Hi there, awhile ago I upgraded my laptop to Windows 7 x64 from Windows XP 32 bit edition. However not before virtualizing the physical installation and I continue to run it under VMWare Workstation today.

The performance on the resulting VM is just absolutely atrocious! I've done a lot of uninstalling stuff that's not longer needed since the machine is virtual in an effort to reduce RAM, but in general the responsiveness seems sluggish. I also run the Virtual Machine on it's own separate HD that is seldom used by the host OS.

I'm just hoping for some general tips in increasing VMWare performance anywhere, thoughts?

EDIT: Both of the below answers were excellent starting points for me. However I did like the selected answer's strategies on disk management. I am running the Virtual Machine in a separate external hard disk, likely I'm going to have to reconfigure somehow. Thanks all!