Windows 10 running like a dog

[craig100]

Runing Linux Mint 17.2 x64 Cinnamon and VBox5.0.0 r101573 on i7 with 16GB RAM and 4K display (Intel GPU), new VM with W10x64. Runs like a dog, can't work out why. Using following settings:-
4GB RAM
128MB VRAM
Scale Factor 1.70
2D Acceleration
SATA Port 0 Normal, 32GB (set as SSD)
USB3 Enabled
Chipset PIIX3
Pointing Device USB Tablet (just because was even slower with PS2)

Just gives the impression of being laggy. Not as snappy as my other Win7 32 bit VM. Also getting the occasional stuck key syndrome, though no keys are stuck down. like loads of sssssssssssssaaaaaaaadddddddddddddd. Could be the new MS wireless keyboard though it doesn't do it in the Linux host. Latest Guest Additions installed.

Sound broken up as well.

This is before adding anything like Visual Studio and before "Activating" it.

Any thoughts?

Craig

[mpack]

Er... Running like a dog? Dogs can run pretty fast! Just try keeping pace with a collie, or a greyhound!

However, I assume you mean that the VM runs slow. In fact it is common for freshly installed Windows to run slow, as that is when it is doing initial disk indexing, update checks etc.

You can take this matter into your own hands: check the task list in guest and host, see who the CPU or I/O hogs are.

If you want to pursue this further then post a VM log file as a zipped attachment. It would be handy if you included the .vbox file in the zip as well.

[entalpia2]

Does OpenGL work in Windows 10? I want to confirm if the version 5.0.0 and Windows 10 is affected by the Ticket: #12048 "No OpenGL Support for Windows 8"

[craig100]

@mpack: Thanks, I didn't realise that was the case with a new Windows install. Forgot to mention it's the Enterprise version, don't need it, but all I could get my hands on in ActionPack. Thought it might be due to Linux Mint scaling x 2 together with VBox scaling x 1.7 and scaling in Windows itself. That's a lot of scaling.

I'll keep an eye on it.

Thanks

[jvanfos1]

I have no access to OpenGL in a Windows 10 Guest on Mac hardware. As mentioned, OpenGL works in a Windows 7 VM, and the issue seems to be caused by the graphics driver introduced for Windows 8+. Hopefully it gets rectified in a future build. I don't rely heavily on VMs, but do use them on occasion to demo the Windows version of lab software to my students, as the UIs change a bit between the Mac and Windows versions.

[craig100]

So time has moved on and I've now purchased a copy of Windows 10 Home version to use as a VM on my Linux Mint 17.2 box. It's my main development environment. It's running faster than the Enterprise version was but it's still painfully slow. I'm running VS2015 Community Edition with SQL Server Express 2014. But the W10 interface is just slow, takes a second for the menu to appear when clicking on the home button, etc. If any VB Dev's need me to run anylogs etc, I'd be happy to. Just want this fixed if poss. W7 was much snappier.

[craig100]

Six months later and a couple of VB versions on (now 5.0.16 build r105871) and W10 is still a dog. Typing is painful. It's my main dev environment for work and it's taking a second to respond to every keystroke or mouse click. It's also sitting at 80%CPU when it's doing nothing and occasionally going as high as 112%.

I just wish someone could advise me on set up or what the problem could be. Or is it par for the course?

Craig

[Martin]

You could start with following the request from the first reply:
"If you want to pursue this further then post a VM log file as a zipped attachment. It would be handy if you included the .vbox file in the zip as well."

[craig100]

Good point. Files duly zipped and attached.

Looking at other threads, it appears that one big issue is lack of 3D support by the host's GPU. My Dell lappy has an integrated Intel GPU and an nVidia Quadro K1100M GPU which doesn't run very well even with the latest driver so I use the Intel. They're driving a 4K display if it makes a difference. The log file shows no host 3D support whichever GPU is running. The host is Linux Mint 17.2 Cinnamon.

[mpack]

Perhaps it would help if you were specific about what is slower (e.g. disk, network, graphics), with relative benchmark numbers to back you up. This conversation is all very vague so far.

