup?
August 7th, 2008 at 20:16
[...] the pre-logon screensaver - Click here for details. [from Duncan at [...]