Virtual PC 5.0.3:

Connectix replies on its temporary absence;
Readers report update is "slow"

VPC 5.0.3 update returns After being temporarily pulled yesterday, the Virtual PC 5.0.3 update is back.

Update: Connectix informs us: "To avoid the possibility of users thinking they may have to re-download the Virtual PC 5.0.3 updater, please be aware that the Virtual PC updater was never pulled. What actually happened was our web sever went down due to the overwhelming demand for this new update. I apologize for any inconvenience this has caused. Our server problems have now been corrected. Users who downloaded the Virtual PC 5.0.3 prior to the server going down can feel confident in using the updater they currently have."

VPC 5.0.3 slow? We have received three reports today about a decrease in performance after updating to Virtual PC 5.0.3. [Not all users report this symptom.]

John Welle writes: "It's much slower, at least to the pre-5.0.2 level. Applications launch extremely slow (on order of minutes); can sometimes watch windows draw themselves; in the task manager the CPU is most always at 100% (and when it's at rest just moving the cursor around will spike it up to 100%)."

Terry Hulseberg adds: "It is painfully slow. I estimate 1/2 or less of the speed of 5.0.2."

Bob Edwards adds: "Very, very slow! And there seems to be a problem connecting to the Internet which is also very slow."

Update: We have two replies from Connectix on this slow performance symptom:

• "We haven't seen any performance decrease and am very surprised by the large amount your users have reported. If they are running on Mac OS X one thing for them to check is their settings for the CPU Usage sliders. This is a new feature added in 5.0.3. The CPU Usage feature can be found in Virtual PC - Preferences -> CPU Usage."
  
  
• "We have had a few complaints in the Connectix online support forums of exactly the same behavior. To my knowledge, our internal and extensive external beta testing of 5.0.3 did not reveal a big decrease in performance. We are investigating.
  
  Ever since VPC 5.0 shipped there has been a diagnostic service added to Virtual PC to diagnose problems in the field. Please ask your readers with this symptom to choose the 'Save Troubleshooting Details' menu item under Virtual PC's Help menu. A text file is produced which should be emailed to beta@connectix.com.
  
  I suspect that the foreground 'CPU Usage' preference panel is somehow not set to 'High,' but the Troubleshooting Details file would reveal this."