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VBox 3.0.10 Ubuntu 9.10 64 Host Win 7 64 Guest Very Slow!

Posted: 30. Oct 2009, 17:57
by ihendley
Hi,

I am running VirtualBox 3.0.10 r54097 on an Ubuntu 9.10 64 host with a Windows 7 RC Build 7100 64 guest. I am on a Dell Latitude e6500 laptop with a 2.66Ghz C2D and 4GB RAM.

About 1-2 months ago (unfortunately I don't remember exactly when) Windows 7 under VirtualBox started running extremely slowly. I did not change any settings, but it may have been after an automatic update. It went from taking about 40 seconds to boot to about 10 minutes. I then reduced the number of CPU's from 2 to 1 and saw some improvement. It now takes 3-4 minutes to boot.

Can anybody help me isolate this problem further? Are the new versions of VBox broken for my system configuration? Or is there some way I can fix this?

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Re: VBox 3.0.10 Ubuntu 9.10 64 Host Win 7 64 Guest Very Slow!

Posted: 30. Oct 2009, 18:47
by qhartman
I think this is related to a recent kernel change in Karmic. Try installing the Realtime kernel by installing linux-image-rt. It _might_ help. I'm going to give it a shot now myself and will report back the results. I've seen other people posting similar problems and tried the enabling / disabling of Vt extensions and enabling/disabling audio. Neither of those made a difference. I've also tried OSE 3.0.8 and the... not OSE 3.0.10. both exhibit the same very slow "stalling" behavior.

Re: VBox 3.0.10 Ubuntu 9.10 64 Host Win 7 64 Guest Very Slow!

Posted: 30. Oct 2009, 18:57
by ihendley
Update: I tried downgrading to 3.04 then 3.02 and saw no improvement, which indicates that VBox might not be to blame.

Please post the results of your kernel change as soon as they are available. Thanks for the help!

Re: VBox 3.0.10 Ubuntu 9.10 64 Host Win 7 64 Guest Very Slow!

Posted: 30. Oct 2009, 19:03
by MexicanPsycho
I also have the same problem.
After upgrading to 9.10, it is very very slow and the display manager will not boot (I tried rebooting, restarting GDM but to no avail). So, instead, I have a black screen with a login prompt.

The screen kind of flickers and the load of the VM is unusually high when idle (2.00+).

I believe the problem is either related to Virtualbox itself or the video drivers it uses (and it's compatibility with the new ubuntu 9.10).

I'm running on an OSX Snow Leopard host, with a Ubuntu 9.10 guest (I actually ran an upgrade from 9.04 Jaunty).

Re: VBox 3.0.10 Ubuntu 9.10 64 Host Win 7 64 Guest Very Slow!

Posted: 30. Oct 2009, 19:06
by qhartman
*possibly fixed*

After a few minutes of testing, it seems that switching to the RT kernel fixes it with 3.0.8 OSE on Karmic. I had to have the Virtualzation CPU extensions turned on or the XP guest would bluescreen. I haven't tested extensively yet, but I've been able to get some work done that was impossible before, so it's an improvement at the very least. Don't forget to install the linux-headers-rt package as well so dkms can rebuild your kernel modules.

Hope it works for you too!

Re: VBox 3.0.10 Ubuntu 9.10 64 Host Win 7 64 Guest Very Slow!

Posted: 30. Oct 2009, 21:43
by ihendley
Tried your config. and it's still running really slowly for me.

Also I get a crash report that says, "Your system encountered a serious kernel problem" :(

Re: VBox 3.0.10 Ubuntu 9.10 64 Host Win 7 64 Guest Very Slow!

Posted: 31. Oct 2009, 08:24
by mararual
Hi,

I was having this issue with Kubuntu Karmic 64 bit host and Windows XP 32 bit guest. I switch to realtime kernel and works awesome. Steps:
1. Install linux-image-rt
2. Install linux-headers-rt
3. Make sure it is set as the default kernel. I did it by checking the grub init screen, and settings its index in /etc/default/grub (GRUN_DEFAULT)

Hopes this helps anyone else, and thanks to qhartman for the tip.

Re: VBox 3.0.10 Ubuntu 9.10 64 Host Win 7 64 Guest Very Slow!

Posted: 31. Oct 2009, 17:20
by olivierp
Same issue with an XP VM. VBox 3.0.10, Ubuntu 9.10 64bit.
Installing the RT kernel improves things significantly.

Re: VBox 3.0.10 Ubuntu 9.10 64 Host Win 7 64 Guest Very Slow!

Posted: 2. Nov 2009, 21:41
by zelhar
I installed linux-rt but the system kept telling me it there is a kernel error even though it seemed to keep running. The OS guest performed even more poorly.

Re: VBox 3.0.10 Ubuntu 9.10 64 Host Win 7 64 Guest Very Slow!

Posted: 2. Nov 2009, 22:18
by guim
Same problem with my system. Win XP 32 in Ubuntu 9.10 64 using VB 3.0.10 is very slow. I tried with linux-kernel-rt but the system keep warning me kernel error. VirtualBox also report me that the OS guest crashed.

Re: VBox 3.0.10 Ubuntu 9.10 64 Host Win 7 64 Guest Very Slow!

Posted: 4. Nov 2009, 19:32
by zelhar
I'm these issues as well and I tried the rt kernel but it didn't improve things, in fact I kept getting messeges of a kernel error while vbox was running

Re: VBox 3.0.10 Ubuntu 9.10 64 Host Win 7 64 Guest Very Slow!

Posted: 4. Nov 2009, 22:54
by guim
I changed the number of CPU in the guest from 2 to 1 and it seems to improve the performance, at least the sounds and the music is continuous and play well.

Re: VBox 3.0.10 Ubuntu 9.10 64 Host Win 7 64 Guest Very Slow!

Posted: 8. Nov 2009, 22:24
by sahaskatta
same issue here. even typing text into text editor is very slow!

i found that if i disable all visual effects, it becomes a lot better!

Re: VBox 3.0.10 Ubuntu 9.10 64 Host Win 7 64 Guest Very Slow!

Posted: 12. Nov 2009, 06:32
by grump
mararual wrote:Hi,

I was having this issue with Kubuntu Karmic 64 bit host and Windows XP 32 bit guest. I switch to realtime kernel and works awesome. Steps:
1. Install linux-image-rt
2. Install linux-headers-rt
3. Make sure it is set as the default kernel. I did it by checking the grub init screen, and settings its index in /etc/default/grub (GRUN_DEFAULT)

Hopes this helps anyone else, and thanks to qhartman for the tip.
Worked for me.

Re: VBox 3.0.10 Ubuntu 9.10 64 Host Win 7 64 Guest Very Slow!

Posted: 19. Nov 2009, 04:29
by spamless
The fix of installing the rt kernel did not work for me. I am very frustrated. I am running 3.0.12 downloaded yesterday on a 64-bit host with AM2 chip. My appliance is Win 7 64-bit. This is not the OSE version of VirtualBox.