Vbox 100cpu usage problem

[emzvargas]

hello i have a HP pavilion with the following characteristics:

1.8 GHz AMD Turion ™ 64 X2 Dual-Core
2GB of System Memory
Running Ubuntu 8.1 as host OS
winXP sp3 as guest OS

the problem is that every time i run Win XP on virtual box(which by the way is 2.1.4) tCPUPUu load goes from a regular 30 or 40% usage to a 100% in one of the processor and the memory spikes from 5mgs to almost 1.5 GB. which makes simples task in winxp that normally could take u a couple of seconds to last minutes ....(in the case the application doesn't crash....which is the case for applications such as winamp or media player.)
Now beside having my laptop as dual boot, im loading winXP as a .vmdk file from my windows partition to use my actual settings under XP.

ive tried to downgrade Vbox to version 2.1.2 or 2.0.6 without any results whatsoever.

By the way the settings for Vbox are:
base memoy: 1035mb
video memory: 4mb
Hard disk: winxp.vmdk

Extended features:
enable acpi
enable io apic
enable vt-x/amd-v


Please someone that could help me with this :S ???
any help with be very much apreciated

[Sasquatch]

Did you follow the guide that is a sticky here? It seems that there is some driver/hardware issue because of the RAW disk usage.

[emzvargas]

thanx for the reply....

ive tried to change my acpi multiproccesor to a acpi processor as described in the manual..but when i tried to do that my options are:
acpi multiprocessor
acpi pc
mps multiprocessor
standar pc.

i tried to change it to standar pc and acpi pc without any look since a think they are not compatible with acpi multiprocessor ( just keep trying to boot windows and nothing happends at the end.)

ive been reading a little bit about this..and i dont really know if a have to use sysprep in order to change the settings from acpi multi to acpi unicore..to get this thing done.

And im sorry for the next dumm question: but why is needed to change the multiprocessor in windows to a uniproceso to been able to load succesfully winxp as a guest under ubuntu?? cuz i dont really understand why downgrade the processor will help with this problem of getting one core fully loaded while using xp in virtualbox :S

i will be very much apreciated if someone could help with this question and hepl me as well with problem im having :S

[vbox4me2]

This is a standard HAL/Kernal problem with Windows, once 1 certain type is chozen and loaded you can't change it anymore, so when your coming from a 2 processor into a VM (1 processor) you can end up with a hung VM because HAL doesn't recognize the CPU anymore. There are loads of websites to find with google about this issue.

The easiest way to solve this is by installing your OS again in a new VM and then grab the HAL/Kernal files(NTOSKRNL.EXE / HAL.DLL) and replace them with the VM that isn't working.

[Sasquatch]

The core load is because Windows had two cores first, now it sees only one. It will keep trying to detect the second core or something, which is causing this behaviour.
You can get a stock HAL and kernel from the Windows install CD, no need to install a new VM. Just follow what is in the howto.

[vbox4me2]

You can get a stock HAL and kernel from the Windows install CD, no need to install a new VM. Just follow what is in the howto.

A word of warning because I did not say rebuild/grab for nothing, each and sometimes BOTH modules can be different between runtime and CD versions, take a sp2 and sp3 xp version, taking a sp2 CD version under a sp3 running version without re-running sp3 can cause crashes or other nasties. Despite the contriary the kernal does get patched by windows update when required. For example KB935839 is a direct kernal patch, so does sp3.