This reply is to both Claude and Ed. (Thanks for the help, by the bye.) The Laptop has 1 Gig of Ram. The mem assiged to the guest OS (XP) is 256 Meg. The Virtual Disk size w/in VMware is 8 Gig. All of this is identical to my desktop installation which is has a slighltly slower processor than the laptop. Other difference: the desktop is running FC5, the laptop FC6. I am almost certain this is _not_ a ram or disk problem. Nothing else on the system is running slowly and neither is VMware itself. It is almost as though the internal clock signal has simply been divided by 20 or so. Even the blinking cursors blink at a very slow rate, though regularly. Menus fade in discrete and slow steps, but with regular timing, not jerky like if the system were overloaded. Thanks for your help. Dean