Poor VMware Performance on Windows 10/11

Many users of VMware on Windows 11 hosts (and some on Windows 10) have experienced extremely poor performance when running their guest virtual machines (VMs). Their VMs may perform adequately initially, but then perform significantly worse over time, and often exacerbated by running more than one VM. This issue has been documented by many VMware users (ref: https://sansurl.com/vmware-powercfg).

The following solution has been able to resolve the issue in many cases. The fix is to disable power throttling on vmware-vmx.exe. In order to do so, preform the steps below on your host computer.

On your host computer, launch an elevated Administrator Command Prompt window:
- Click the Start menu, then type cmd into the search bar, and then click the option to Run as administrator

Run the following command from the elevated Administrator command prompt:

Command line

powercfg /powerthrottling disable /path "C:\Program Files (x86)\VMWare\VMWare Workstation\x64\vmware-vmx.exe"

Expected results

C:\>powercfg /powerthrottling disable /path "C:\Program Files (x86)\VMWare\VMWare Workstation\x64\vmware-vmx.exe"

C:\>

Note that the command will not return a message after it is executed.

You can verify the configuration change with the following command:
Command line
```
powercfg /powerthrottling list
```
Expected results
```
C:\>powercfg /powerthrottling list
Battery Usage Settings By App
=============================

Application: C:\Program Files (x86)\VMware\VMware Workstation\x64\vmware-vmx.exe
        Never On

C:\>
```
- If nothing is returned from running powercfg /powerthrottling list, either the command was not issued correctly or your system has power throttling fully disabled, which may be true for some desktop configurations.
You may notice an immediate improvement in performance of your virtual machines. If not, restart your Windows host machine. This ensures that all visible and background instances of VMware are restarted with the proper power configuration setting.
Optional: Revert the power-throttling change after your class ends.

The powercfg change will reduce laptop battery performance while VMware is running. When finished with your class, you could optionally revert the change by re-running the powercfg command to reset power throttling on the VMware process to its default, as shown here:
Command line
```
powercfg /powerthrottling reset /path "C:\Program Files (x86)\VMWare\VMWare Workstation\x64\vmware-vmx.exe"
```
Expected results
```
C:\>powercfg /powerthrottling reset /path "C:\Program Files (x86)\VMWare\VMWare Workstation\x64\vmware-vmx.exe"

C:\>
```
- Note that the command will not return a message after it is executed.