VBox 6.1, Win 10 Pro, R9 3950X performance and boot issues.

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windowswill
Posts: 2
Joined: 3. May 2021, 01:01

VBox 6.1, Win 10 Pro, R9 3950X performance and boot issues.

Post by windowswill »

Hello everyone! I have finally run into an issue that I simply cannot solve. The issue(s) I am having with VB, is that Linux guests hang on boot with a litany of CPU-related errors (please see attached screenshot for examples) and Windows guests exhibit extreme slowness and sound loops (If a sound plays, part or all of the sound will continuously play over and over until the VM window is closed and even persists if the Windows guest is rebooted.)

I am running the latest (Version 6.1.22 r144080 (Qt5.6.2) VirtualBox on a very much up-to-date copy of Windows 10 Pro (Version 20H2 (OS Build 19042.928) which is all running on brand new top spec hardware. (R9 3950X, ASUS Crosshair VIII Formula x570 motherboard, 128GB G.Skill Ripjaws V DDR4 3600 memory, Nvidia RTX 3090 with resizable BAR enabled, 1x 2TB SSD partitioned into a Windows and a Linux partition [Linux/GRUB isn't currently active as I have tried reinstalling Windows due to this issue], 1x 8TB HDD [being replaced by...], 4x 6TB HDD's for file storage.)

Now I used to have a R5 3600X, 32GB DDR4 3000 memory, ASUS TUF X570 PLUS (non-wifi) motherboard, and a GTX 1060 6GB along with the 1x 8TB HDD and was working on copying over the files from it to the 4x 6TB HDD's. VirtualBox worked just fine on that hardware configuration.

I have gone through the troubleshooting steps to make sure Hyper-V is completely turned off using the Group Policy Editor, the registry hacks, and the command line methods. I have also reinstalled VirtualBox as admin as suggested in a post on a different topic. I have even gone as far as to reinstall Windows and make sure Hyper-V is completely disabled before installing VirtualBox and the same behavior is still present. I have tried making new VM's of various types (Windows, Linux [Fedora, Ubuntu, Debian]) and they all have the issues described above. I have zipped up log files from 3 of the machines, and I would very much appreciate it if someone could look at them and let me know if I have done something wrong, or if this is a new bug or incompatibility with my new hardware.

Thank you so much in advance!
Attachments
Screenshot showing many errors during a hung boot sequence.
Screenshot showing many errors during a hung boot sequence.
GbExCSq.png (107.56 KiB) Viewed 1137 times
Virtualbox_VM_Logs_windowswill_2021-05-02.zip
3 log files from broken VM's. 1 Windows guest and 2 Linux-based guests.
(91.48 KiB) Downloaded 10 times
mpack
Site Moderator
Posts: 39156
Joined: 4. Sep 2008, 17:09
Primary OS: MS Windows 10
VBox Version: PUEL
Guest OSses: Mostly XP

Re: VBox 6.1, Win 10 Pro, R9 3950X performance and boot issues.

Post by mpack »

One issue per topic please, I'm going to look at the Windows 10 log only.

The sound loop is a new bug introduced in 6.1.20 and still present in 6.1.22. I simply mute the audio since I don't really need it.

What kind of drive is drive E: (local/usb/network? hdd/ssd?). I notice that the VM folder is located there.

On performance: the sweet spot for a VM is 2 cores. Not 4 cores. That's assuming that you're a typical user and not a Bitcoin-miner. On a physical PC if the CPU is over specified for the task at hand then the wasted cores don't do any harm. In a VM all cores still needs to be cached and restored on each world switch, so unused cores are an overhead - things get slower.

You still seem to be using VBoxVGA graphics. This was deprecated for modern guests a couple of years ago. I would select VBoxSVGA, and enable 3D acceleration after disabling transparency effects in Win10.

You have the GAs ISO mounted in the drive, but the VM is still using 6.1.18 GAs, implying that the CD has been left in the drive. This can cause problems (the referenced ISO file has been changed). It is better to eject the GAs ISO after use, though we're all guilty of forgetting.

I don't see much else going on in the log, though the total run time is only two minutes.
windowswill
Posts: 2
Joined: 3. May 2021, 01:01

Re: VBox 6.1, Win 10 Pro, R9 3950X performance and boot issues.

Post by windowswill »

Since the audio bug is known, I will simply mute the audio from now on. Thank you for letting me know.

Drive E: is a mechanical HDD (6TB WD Black) and gives fairly good performance for a mechanical drive. I only use the Win 10 VM for running some programs in a sandbox environment if I'm unaware of their true consequences.

I will scale back the number of cores from now on. Thank you for correcting me.

I use VBoxVGA graphics because the other two options do not allow the virtual machine to change the resolution to match the window size resulting in a tiny virtual machine in a huge window, or I would have to scale it and have it look distorted (4K monitor.)

Yes, I attempted to put the GAs disc in the drive as it said there was an update, but did not seem to be updating when I clicked the notification. By the way, the notification is what made the sound loop and was so loud, I shut the machine down and made the log file.

For the Linux issue, should I make a separate topic for each different Linux machine, or just a combined Linux topic?
HF
Posts: 31
Joined: 3. Dec 2014, 01:01

Re: VBox 6.1, Win 10 Pro, R9 3950X performance and boot issues.

Post by HF »

I moved from 6.1.18 to 6.1.22 this morning and performance was dramatically worse. Win 10 64 bit host, Win 10 64 bit guest, Hypervisor is Off.
I rolled back to 6.1.18 and everything is fine again.

Sorry, I didn't save the logs from the 6.1.22 install but nothing changed except the versions - and I did install the guest additions as always.

If it helps though, the VM guest has 8G from a 32G host, has 2 cpus and has VT-x, Nested Paging, PAE/NX, and Hyper-V paravirtualization.
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