VMWare - Lots of disk activity after you shut down a virtual machine

Somehow I always found VMWare easier to use than HyperV, except for one minor detail: after I shut down a virtual machine, the VMWare host starts accessing my local harddisk like a maniac. This heavy disk load can take up to 20 minutes, in which I'm

• unable to boot another VM. Well technically I can boot another one, but it's so slow you can't do a thing in it.
• unable to shut down my laptop ... Windows waits until the VMWare host has finished his frantic disk rampage.

I came to live with these terms, so usually I shut down my virtual machine 30 minutes before my shift ends (lets hope my boss doesn't read this blog). Still, it's a pain in the **** if you have another meeting elsewhere and you're stuck staring at a Windows is shutting down message because VMWare has still business to do on your disk.

Luckily, lately I got a nice solution from one of my new colleagues.
If you add mainMem.useNamedFile = "FALSE" to your vm's configuration file, the post-shutdown disk activity stops.

Step-by-step

1. Make sure your VM is turned off.
2. Open the virtual machine's VMX file in notepad.
3. Append mainMem.useNamedFile = "FALSE" at the bottom of your vmx file.
4. Save your changes.
5. Boot your VM again.

We're not sure what this setting actually does, but at least it works :)
I've been testing it for the past month on all my VM's and I must say, I haven't had any problems. The virtual machines still work, their performance hasn't dropped, but now they shut down in a few seconds and without any increased disk activity afterwards.

VMWare on a machine hosting the Hyper-V role

A quick trick if you want to run VMWare workstation on a machine that's running Hyper-V.
Normally you can't run VMWare when the Hyper-V role is enabled on a machine, as the hypervisor will claim some resources upon startup ... which are also needed by VMWare to run its virtual machines.

But I found the following trick to work like a charm:

1. Open a command prompt and type the following:
   

   bcdedit /copy {default} /d "Windows Without Hypervisor"

   The above command should say: The entry was successfully copied to {guid}.
2. Copy that guid to the clipboard (including the curly braces!).
3. Finally, execute the following command in the command prompt:
   

   bcdedit /set {guid} hypervisorlaunchtype off

   Replace {guid} with the GUID that you copied in step 2.

This will create a new entry in your boot menu, called "Windows Without Hypervisor".

• If you want to run VMWare, just boot your machine using that entry. You won't be able to host HyperV machines, but VMWare will run just fine.
• If you want to use HyperV, boot your machine using the default boot entry. This will allow you to run Hyper-V machines, but no VMWare.

Yes, the workaround doesn't fix the fact that VMWare vm's can't coexist with HyperV machines ... but for now that's just fine for me. At least now I can run both vm's on my laptop :)

This workaround was also mentioned here, but the original blogpost is no longer available so I just reposted it here. (All credits go to the original poster of course)