Windows 11 issues

[marius_1956]

On my physical Windows box (Intel i7, 16 GB RAM, 1 TB SSD disk) I used to install and run up to 4 guest Windows VMs, mainly Windows Server 20xx, Windows 10 and Windows 11 with acceptable performance.
After upgrading the host OS to Windows 11 Pro 23H2 I have serious problems, including guest VMs that slow down, guest VMs freezing, and so on.
I installed VirtualBox 7.0.14 without solving the issues.
From Google I see many other people with similar problems and very different suggested solutions, including changing the (virtual) video card to VBoxVGA, installing specific versions of Guest Additions, disabling Hyper-v on the guest (I disabled it years ago in Windows 10), downgrading to VirtualBox 6 and so on.
As it looks to be a quite general problem, is there any "official" guide to configure VirtualBox and/or guest VMs to get acceptable performance in Windows 11 hosts?

[scottgus1]

The usual suspect in poor performance on Windows hosts is host Hyper-V, which is itself a hypervisor like Virtualbox, and basically turns Virtualbox into nested virtualization, and all the slowdowns thereto applying.

If you want full-throttle Virtualbox on Windows, you have to disable Hyper-V. HMR3Init: Attempting fall back to NEM (Hyper-V is active) Note that Microsoft continues to "improve" Windows with more Hyper-V-requiring "services" (One day someone will find a big Melt-down/Spectre-quality security hole in Hyper-V. And the whole Microsoft world will come to an end....) As these services come out, more tweaks will be needed to get good Virtualbox. Some new things might not be in the tutorial yet.

Look for the green turtle in the VM status bar. If it's there, host Hyper-V is enabled.

[UliBär]

I had the same problems migrating the host from Windows 10 Pro 22H2 to Windows 11 Pro 23H2.

I did all the tweaks mentioned in above post to no avail. There still was a hypervisor active and detected by msinfo32.exe. After googling around i found the solution:

Additionally to the tweaks above, i had to issue the following command in an administrative shell and a forced reboot:

Code: Select all

bcdedit /set vsmlaunchtype Off

After that VirtualBox runs as good as on the former Windows 10 Pro 22H2 installation.

[Feets]

Intel i7-11700 32GB 500GB SSD Windows 11 Pro 22H2 was working fine with VirtualBox 6. I updated to VirtualBox 7 last week and started having performance issues. I then updated to Windows 11 23H2 today and, if anything, performance has worsened.

I'm noticing Python is causing constant large CPU spikes. Meanwhile VirtualBox is a consistent 1% to 2%.

I've tried the admin shell command and rebooted but the the poor performance persists. I will soon see if I can downgrade to VirtualBox 6 and return this machine to its former glory, unless a magical update comes along very soon.

Edit: I will also add that I've had performance issues in recent months as a result of a Windows Update package that was later resolved by a further update, weeks later. I wonder whether Windows Update might release something that will fix this issue soon enough. I'm going to wait a few days.

[Sm4sH]

...found the solution:

Additionally to the tweaks above, i had to issue the following command in an administrative shell and a forced reboot:

Code: Select all

bcdedit /set vsmlaunchtype Off

After that VirtualBox runs as good as on the former Windows 10 Pro 22H2 installation.

Hi,

kann man hier keinen privat anschreiben? Wenn das geht, würde ich mich freuen über eine PM.

Habe das in meinen Win 11 24H2 ausgeführt in der PowerShell - hat er auch gemacht - nach neustart immernoch Schildkröte.
Egal was ich mache... VB ist soo lahm, das nervt total

English:

Hi,

is it possible to write to someone privately? If you can, I would be happy to receive a PM.

I ran this in my Win 11 24H2 in PowerShell - it did it - after restart still turtle.

No matter what I do... VB is soo lame, it's totally annoying

[rajthampi]

Check this post
https://simpleoracle.com/2024/10/09/how ... urity-vbs/

[Sm4sH]

Thx. I am now back on 23H2.
I wonder why it works on 23H2 without these “hacks” and not on 24H2?
In other words, is it the Windwos or VirtualBox, so do you have to fix or reprogram etc...?
If it's Windows, I'll probably stay with 23H2 as long as I can, but on the other hand, it can't be that if you use 24H2 together with VirtualBox, you always have to make some settings... I hope you understand what I mean.