[craig100]

When running pretty much anything in the Windows 10 guest, the response to keyboard input or mouse clicks is extremely slow. Like 1 second a character or click. It's particularly bad when working in Visual Studio. I have it's hardware acceleration switched off so it just uses software acceleration. Why a fancy text editor requires such a heavy graphics capability is beyond me, but that's the way Microsoft designed it.

[Rootman]

This is just my $0.02 so take it or leave it as you will.

I too experienced the same issue with Win 10 guests, over 4 different Win 7 hosts. I did a Windows 10 update of a copy of a Windows 7 VM and the result was unusable. Reinstalled the Guest Additions to include the 3d support and it still was terrible. I even moved the VM to an SSD with not much better results. I upgraded 2 of my PCs to new hardware and tried each one with a Win 10 guest. The guests were just unusable.

On another Win 7 host I setup a NEW Win 10 guest, same results with an Intel Xeon quad core with hyperthreading, 12 GB ram (4 for guest) and SSD based disk image. Ran so slow it was unusable as well. Win 10 just does NOT virtualize well.

I run Win 10 on a bunch of physical boxes and the performance is acceptable. My laptop runs Win 10 on the host, it is impressively fast. I have 20 GB host RAM, 1.5 TB total in SSD drive space and the two times I have tried to setup a Win 10 guest it runs like a slug. A Windows 7 guests I run on this host have run almost as fast as some of my Win 7 physical boxes I have. Some day I will setup HyperV on one of them to compare the results. I don't hold out too much hope. I just think something in Windows 10 just not mix well with VB. I will just stick to Win 7 for all my guests for the foreseeable future.

[michaln]

Rootman: Unfortunately, as problem report this is, to use your terminology, unusable. "It ran so slow it was unusable" maybe means something to you but not to anyone else. Is it a specific application/action? Or to put it differently, how do I tell my Windows 10 is "unusable"? It looks quite usable here, but maybe I have different expectations or am not doing the same things.

And as always, where's your VBox.log from the affected VM(s)? Without that, no one can say anything concrete.

[Rootman]

Rootman: Unfortunately, as problem report this is, to use your terminology, unusable. "It ran so slow it was unusable" maybe means something to you but not to anyone else. Is it a specific application/action? Or to put it differently, how do I tell my Windows 10 is "unusable"? It looks quite usable here, but maybe I have different expectations or am not doing the same things.

And as always, where's your VBox.log from the affected VM(s)? Without that, no one can say anything concrete.

I won't post the logs as I don't intend on recreating a Windows 10 guest any time soon. As far as being "concrete", I suppose not, that's why I prefaced my previous comments with "This is just my $0.02 so take it or leave it as you will."

"Unusable" means to me so aggravatingly slow that it cannot be used for any common activity. Simple stuff like opening IE would take 30 to 60 seconds. Once open I was simply cruising the internet and the lag and slowness was so bad that I got aggravated with it and closed the last Win 10 VM down and deleted it. Even the boot times was about 6 times as long as the original Win 7 was.

I fired up the original Windows 7 VM that I had made a copy from to update it to Windows 10 and it ran very, very well. I have also tried a fresh setup of 10 that has the same slow results. Markedly slower response time, so bad that it is not usable as the lag times are so slow it is totally aggravating. What would take a few seconds in a Windows 7 VM took minutes to do in a Windows 10 VM.

As of now I have just given up on running Win 10 as a VM. It's just too slow and I don't want to waste any more time working with it. The Windows 7 VMs I have are adequate for my needs.

Take it or leave it, I am leaving it. I just threw it out there so some poor soul might see that they are not the only one that is experiencing dismal performance on a Windows 10 VM under VB. maybe it will improve. i run 10 on physical machines and it runs very well. Something is just not right with it under VB.

[michaln]

Fair enough, I understand that you don't need Windows 10 guests so it's easier to just leave it alone.

It won't improve by itself though. We don't see a problem, and currently do not have real information indicating what the problem might even be. Without having even the most basic data on your host/guest config it's impossible to guess what could be going wrong. For all I know, you didn't give the guest enough RAM and combined with automatic updates and other "goodies", that can easily make a VM totally unusable or at least unusable for many hours until Windows is done with its housekeeping. But I'm not saying that was the problem because I don't have enough information.