Bad Performance Win10 Guest Mac OS 12.1 Monterey

Discussions related to using VirtualBox on Mac OS X hosts.
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UweHoc
Posts: 2
Joined: 4. Jan 2022, 00:04

Bad Performance Win10 Guest Mac OS 12.1 Monterey

Post by UweHoc »

Hey everybody,
I wanted to get a VM running on my laptop to have a better workflow between work and my personal laptop. But I encountered some problems, I wasn't able to fix in the last few days. I kinda ran out of options and was hoping someone on here can help me out.

Problem:
First I installed the Win10 Guest on an external HDD connected via USB 3.1 Hub. When I tried to launch it, it was stuttering with a refreshrate of around 1second. When I managed to install the guest additions and do some tuning in the settings the stuttering became manageable on the desktop but as soon as I try to launch applications my computer runs hot and the stuttering is in a range of around 250ms again (sometimes its very smooth and ideal to work with) in the log it also crashed when I tried to launch OneNote. I can't imagine that the VM is supposed to run this poorly that I can only accomplish the most mundane of tasks.
I figured it would be a bottleneck of the external HDD and I installed another VM on my local SSD. I chose the exact same settings (mentioned below) but this time the stuttering was even more severe. I tried to install the guest additions again but the VM froze up at the "do you want to run this program" prompt and was stuttering with around 30 second delays. I never was able to hit the "Yes" button.
I also can't access external USB flash memory, but thats the lesser problem.

Specs:
I have a 13inch Macbook Pro 2018
i5 4 cores with hyperthreading @ 2,3GHz
8GB DDR3 RAM
256GB integrated SSD

probably all relevant settings:
Guest - Windows 10 (64bit)
Starts in Low Res Mode*
System - Base Memory: 4096MB; Chipset: PIIX3; Processors: 4 out of 8*; Paravirtualization Interface Hyper-V*
Display - Video Memory: 256MB; Scale Facotr: 100%; Graphics Controller: VBoxSVGA*; 3D Acceleration Enabled*
*...changing didn't seem to better or worsen the performance

logs in attachment


Next I will try to reinstall virtualBox and maybe that will help ://

Thanks for any help and suggestions!
If any further information is needed, Ill gladly provide it.
Attachments
Logs.zip
Log from HDD, Log from SSD and Log from SSD trying to connect USB
(113.69 KiB) Downloaded 8 times
granada29
Volunteer
Posts: 691
Joined: 3. Mar 2015, 07:27
Primary OS: Mac OS X other
VBox Version: OSE other
Guest OSses: Linux, macOS, Windows

Re: Bad Performance Win10 Guest Mac OS 12.1 Monterey

Post by granada29 »

You are very close to the limit of your available RAM. Try reducing the VM allocation to 3GB
Also - try the VM configured with 3 CPUs - you currently have 4 configured.

In System Preferences->Security & Privacy->Privacy:
Disable (or remove) VirtualBox/VirtualBoxVM in the Accessibility pane.
Disable (or remove) VirtualBox/VirtualBoxVM in the Input Monitoring pane.
I disabled these 2 a couple of years back and it got rid of severe keyboard lag. YMMV.

If doing all these 4 things shows a marked performance improvement in your VM, then you could try lifting the restrictions one at a time until you find which one triggers the slowdown.

Hope that helps.

*edited to add VirtualBoxVM - not sure if it's in those panes or not.
UweHoc
Posts: 2
Joined: 4. Jan 2022, 00:04

Re: Bad Performance Win10 Guest Mac OS 12.1 Monterey

Post by UweHoc »

Hey Granada, that helped alot, thank you so much!
It is running really smooth now, except for some small features.
mountains
Posts: 1
Joined: 4. Jan 2022, 17:11

Re: Bad Performance Win10 Guest Mac OS 12.1 Monterey

Post by mountains »

granada29 wrote: In System Preferences->Security & Privacy->Privacy:
Disable (or remove) VirtualBox/VirtualBoxVM in the Accessibility pane.
Disable (or remove) VirtualBox/VirtualBoxVM in the Input Monitoring pane.
I disabled these 2 a couple of years back and it got rid of severe keyboard lag. YMMV.
Are you able to explain this based on windows 11?
Did not find these options or what to do.
granada29
Volunteer
Posts: 691
Joined: 3. Mar 2015, 07:27
Primary OS: Mac OS X other
VBox Version: OSE other
Guest OSses: Linux, macOS, Windows

Re: Bad Performance Win10 Guest Mac OS 12.1 Monterey

Post by granada29 »

mountains wrote: Are you able to explain this based on windows 11?
Did not find these options or what to do.
These options are in the macOS host System Preferences. i.e. not in the guest VM.
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