I'm not sure if this is the best place to post this question because it covers quite a few of the sub forums, but I'll provide the background in case it is moved. I'm sorry for the long post, especially as a first poster, but I've literally spent about 6 hours on this and I'm pulling my hair out.
Host Linux 3.2.6-2-ARCH x86_64 | VirtualBox 4.1.8-2 | Guest CentOS 6.2
Host Windows 7 64 bit | VirtualBox 4.1.8 | Guest CentOS 6.2
Background
I use VirtualBox on my ASUS G53SW laptop, on which I have a dual boot setup with Windows 7 and Arch Linux. I have a separate partition ("Data") for my large files and stuff that I don't want to really lose if I choose to rebuild one of the OS's. Here's an outline of what my hard drive looks like in Disk Utility (linux):
- 2012-02-21--1329785589_991x642_scrot.png (125.17 KiB) Viewed 24144 times
I have VirtualBox installed on both OS's, and keep all my VDI files on the Data partition and point VirtualBox to those VDI files. I currently have two virtual machines; a Windows XP and a CentOS machine. For the Windows XP file I actually have two copies of it, one which I access from Windows and the other I access from Linux. With the CentOS, I only access this from my Linux OS so I have just one copy of that.
The problem
Everything was running absolutely fine and smoothly until yesterday. I booted up my CentOS machine from my Linux OS only to find that it was crawling along at an unbelievably slow pace. It takes over five minutes to boot up as opposed to the normal 30 seconds or so. All operations on the machine are slow aswell, even just moving the mouse is laggy.
What I've tried - all of which resulting in the same laggy performance
- Deleting all the vbox files, leaving only the .vdi file (on my Data drive) and then recreating the virtual machine from the vdi
- Throwing loads of RAM (2Gb) and video memory (the maximum allowed) at the VM
- Playing with as many of the settings as I thought would effect the performance
- Installing the Guest Additions (admittedly I thought it was already installed) and restarting the VM
- Creating a new virtual machine with a new disk altogether, then booting up with the same CentOS LiveCD that I used to install it originally
- Restarting the laptop and doing most of the above from Windows host
By this stage I was completely confused. I'd eliminated that the VDI file was corrupt by creating a completely new one and experiencing the same slowness. I'd eliminated a potential host OS issue because it had the same performance from the Windows host (I do run Arch Linux and am quite new to it so I admit that something could have easily been broken by me).
The only thing I could think of was that my Data drive was somehow corrupt. So I then tried to prove this, by loading up my Windows guest machine from both Linux and Windows host (remember that I keep all vdi files on the same partition). As if by magic it was absolutely fine, unscathed, fluid...
So by this time I'm really confused. Not a corrupt VDI. Not a corrupt hard drive. Not a corrupt virtualbox installation (I did do a package reinstall on Linux host but not Windows).
*Getting somewhat agitated now*
Next thought - a corrupt CentOS download which somehow has ruined itself sitting on my CD. Test: boot up laptop with LiveCD I used before. Result: no problem at all, totally smooth.
*Scratches head for about half an hour*
Next stage - I'm going at it guns blazing now - backup Data drive, format it to NTFS with Disk Utility, then try again with a fresh CentOS virtual machine. Result: same slow performance issue.
*Feels like crying*
I have pasted the output of the log file for running CentOS from ArchLinux on http://pastebin.com/8vy1E1xV. I would really really appreciate some help and am more than happy to provide any more information if this wasn't enough, although I'm sure my waffling has gone on long enough already...