jwcolby
jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com
Fri Mar 5 07:40:15 CST 2010
Jurgen, OK, I installed Office 2003 on the VM. Both the host and the VM are running Windows 2003 standard. I created and shared a directory on the host. On the VM I mapped the shared host directory to drive Y:. I set up an Access BE in the VMWare host shared directory. Then I created an FE in that VM and linked all of the tables in the BE in the host shared directory through the mapped drive. This "mapped shared directory" is my standard operating procedure since my clients are all small and allow me to do this. BTW, the last I heard using a URL for the table links is a known speed issue in Access. I created a form to one of the more complex tables and opened the form. As I started navigating through the form the CPU usage in the VM averaged around 40%, and way less than that on the VMWare host. It appears that Access caches the data because after navigating through every record via the subform, I could navigate back and forth through the records and the CPU usage stayed at close to zero. After writing this much, I went back in and navigated through the data again, and again the CPU usage shot up. After moving back and forth a few times the CPU usage in the VM again settled to zero. Apparently the Access cache is purged after some period of inactivity, so that it has to be refreshed if you start loading data again. One way or the other, the CPU usage on the VM does not stay at 100% more than the time it takes to grab the data. This is admittedly a much simpler scenario than you are working with but it may point you somewhere. If it were me I would do some troubleshooting. Is the VM CPU usage pegging as soon as the FE is opened? If so create a simple FE that does not do anything and try opening that. Then build a simple form bound to one of the tables and try opening that. Does the CPU usage peg now? If not... It certainly appears that your FE is doing something behind the scenes that keeps data moving. John W. Colby www.ColbyConsulting.com