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?
Windows 11 issues
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marius_1956
- Posts: 58
- Joined: 4. Jun 2008, 14:10
- Primary OS: MS Windows XP
- VBox Version: OSE other
- Guest OSses: Windows Server
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scottgus1
- Site Moderator
- Posts: 20945
- Joined: 30. Dec 2009, 20:14
- Primary OS: MS Windows 10
- VBox Version: PUEL
- Guest OSses: Windows, Linux
Re: Windows 11 issues
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.
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.
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UliBär
- Posts: 21
- Joined: 24. Jan 2018, 11:12
- Primary OS: MS Windows 10
- VBox Version: PUEL
- Guest OSses: WinXP and lots of Linuxes
Re: Windows 11 issues
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:
After that VirtualBox runs as good as on the former Windows 10 Pro 22H2 installation.
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 OffRe: Windows 11 issues
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.
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.