This might seem a bit off-topic for our normal readers.  However, virtual PC (VPC) performance is consistently an issue during our sales process because we use VPC as a demo platform. Additionally, we use VPC during the development and envisioning stages of integration. So here are nine tips you can use to improve VPC performance.  If you don't know what VPC is, you can get all the information from Microsoft Virtual PC Home Page and you can even download the application for free. 

1) Download the most recent version.  Download Here

2) Use Optimal Hardware:

• 2.0+ GHz
• 2 GB RAM MINIMUM
• Internal 10/100 NIC
• Internal 5400 RPM drive for OS
• External USB 2.0 or FireWire Hard Drive; 7200 RPM Drive w/ 8 MB Cache for the VPC image files
• NTFS format with VPC stored in a compressed file folder. This is an instance where the application overhead of the uncompressing process is faster than reading the larger file.

3) Exclude VPC files from your Virus Scanning process.  Most virus scanners let you exclude extensions from the virus scanning process.  Add .VHD to that list.

4) Adjust the RAM to a Maximum of 50% of Host's physical RAM.  Windows has a very disk-intensive process for swapping programs from RAM to your swapfile when memory utilization is contending for resources. Once you get over 50%, your machine will have to spend too much time managing the swapping to disk. This is like giving a drowning man a brick.    

5) Default the network adapter to Local Only.  Increased start time happens when the adapter is trying to negotiate an actual network connection between your Host machine and the VPC. 

6) Kill all the unnecessary applications from Task Manager. Even when you exit from Outlook it will still be running as a service, so kill it. Additionally, we often have local SQL servers that might be running, so close out of them, check the service control panel to make sure they are stopped, and check the Task Manager to make sure they are out of the Active RAM. 

7) Use Super Fetch (requires Vista).  SuperFetch tries to relocate application data from the slow hard drive into all available memory. It utilizes the available capacity to create a so-called warm memory state for the single purpose of making applications available almost instantaneously.

8) Get a 4 GB SD card for your Laptop and use ReadyBoost (requires Vista).   Ready boost works like swapfile to a hard drive but will use USB Ram or SD Ram for this purpose.  This means that you don't have to go out and buy OEM internal RAM for your computer, which is normally very expensive because it is proprietary.  But the SD RAM is cheap, a 4GB SD card will work fine.

9) Turn off the XP Style - I have found I can free up resources by changing my Display properties. Go to Appearance | Windows and Buttons | Windows Classic style.  This will free up some resources allocated to the display.