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I have read a discussion about musthave Windows software. User esabine addend a link to Scott Hanselman's tools list. One of the tools Scott was writing about was an optimizer tool for VM’s. - Invirtus VM Optimizer for 70 USD. However, Invirtus is not in the market anymore, and was acquired by Quest and Vizioncore. The prices went up 4 times (to about 300 USD).

Does anyone knows good VM optimizer tool, that will work with VMWare Workstation?

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    +1 for good question. Invirtus VM Optimizer was great for optimizing VM footprint - it would do many things that out-of-the-box tools didn't do, like nuke all the Windows help files (who needs those in a barebones VM?) Since I haven't been able to use it in forever, I'm forgetting some of the other nice features that it used to have. :(
    – Yoopergeek
    Aug 21, 2009 at 16:05

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VMware does have built in tools for shrinking Virtual Disks.

And you can also use the VMware Virtual Disk Manager to do this.

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A lot of supposed optimizers just make it easier to remove unnecessary software/services from Windows--items that can be removed manually (for free) by the user.

I agree with Dave Webb's suggestion for using VMWare's built-in tools. In addition, I keep a bare-bones image (whether it's XP, Vista, or Windows 7) with as much of the bloat uninstalled/disabled. I'll use the bare-bones image as a base for subsequent clones.

The biggest optimization IMHO is ensuring that your VM isn't fragmented.

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  • I do not grok the last part. Why would that matter enough to worry for the guest. (I understand why you do not want the vmdk on the host to be fragmented).
    – Hennes
    Jul 6, 2016 at 12:24

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