A Portal to a Portal

I was bashing my head against my screen, trying to work out why a particular Windows 2003 Server VM was sooooooooooooooooooooooooooo slow.

I'd done all the usual things - checked the memory allocation, removed un-needed hardware, defragged the virtual SCSI disks etc. but to no avail.

Thankfully, Google had the answer, Google is my friend :)

"Display Hardware Acceleration

Windows Server 2003 has display adapter hardware acceleration disabled by default. This slows down graphics performance and mouse responsiveness in the guest operating system.
To enable hardware acceleration in a Windows Server 2003 guest, open the Control Panel, and then open the Display Properties control panel. On the Settings tab, click Advanced. On the Troubleshoot tab, drag the Hardware acceleration slider all the way to Full."

Source: http://pubs.vmware.com/guestnotes/wwhelp/wwhimpl/common/html/wwhelp.htm?context=GOS_Install&file=guestos_win2003.html

Obvious really :)