Unusable Windows 10/11 guests (trying for 3 years)

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llewellyn
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Guest OSses: Microsoft Windows 10 version 22H2

Unusable Windows 10/11 guests (trying for 3 years)

Post by llewellyn »

For about three years I have not been able to create any Windows 10 or 11 virtual machine that is not unusable using VirtualBox. It took me about 12 hours to install Windows, no exaggeration, and the virtual machine constantly freezes, eventually taking me half a day to run a simple application. Windows 7 used to work perfectly.

I tried allocating more resources, installing Oracle VM VirtualBox Extension Pack, disabling various services (Superfetch, Windows Update, Windows Defender), but to no avail. A number of processes are increasing disk or sometimes memory usage up to 100% (Microsoft Compatibility Telemetry, Antimalware Service Executable, Windows Problem Reporting, Windows Error Reporting, Windows Update, AntiMalware Definition Update and System), but Windows 11 22H2 runs perfectly fine on the same computer from an external disk and this does not happen. Disconnecting the network adapter always helps.

My laptop is running openSuSE Tumbleweed 64-bit and it's specifications are: Intel® Core™ i7-7700HQ (6 M Cache, up to 3.8 GHz), 8 GB DDR4, 1 TB HDD, GeForce GTX 1060 6 GB. I'm using VirtualBox 6.1.40_SUSE r154048.

The settings for the Windows 10 22H2 64-bit guest are: 2 GB RAM, I/O APIC and EFI enabled, 2 CPUs with 100% execution cap, no extended feature selected in the Processor tab, Nested Paging enabled, 256 MB video memory, VBoxSVGA graphics controller, 3D Acceleration enabled.

Any help will be appreciated.
scottgus1
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Re: Unusable Windows 10/11 guests (trying for 3 years)

Post by scottgus1 »

Start the VM from full normal shutdown, not save-state. Run until you see the problem happen, then shut down the VM from within the VM's OS if possible. If not possible, close the Virtualbox window for the VM with the Power Off option set.

Right-click the VM in the main Virtualbox window's VM list, choose Show in Explorer/Finder/File Manager. In the "Logs" subfolder, zip the VM's "vbox.log", and post the zip file, using the forum's Upload Attachment tab.
llewellyn
Posts: 3
Joined: 3. Dec 2022, 14:06
Primary OS: openSUSE
VBox Version: OSE other
Guest OSses: Microsoft Windows 10 version 22H2

Re: Unusable Windows 10/11 guests (trying for 3 years)

Post by llewellyn »

Thank you for your reply!

I have also noticed that although the disk usage is 100% almost always, the read and write speeds are very low, as they appear in Task Manager, often below 2 MB/s, rarely increasing to 15 MB/s for a second or even more rarely to more than that, but below 50 MB/s, I don't know if it is normal.
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mpack
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Re: Unusable Windows 10/11 guests (trying for 3 years)

Post by mpack »

ZIP file exceeded allowed size
That might be because you provided 4 copies of the log, instead of the one log requested by exact name!

The software is not VirtualBox, it's a third party (SUSE) build from the open sources.
00:05:57.060766 VMMDev: Guest Log: vboxIPCSessionThread: Session 0000000019840804: Unknown message: 0x1, 0x3, 0x0, 0x0
00:06:02.087269 VMMDev: Guest Log: vboxIPCSessionThread: Session 0000000019840804: Unknown message: 0x1, 0x3, 0x0, 0x0
00:06:07.113226 VMMDev: Guest Log: vboxIPCSessionThread: Session 0000000019840804: Unknown message: 0x1, 0x3, 0x0, 0x0
00:06:12.133780 VMMDev: Guest Log: vboxIPCSessionThread: Session 0000000019840804: Unknown message: 0x1, 0x3, 0x0, 0x0
00:06:17.163381 VMMDev: Guest Log: vboxIPCSessionThread: Session 0000000019840804: Unknown message: 0x1, 0x3, 0x0, 0x0
00:06:22.190451 VMMDev: Guest Log: vboxIPCSessionThread: Session 0000000019840804: Unknown message: 0x1, 0x3, 0x0, 0x0
00:06:27.206102 VMMDev: Guest Log: vboxIPCSessionThread: Session 0000000019840804: Unknown message: 0x1, 0x3, 0x0, 0x0
I've been seeing this in several different topics. IPC is (I believe) "Inter-Process-Call", but I'm not sure what is being called by what - though it looks like 3D acceleration is always involved. This looks like an API version conflict, but I don't see any user error involved. Looks like a VirtualBox bug.
fth0
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Re: Unusable Windows 10/11 guests (trying for 3 years)

Post by fth0 »

This log message from vboxIPCSessionThread is new in VirtualBox 6.1.40 (Change Log: "Windows Guest Additions: Added fixes related to VBoxTray IPC"), and it's indeed erroneously created when the IPC message type is inside the valid range. In VirtualBox 7.0.(0|2|4), it's correctly created when the IPC message type is outside the valid range. For some reason unknown to me, the fix in Changeset 96663 wasn't backported. I'll try and ask someone who knows about the consequences ...

Since the OP's problem is allegedly older than that, I'd rather concentrate on the slow disk I/O. On what type of device is "/mnt/files/Home/Virtualbox VMs/" located?
fth0
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Re: Unusable Windows 10/11 guests (trying for 3 years)

Post by fth0 »

FWIW, the log messages from vboxIPCSessionThread can be considered as a red herring. The corresponding bugfix is already contained in the VirtualBox test builds 6.1.41r154521 and newer.
llewellyn
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Re: Unusable Windows 10/11 guests (trying for 3 years)

Post by llewellyn »

Please accept my apologies for the delay.
fth0 wrote:On what type of device is "/mnt/files/Home/Virtualbox VMs/" located?
It is a partition on the laptop's internal hybrid hard drive (Seagate FireCuda ST1000LX015) that contains the /home directories.
fth0
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Re: Unusable Windows 10/11 guests (trying for 3 years)

Post by fth0 »

I don't know what speed would be realistic, but VirtualBox accesses its virtual disk file rather randomly, so I would expect the typical HDD speed of the hybrid hard drive, not the SSD speed.
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