Problem Windows XP 32bit sp3 on windows 10 pro

[AColza]

Hello everyone, it's the first time I've written on the forum, but I have used your advice in case of need.
But now I have a problem of which I have not found an open discussion.
My problem is related to virtual machines running Windows XP 32bit sp3. Virtual Box is installed on Windows 10 pro.
Last week I found myself having to make changes to a very old machine, where the software to make them run on XP, so I came back to use a virtual machine created 4/5 years ago, where I've never had problems, but now I noticed particular slowness, both during start up and during its operation. this slowness slowed me a lot the communication with the equipment and often I fell communication losing information and changes.
After several tests done by increasing the RAM of the virtual machine, defragmenting the virtual disk, updating virtual box, reinstalling Virtual box, I recovered the old notebook with windows 7 pro, I noticed that with the old version of virtual box I have no problem.
I would like to test, by performing a virtual box downgrade that I currently have installed on windows 10 pro, from version 5.2.12r 122591 to version 5.0, is this possible?

If you need more information to help me, please ask me

thank you

[mpack]

Please post a VM log file. With the VM fully shut down, right click and "Show Log" in the GUI, save "VBox.log" (no other file) to a zip, and attach the zip here.

[AColza]

Thanks, attached I send the log file

[mpack]

I see you are using VirtualBox 5.2.0, which is by definition the buggiest release in the 5.2.x series.

I would bring the software up to date (5.2.12 at time of writing). You should also update the Guest Additions, which are still on the 4.x branch, so very old.

Finally I would increase graphics RAM in the VM to 128MB, since the host has plenty of RAM. You should have been getting warnings in the VM settings dialog about the VRAM being too low (16MB).

Then let's see where that takes us.

....

One parting question: what is drive F on your host? If that's an external drive then naturally the VM is slow, though you could speed it up by killing off disk management tasks in the XP guest, e.g. disk indexing.

[AColza]

Thanks for the advice, but I have to apologize because I sent the wrong log file.
Two weeks ago I had to recreate the virtual machine because it did not start up anymore, so I recreated it by connecting it to the .vdi file of the previous one.

In the meantime, I also answer about the tests you asked me to do and I just did, I increased the video memory to 128MB, but nothing has changed, the machine is still slow at startup, I also see it from scrolling of the windows startup bar that often crashes, and as the XP startup logo appears and disappears on the screen. I do not know how to describe what happens.
On the contrary, on the old PC this does not happen, everything flows freely and without problems.
I do not understand how the guest 4.0 can have, when I install the new version of VirtualBox it also installs the relative guests. Do I need to start the installation for each individual virtual machine created previously?

[AColza]

I was thinking, could not it be a PC problem? the PC I currently use does not have dedicated video memory, while the old PC has dedicated video memory

[mpack]

The guest (being virtual) does not use physical host graphics RAM, so the latter question is moot.

I see that the new log still shows the guest using 4.1.8 Guest Additions.

I see you increased allocated cores from 1 to 2. In fact if XP is already installed then it won't recognize that this happened, unless it was originally installed with a multi-cpu kernel. However VirtualBox still has the overhead of context switching an additional core, so this most likely slowed things down some more.

If you open a task manager inside the guest you can check whether it shows you a performance profile for one core or two. Also your host only has two cores, so this means that the guest can slow down the host and vice versa.

Finally: CPU time is like energy. It gets converted into work, it can't just disappear. So look at the task manager in the guest and the host and see who the CPU or I/O hogs are. But do bear in mind that any CPU or I/O hogging process running inside the guest (e.g. indexing, windows update) will present on the host as a VirtualBox process being the hog.

[AColza]

Ok, I put the processors back to 1 because entering the task manager is as you said, I see only one processor, I had taken to 2 to run a test.

Having a little bit of fear in updating the guest additions, I created a copy of the virtual machine, I installed the new guest additions but it did not fit anything, it's always slow.

I did not understand what you write at the end point, could you answer it?

Thank you very much

[mpack]

I'll highlight the important part of the final paragraph :-

look at the task manager in the guest and the host and see who the CPU or I/O hogs are.

[AColza]

I am attaching a short video where you see the loading window of Windows XP that hangs and the mode with which they are the XP logo, then I executed the images on the screens of the task manager of both Windows XP and Windows 10

[AColza]

Sorry for the delay but for a series of inconveniences at work I had to get away from the problem, which still did not solve, I checked the CPU HUG, but I do not find anything abnormal, if not different executions of svchost.exe.

I send you the image anyway.

In these days I still have to use two other old virtual machines with XP and all have the same problem, ie slow start and even once started are slow. I'm sure that time ago with the old Notebool HP with windows 7 pro I had no problems

[mpack]

I agree that 96% system idle means there is no CPU hog. Something could still be hogging I/O however. If you right click on the columns headings of that dialog you should be presented with a menu that allows you to select the columns which should appear - most are hidden by default. I enable CPU Usage, I/O Reads and I/O Writes. In evaluating I/O hogs, look for processes whose I/O figures are much larger than others, and especially when the number is continually incrementing.

Then Google for information on the processes which are the worst offenders. Typically for XP they'll turn out to be related to Windows Update. Disk indexing can be disabled. I also see a lot of non-standard processes in the list, e.g. Modbus related.

Ultimately, if there is no extra CPU use and no extra I/O use then by definition the OS is running well and you should look to your own perceptions to evaluate why you believe it runs slowly!

[AColza]

Thank you for your patience and help
I send you the image I've done with I / O displayed.

I tell you that the virtual machines with XP are slow because since the windows loading phase the bar runs slowly and then the windows logo disappears slowly. thing that on the old notebook with an older version of Virtgualbox, it should be a 5.0 .... this does not happen.
For this reason I wanted to ask if you can downgrade virtualbox, so I can see if anything changes or not.

thanks again for your patience

[mpack]

Nothing really stands out, but the intention was for you to watch the general behaviour - is the I/O count on one process continually incrementing? I can't really tell that for you from one screenshot or any other reasonable number.

Looking again at the original log I see that the VM reaches the stage of having loaded the GAs only 21 seconds after boot. It looks like you started interacting after 36 seconds. Those seem like quite respectable times to me, especially for a single core VM whose VDI is located on a secondary drive. Why do you call it slow?

Incidentally, the following link discussed how to change the XP kernel from single CPU compatible to multicpu. It's quite easy if you take your time and read the instructions, but do remember to back up the VM before trying it. viewtopic.php?f=1&t=24823&start=15#p111502.

[AColza]

Hello everyone, I still could not solve the problem, and is a very big problem for me, because if I use the virtual machine with the 1st old notebook everything works properly, while if I use it on the 2nd notebook, or on the 3rd ° notebook just bought I have problems, the virtual machine is too slow and communication with the machines that I program.
1st notebook = HP probook 6570b code c5a67et
2nd notebook = HP probook 450 G4 code y8a15ea
3rd notebook = HP probook 450 G5 code 2xz22ea
the problem is that having to run old machine programming, I need to virtualize Windows XP 32bit

On PC 1 I installed the virtualbox version 5.1.22
On PC 2 I installed the virtualbox version 5.2.16
On PC 3 I installed the virtualbox version 5.1.22

Who can help me?