auto-resize guest display - works only for an hour at a time

[maker675]

VirtualBox 5.0.14 / El Capitan Host / Windows 10 Guest / Guest Additions installed

"Auto-resize guest display" works when the Guest has just been launched. But then after an hour or two of work in the guest environment there's some kind of chime from Windows 10 and the guest display resizes such that it no longer matches the Host. Typically I then try toggling lots of settings, occasionally that works but generally have to restart the Guest to get back a resolution that matches the Host.

This has been going for for months and it's not a very practical way of working.

Any ideas what is going on? What to do?

[socratis]

I'm a little bit skeptical about the time trigger. So, if you launch your guest and have it sitting there it happens after a certain timeframe? What does the Event Viewer in Windows says? Could you attach the VBox.log for the session?

[loukingjr]

I haven't run into this. I will let my Windows 10 guest run Spotify so it's doing something while i sleep. night night.

[loukingjr]

Any ideas what is going on? What to do?

I couldn't reproduce this.

Please post the VM log file. With the VM fully shut down, right click and "Show Log" in the GUI, save "VBox.log" to a zip, and attach the zip here.

[maker675]

Sorry. Thought I'd be notified of responses (by mail) and didn't check back to forum.

Here are some log files...

There should be multiple examples of reported event.

[socratis]

In most of the cases your guest requirements are too high. You're running almost at, or just below the limit of what RAM is available at your host. Either but some more, close some applications on the host or reduce the requirements of your guest.

[maker675]

Great.

That's really good to know @socratis

A pity I can't update my 8GB RAM Macbook Pro 13 inch to 16GB

It's only 6months old

Would NEVER have anticipated needing to do so much exciting stuff

[gwiesenekker]

I am having the same issue with Virtualbox 5.0.14, Ubuntu 14.04.3/16GB RAM as the host and Windows 10/2GB RAM as the guest. The resize works after a reboot but stops after some time. I am seeing this issue only with Windows 10 guests, so perhaps it is Windows 10 Guest Additions related?

Gijsbert

[socratis]

1) You're not having the same issue, since you're on the OSX Hosts forum.
2) Start a new thread in the appropriate board. I would pick "Windows guests".
3) Minimum information needed for assistance.
4) Read #3.

[maker675]

@socratis

your suggestion seems to work: quitting lots of apps does allow virtualbox to remain fullscreen at a appropriate resolution

In the OSX activity monitor / memory tab / one can follow many different memory indicators:

- memory pressure;

- memory used;

- cache used;

- swap files;

- app memory;

- wired memory;

- compressed memory;

I thought it would have been "memory pressure" that would be the risk indicator for this problem, but it would appear not. Pressure might be 80% (and the display GREEN) yet if you quit apps pressure might still remain 80% - however "app memory" will fall.

Do you think it's "app memory" that I need to keep an eye on?

Or something else?

(Clearly its suboptimal to have to quit apps for VB to run properly when the computer is far from struggling with the load. So at least it would be good to understand where the threshold is.)

Tx.

[socratis]

Actually, I don't really like the way that Apple changed the reported memory, so I use a small utility called Memory Monitor (http://www.bernhard-baehr.de/) which runs always in my Dock and reports the "traditional" amounts of RAM. I use other tools like Menu Meters, but that doesn't work on El Capitan.

So at least it would be good to understand where the threshold is.

Well, some people say that it should be 50% of your available RAM. I don't quite agree. That could very well be the case when you had 4GB of RAM, host uses 2GB so you allocate 1GB to your guest. Then yes. But if you have a ton of memory, my rule of thumb is Available minus 1-1.5 GB of RAM. That has worked fine for me...

[loukingjr]

The two main iMacs I use have 32GBs. Most all my guests are set to use 2GBs because that is plenty for what I do with the guests. On the boxes I have with 8GB or 16GB, I still set them at 2GBs.

That's just me.

[gwiesenekker]

I checked the WIndows event log and it showed Event ID 4113: 'Display driver VBoxVideoW8 stopped responding and has been successfully disabled' each time this happened. The workaround is easy: launch Device Manager, right-click on the 'VirtualBox Graphics Adapter for Windows 8' under 'Display adapter', disable it and enable it. But see also ticket #14409: there is a new build of the Guest Additions that should solve this issue.

Gijsbert

[maker675]

Thanks for the good information everybody.

My mac is clearly underpowered at 8GB for running Virtual environments. Am now using the suggested memory monitor.

The disable/enable graphics driver trick works perfectly and much better than a restart.

Here's the link to referenced ticket for everyone's convenience: https://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/14409