Attempt to Increase Speed of Windows 10 Guest, Now Machine Won't Boot

[IrishEng]

Hello all,

Before I start here is some auxiliary information: I'm very new to VirtualBox and running virtual machines (this is my first post), and the issues I've been having are related to a Windows 10 guest on my Macbook Air (Mojave version 10.14.3 operating system). Note that this is the only machine I have created and used on VirtualBox.

Hardware information for my computer:
Processor: 1.6 GHz Intel Core i5
Memory: 8 GB 1600 MHz DDR3
Graphics: Intel HD Graphics 6000 1536 MB

To start at the beginning of my issues and move forward from there, I successfully got my guest machine up and running for the purpose of using Autodesk Inventor on my mac laptop. I noticed it was ungodly slow, and Task Manager indicated 100% of the CPU was being used in the machine. Through some research I attempted to increase the speed of my machine by altering settings based on advice found in other forums posts. Though the Windows 10 guest was running just fine, it was still slow after many changes.

I've successfully solved the issue described in the following paragraph:

((((( The most recent advice I stumbled upon was to disable "Nested Paging" under System>Acceleration in the VirtualBox settings window. Now when I try to boot the guest it gets stuck on the Windows 10 logo loading screen, and even more strange is that the VirtualBox application on my host OS freezes up when I try to access guest machines' logs. After doing some searching I found the VBox.log folder in finder which I've compressed yet I cannot seem to get it to upload to this post? (The window refreshed at when uploading gets to 100%). I'm assuming this is the correct log file associated to the most recent boot of my guest machine, so if anyone knows an alternative way that I can upload it here that would be great. I do understand that without context from the log file there is not much that can be done to help diagnose issues from a machine. )))))

My primary issue: (solved) Why won't my guest machine boot up after simply changing the nested paging setting, and is that really the reason behind the issue? Also, how can I upload my log file to this website without the page refreshing each time?

My additional issue: Before disabling nested paging, the CPU usage on the Windows 10 guest was still at a steady 100% even when idle on the desktop screen, and because of this Autodesk Inventor was nearly impossible to navigate. Is there a mismatch with my settings vs. my computers hardware capabilities, or could these issues have more implications than how I've set up the machine?

Thank you all for your time and dedication to solving user issues, and I look forward to gaining any insight on how to solve these issues.


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UPDATE: I managed to get my virtual machine to boot by re-enabling nested paging (this should have been obvious to me to begin with, womp oh well) and I also managed to attached my log file of said boot to the post in this edit. So now the only issue I have remaining is a very laggy system when trying to run Autodesk Inventor.

My attempts at speeding up the machine so far have consisted of:
- Lowering # of processors to 1 core
- Changing base memory to 3072 MB of RAM (based on advice in another forum post)
- Enabling 2D and 3D acceleration

I'd sincerely appreciate any other advice for adjusting my settings based on my computer's hardware specs and/or general methods of increasing run speed of Windows 10 guest machines. Thanks again.

[socratis]

I noticed it was ungodly slow, and Task Manager indicated 100% of the CPU was being used in the machine

Have you ever used Win10 before? On a real system? It does exactly that. My PC takes a couple of minutes at every startup before it settles, so does my Win10 VM. Go to the TaskManager and sort the processes by CPU and see who's responsible. It's going to be either the installer, the antivirus, the optimization or something similar, all part of the system.

If it's a new installation, it's going to take about a day or so to install all updates, scan all files, optimize .NET, etc...

00:00:03.434871 File system of '/Applications/VirtualBox.app/Contents/MacOS/VBoxGuestAdditions.iso' (DVD) is apfs

When you're done installing the Guest Additions, eject the CD. Nothing good can come out of it.

00:00:03.482154 NumCPUs <integer> = 0x0000000000000001 (1)
00:00:03.899240 CPUM: Physical host cores: 2

On one hand, you have two cores on your host, you shouldn't be assigning both of them to your guest. On the other hand, Win10 is not going to be very happy with 1 CPU. I would suggest to run nothing else on your host (when using the VM) and assign both your CPUs to the VM. If you have trouble (any) revert back to 1 CPU.

00:00:03.482259 [/Devices/ahci/0/LUN#0/Config/] (level 5)
00:00:03.482260   BlockCache <integer> = 0x0000000000000001 (1)

Go to the VM Settings » Storage » select your SATA controller » Use Host I/O Cache: enable that.

That's all...

[fth0]

I would use 2 CPUs (as socratis suggested) and additionally try out using the High Precision Event Timer (HPET):

Code: Select all

VBoxManage modifyvm <vmname> --hpet on

Please tell us if it helps or not.