Intel Power Gadget Does Not Play Nice with Virtualbox on MBA early 2020

Discussions related to using VirtualBox on Mac OS X hosts.
Locked
davenorth
Posts: 13
Joined: 12. Apr 2009, 21:40
Primary OS: Mac OS X Leopard
VBox Version: PUEL
Guest OSses: Various Debian & Ubuntu
Location: White Rock New Mexico

Intel Power Gadget Does Not Play Nice with Virtualbox on MBA early 2020

Post by davenorth »

I had all manner of weird behavior, including VDI corruption, when trying to run or install Virtualbox guests on my new Macbook Air i5 while running the Intel Power Gadget. Of course I was interested in monitoring behavior on a new computer but I finally started turning things off to see what the problem might be. Once I dismissed Intel Power Gadget things got (mostly) normal. So this is just kind of a heads-up to anyone who sees weird stuff while running Power Gadget -- try killing it and see if things don't improve.
SlaunchaMan
Posts: 65
Joined: 6. Apr 2009, 22:28
Primary OS: Mac OS X other
VBox Version: PUEL
Guest OSses: Ubuntu 18.04
Location: Detroit, MI
Contact:

Re: Intel Power Gadget Does Not Play Nice with Virtualbox on MBA early 2020

Post by SlaunchaMan »

Holy crap. You just solved months of issues for me! Uninstalling Intel Power Gadget fixed all of my VM issues.
davenorth
Posts: 13
Joined: 12. Apr 2009, 21:40
Primary OS: Mac OS X Leopard
VBox Version: PUEL
Guest OSses: Various Debian & Ubuntu
Location: White Rock New Mexico

Re: Intel Power Gadget Does Not Play Nice with Virtualbox on MBA early 2020

Post by davenorth »

Hey, thanks for letting me know it helped. Was driving me nuts too.
narindo
Posts: 15
Joined: 13. Apr 2020, 11:49

Re: Intel Power Gadget Does Not Play Nice with Virtualbox on MBA early 2020

Post by narindo »

SlaunchaMan wrote:Holy crap. You just solved months of issues for me! Uninstalling Intel Power Gadget fixed all of my VM issues.

I posted an issue as well, couldn't get it work normally. (viewtopic.php?f=8&t=97681). I turned off SIP, and it worked, but when back on, it didn't. I uninstalled the Intel Power Gadget as you said, it works again.

Makes me wonder what the Intel Power Gadget installs that screws up the Virtualbox?
XciD
Posts: 3
Joined: 5. Apr 2020, 18:47

Re: Intel Power Gadget Does Not Play Nice with Virtualbox on MBA early 2020

Post by XciD »

Oh god, thanks a lot for this :)
Emiliano Necciari
Posts: 6
Joined: 9. Apr 2020, 20:13

Re: Intel Power Gadget Does Not Play Nice with Virtualbox on MBA early 2020

Post by Emiliano Necciari »

I unloaded intel energy driver
sudo kextunload -b com.intel.driver.EnergyDriver

start windows vm and the reload the driver

sudo kextload -b com.intel.driver.EnergyDriver

without issues.
davenorth
Posts: 13
Joined: 12. Apr 2009, 21:40
Primary OS: Mac OS X Leopard
VBox Version: PUEL
Guest OSses: Various Debian & Ubuntu
Location: White Rock New Mexico

Re: Intel Power Gadget Does Not Play Nice with Virtualbox on MBA early 2020

Post by davenorth »

Wow, a lot of people seeing this problem.

FYI, my real interest was thermals. After unloading the Power Gadget I dorked around and ended up installing Macs Fan Control. No issues so far. The weird thing is, I think Intel Power Gadget may have been causing a lot of the noise about the new Airs running so hot. Before, it was usually >50C without much going on, and over 60C with a browser or whatever. Right now, as I type this in Safari, it's showing 47C. If I'm just doing terminal stuff, which is fairly often, it dips into the 30s sometimes.

YMMV, but I'm finding this very interesting.
Avasta
Posts: 4
Joined: 28. Apr 2020, 19:13

Re: Intel Power Gadget Does Not Play Nice with Virtualbox on MBA early 2020

Post by Avasta »

Seems like intel power gadget doesnt exist for MacOS anymore... :(

I need it for Istat Menus
What you get when you try to download IPG for MacOS
What you get when you try to download IPG for MacOS
Intel Power Gadget Download Smaller.jpg (111.77 KiB) Viewed 9081 times
davenorth
Posts: 13
Joined: 12. Apr 2009, 21:40
Primary OS: Mac OS X Leopard
VBox Version: PUEL
Guest OSses: Various Debian & Ubuntu
Location: White Rock New Mexico

Re: Intel Power Gadget Does Not Play Nice with Virtualbox on MBA early 2020

Post by davenorth »

I'm not really surprised to see it offline for the time being. Perhaps they're going to fix it. After running some tests of my own, I suspect some of the thermal issues people have been reporting are directly related to readings from (and while running) the power gadget. Once I stopped using it my temps went down on average, and watching from another meter I could see the periodic spikes from the power gadget. We may have been significantly heisenberged.
TheQL
Posts: 17
Joined: 4. Nov 2020, 22:27

Re: Intel Power Gadget Does Not Play Nice with Virtualbox on MBA early 2020

Post by TheQL »

I had this issue after updating to Big Sur from Mojave. I verified VirtualBox worked and proceeded with stuff, including installing the Intel Power Gadget at some time. Then I noticed VirtualBox did not work properly/at all but couldn't figure out why. This saved my life ;)
Locked