[Resolved] Slow boot / crash on Windows 10 guest

[tonystark78]

Hello...I'm running a Windows 10 guest 64bit under Windows 10 host 64bit. All this on a Threadripper 2990WX, assigning 32 cores, 100GB to my virtual machine (it must use all the computational power of it).
I had to disable Hyper-V with bcedit on the host because it caused me a lot of pains. But now..everytime I must wait forever for the vmachine to load.
Why I get a lot of
HyperV: Enabled APIC-assist page at 0x000000003ffe2000
HyperV: Enabled APIC-assist page at 0x000000003ffe1000
00:01:17.078517 TM: Giving up catch-up attempt at a 60 010 007 946 ns lag; new total: 60 010 007 946 ns

and it takes from some minutes to 10-15 minutes before I see the Windows desktop. Sometimes it crashes with a Critical error . I have attached a log

[mpack]

I wonder how VirtualBox is supposed to simulate hardware, or how the host OS is supposed to work at all, if all available CPU power and almost all the RAM has been assigned to the guest.

What is the guest doing that it requires 32 cores? I hope you aren't assuming that more cores automatically makes it go faster. More cores means that an OS (or a specially written app) can do more things at once, but each one thing doesn't necessarily go any faster, as that would require sophisticated partitioning of the task among multiple processors.

I won't address your Hyper-v query. A simple search of the forum should throw up the many existing discussions.

[tonystark78]

The guest OS is a simulation software that needs all the power because it can use all the available resources...it partitions the FEM model in 32 zones and runs each one on a different core. Even lowering memory to 64GB still remain slow to boot. How many cores should I assign if there is overhead? 28? 30?
The Hyper-v is not really a problem, the vbox runs on VT-x without the green turtle icon. But why it is slowing down to boot? Why those errors? Your reply is really not helpful...

[scottgus1]

Your reply is really not helpful...

Careful with the snark. This sort of comment makes folks tend to let you sink or swim on your own. And as you're sinking now...

Since Windows 10 allows installs for a limited time without activation, please do the following:
1. Make a new Windows 10 guest with new virtual .vdi disk and only 2 cores and 4GB of memory.
2. Install a fresh copy of Windos 10 in this guest. Don't bother trying to activate it.
3. When this guest is installed, shut it down completely from within the guest OS so the Virtualbox guest window disappears.
4. Start the guest again. When the guest is completely booted up and logged in so you can see the desktop, then shut it down again from within the guest OS so the Virtualbox guest window disappears. Stay there and watch the guest boot so you can shut it down when the login is complete.
5.Post the latest zipped log from this new guest.

The reason for your staying and watching the guest boot is that I would like to see the timing in the log.

[tonystark78]

done this try. The machine starts fast without any lag. I have attached the zipped log

[scottgus1]

Thanks for the log! So this is the line I was looking for:

00:00:54.851263 Changing the VM state from 'RUNNING' to 'POWERING_OFF'

This happens 54 seconds into the run. Assuming this corresponds with the test state of waiting until the log-in is finished then shutting down from within the guest, this looks like a decent speed.

From this I deduce that your host Virtualbox installation is working fine, and the issue lies with your large-provisioned guest. You could try increasing the processor and memory count in this new test guest and see if it slows down. If so, it would seem that Windows 10 either doesn't go for that much cpu & memory, or it's hard on Virtualbox to give that much to a guest.

FWIW it sounds like this project might be more suitable to bare-metal rather than virtual.

One other thing, just noticed it:

a Threadripper 2990WX, assigning 32 cores,

According to https://www.amd.com/en/products/cpu/amd ... per-2990wx, this processor has 32 cores. (yes there's 64 threads, but Virtualbox doesn't use the threads, only the cores.) You have given your entire processor to the guest. Big problem. Your host has nothing to work with. This might be the cause of your slowdown. Try 30 processors in the guest, then 28, then 26, etc. until the speed is reasonable.

[andyp73]

If you search through the forums, there are a number of threads such as: VirtualBox 6.0 on threadripper performance issue and VirtualBox 6.0 brutally slow with AMD Threadripper 2 (to name two) that lead me to believe that currently VirtualBox and Threadripper processors don't always play well together.

Hopefully this is something that the devs are aware of and are looking into.

-Andy.

[socratis]

doing some tests, switching to 30-28-26 cpus did not helped me a lot. Then I've tried starting from 4 cpu, 64GB on the VM allocated. Always slow start...it gave me

TM: Giving up catch-up attempt at a...

that brought me to search on the forum and enable "Use host cache" option. Activating it the boot is a LOT faster...even with 30 cpus.

in some logs I found

00:00:51.020 PGMR3PhysAllocateLargePage: allocating large pages takes too long (last attempt 3960 ms; nr of timeouts 2); DISABLE

so I've used the command

Code: Select all   Expand viewCollapse view

VBoxManage modifyvm <vmname> --largepages off

to disable this largepages...maybe in systems with a LOT of ram it gives problems.
Now the vbox machine seems much faster and I don't get anymore those "giving up" messages...I'll update the thread if I find more info.

[tonystark78]

FWIW it sounds like this project might be more suitable to bare-metal rather than virtual.

yes...I could gain more speed with a bare-metal approach. I've tried with Virtualbox because it's easier for me and I prefer its interface. I've always used it with normal PC. But it seems to not handle very good this "monster". Next step will be using Windows 10 Hyper-V..

[socratis]

I'll update the thread if I find more info.

Please do, so that we can mark the thread as [Solved]. The things that you've tried so far seem to have a positive effect...

[tonystark78]

after cloning a vbox machine, I had again the slow boot problem, found that the "VBoxManage modifyvm <vmname> --largepages off" solved the lagging problem. You can close this post