Improving Performance of a Windows 95 or 98 Guest Operating System

This topic offers advice for configuring a Windows 95 or Windows 98 guest operating system for better performance inside a VMware GSX Server virtual machine. It pertains to the guest operating system that is running inside a virtual machine. It does not describe actions that should be taken on the host.

To improve performance, you can:

Install VMware Tools
Enable direct access memory (DMA) for hard disks
Use full screen mode
Modify your swap file usage
Disconnect your CD-ROM device
Turn off visual effects

Install VMware Tools

Make certain VMware Tools is installed. VMware Tools provides an optimized SVGA driver and sets up the VMware Tools service to run automatically when the system starts. Among other things, the VMware Tools service allows you to synchronize the virtual machine's clock with the host computer's clock, which can improve performance for some functions.

Enable direct access memory (DMA) for hard disks

Windows 95 OSR2 and later (including Windows 98) can use direct memory access (DMA) for faster access to IDE hard disks. However, this feature may not be enabled by default.

You can turn on DMA access using the guest operating system's Device Manager:

Right-click My Computer and choose Properties from the pop-up menu.
Click the + sign beside Disk Drives to show your virtual machine's individual drives.
Right-click the entry for each IDE drive to bring up its properties dialog box.
Under Settings, check the box labelled DMA and accept any warning Windows displays.
Restart Windows for the new settings to take effect.

Use full screen mode

Run your virtual machine in full screen mode. Click the Full Screen button on the console toolbar.

Modify your swap file usage

In your system.ini file, in the [386enh] section, add the following line:

ConservativeSwapFileUsage=1

Disconnect your CD-ROM device

Using the Devices menu, disconnect your CD-ROM drive if you do not need to use it. If you are using a Linux host, also disconnect /dev/rtc. Disconnecting these devices reduces CPU usage.

The time synchronization feature in VMware Tools does not rely on /dev/rtc.

Turn off visual effects

Windows 98 has a number of visual effects, designed to be attractive, that place unnecessary demands on the graphics emulation in VMware GSX Server. Some users have seen performance improvements when they turn off these special effects.

To modify these settings, right-click on the desktop of your virtual machine, then select Properties from the pop-up menu. Click the Effects tab and deselect the Animate windows, menus and lists option.

Also deselect the Show window contents while dragging option if it is currently enabled.