[rajthampi]

I've been constantly trying to upgrade existing one 23H2 VM from 2 different hosts, both running Windows 11 24H2. I was hit by "irql_not_less_or_equal" each time during the first boot after successful installations. This made me curious and I copied the VM to my 12 years old hardware, that runs Windows 10 and VirtualBox 7.1.4. The upgrade was successful, and I have 24H2 VM on Windows 10 and copying the upgraded VM back to my eligible hardware breaks it once again with the same "irql_not_less_or_equal" error!
It looks like either TPM or secure boot hacks are acting up, which are totally missing from the older hardware.

[klaus]

It's complicated - the BugCheck (visible only in VBox.log, the VM hangs with nothing unusual visible on the screen) depends on many conditions, including the CPU model... we found a system where it happens and the bug could be fixed. Please retry with the latest 7.0 or 7.1 test build (not the development snapshot).

[rajthampi]

@klaus, thank you for the happy news! Care to share more details? Especially about the very particular element that was interfering with the booting process?

[rajthampi]

It's complicated - the BugCheck (visible only in VBox.log, the VM hangs with nothing unusual visible on the screen) depends on many conditions, including the CPU model... we found a system where it happens and the bug could be fixed. Please retry with the latest 7.0 or 7.1 test build (not the development snapshot).

Yes! I copied the VM to the hardware with issues and was able to start using the TEST build. Hope to see these fixes copied to new build soon.

[csmccarron]

Here is what worked for me to disable Virtualized Based Security (VBS). I am running Windows 11 24H2 OS Build 26100.2894.

Source HMR3Init: Attempting fall back to NEM (Hyper-V is active)
viewtopic.php?p=482149#p482149

To Disable VBS

Step 1
Use Group Policy Editor (gpedit.exe) to completely disable VBS
Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > System > Device Guard > Turn On Virtualization Based Security - Set to Disable

Step 2
Open a Command Prompt using Run as Administrator and run the following commands:
1. bcdedit /set hypervisorlaunchtype off
2. bcdedit /set vsmlaunchtype Off
3. DISM /Online /Disable-Feature /FeatureName:Microsoft-Hyper-V

Step 3
Set CredentialGuard Enable DWORD bit to 0
1. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\DeviceGuard\Scenarios\CredentialGuard
"Enabled"=dword:00000000

Step 4
Reboot

To Reenable VBS

Step 1
Use Group Policy Editor (gpedit.exe) to completely enable VBS
Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > System > Device Guard > Turn On Virtualization Based Security - Set to Not Configured

Step 2
Remove the following registry entries
1. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\DeviceGuard\Scenarios\KernelShadowStacks
2. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\DeviceGuard\Scenarios\HypervisorEnforcedCodeIntegrity
3. Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\DeviceGuard
REG_DWORD EnableVirtualizationBasedSecurity
REG_DWORD Locked

Step 3
Set the CredentialGuard Enable DWORD to 1
1. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\DeviceGuard\Scenarios\CredentialGuard
"Enabled"=dword:00000001

Step 4
Open a Command Prompt using Run as Administrator and run the following commands:
1. bcdedit /set hypervisorlaunchtype On
2. bcdedit /set vsmlaunchtype Auto
3. DISM /Online /Enable-Feature /All /FeatureName:Microsoft-Hyper-V - This step will install and enable Hyper-V software

Step 5
Reboot

[utahime]

When I upgraded my host OS from Windows 10 22H2 to Windows 11 23H2, I faced performance issue and it was fixed by disabling memory integrity.

On Tuesday my host OS was forcibly upgraded to 24H2. And I faced performance issue again. I checked this forum, found this thread and tried the steps to disable VBS explained by @csmccarron. Then blue turtle is disappeared from guest OS window but performance issue isn't solved.

Is there anyting alse I should try?

[csmccarron]

I personally do not know of anything.

[klaus]

Then blue turtle is disappeared from guest OS window but performance issue isn't solved.

Impossible to tell what kind of "performance issue" you're talking about. You need to give much more detail.