Full CPU usage with MS-DOS or FreeDOS

theresonant · Post by **theresonant** » 11. Nov 2009, 17:45

Hello all!
I created two virtual machines, one with MS-DOS 6 and the other one with FreeDOS 1.0, and in the moment I start them, the virtual machine begins using an entire core of the processor, even when completely idle (CPU usage goes up to 50% on my Intel Core Duo, and the cooling fans go crazy - a bad thing on a laptop). I suspect this to happen due to the real-time nature of these two operating systems, since I also have a Windows XP virtual machine, which is very gentle on the processor (I barely even know it's running). Is there a way to keep the virtual machines for DOS-like systems under a certain CPU usage limit?

Cheers!

Post by **Sasquatch** » 11. Nov 2009, 20:52

That is unfortunately not possible. setting the CPU to idle mode is done through ACPI, something these OSses haven't heard of. Hence the full CPU load.

Post by **vbox4me2** » 11. Nov 2009, 21:34

For such OS's there are tools like dos-idle, winwait, etc... TSR tools which still can be found on the web.

virtualbox.org

Full CPU usage with MS-DOS or FreeDOS

Full CPU usage with MS-DOS or FreeDOS

Re: Full CPU usage with MS-DOS or FreeDOS

Re: Full CPU usage with MS-DOS or FreeDOS