I run my Windows 7 that's installed on Boot Camp via VMWare Fusion. I like keeping it open so that I don't need to wait 3 minutes until it starts up and so that I don't need to login every time I close the application. The only problem is that it uses up lot's of resources (e.g. 1GB ram) even when I'm not actively using it.

What I would really want is to have it running in the background, but not consuming any resources. Sort of like hibernating the virtual machine, such that when I start it up, ideally the same exact state is restored very quickly and doesn't require a login.

I thought that I might be able to do this with VMWare Fusion's Suspend command, but it's disabled on my version. Is suspend really the feature I'm looking for? If so, how can I enable this feature?

Update: According to the help, it seems that this is the feature I'm looking for, however it's not supported with boot camp partitions. Is there any similar feature, hack, or do you have any other suggestions which can produce similar results as VMWare's suspend feature for Boot Camp partitions?

  • What happens if you suspend/hibernate Windows itself? Is that an option? – Jason Salaz Feb 24 '11 at 0:32

I know that Parallels 6 can 'pause' the boot camp partition. It suspends the virtual machine and frees up system resources without actually suspending the machine i.e. hibernation, however I don't know of any hack/workaround for VMWare Fusion.

Also Parallels can suspend the machine very quickly (around 5 seconds) so you can quit the app freeing up resources. I use it quite a lot as my computing class requires Windows.

Pausing a Virtual Machine Pausing a virtual machine releases the resources, such as RAM and CPU, currently used by this virtual machine. The released resources can then be used by the host computer and its applications or by other virtual machines running on the host computer.

Hope this helps.

  • Wow that really helps, especially because I'm still using a trial version of VMWare. I'll definitely check out Parallels. Thanks! – Senseful Feb 24 '11 at 21:44

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