Optimal Settings for XPsp2

Discussions related to using VirtualBox on Mac OS X hosts.
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spoz
Posts: 2
Joined: 27. Apr 2009, 02:37
Primary OS: Mac OS X Leopard
VBox Version: OSE other
Guest OSses: XP

Optimal Settings for XPsp2

Post by spoz »

I've played around with VB for a few months now and have been really quite impressed with it (esp since it's free and I wasted many painstaking months on crossover). Everything works as I expected and the forum has proved to be valuable on many occassions.

Anyways, i finally thought I'd come in and ask a question about the optimal settings for running an XPsp2 guest on OS X.
Atm, it's quite slow and more often that not it's only worth me running if I shut down every single app other than VB. If i try running VB with say Safari. . it takes up to 30 seconds to swap from looking at a program in the XP guest to the browser.

I've searched some posts on the forum and some people have said 2.1.2 is significantly slower than 2.1.0 - but i cant find any posts about whether 2.1.4 (which I'm using) is faster/slower than 2.1.0?

I'm only running reference software in XP so it's not exactly the most resource hungry program.

Fyi, I have a 2.2 C2D macbook with 1GB ram running 10.5.6. . .
I have VB 2.1.4 with XPsp2 installed as a guest with additions. . . i allocated 10GB as its hard disk with 510 base memory and 15 video memory. . .

I fiddled around with the memory allocations but it only seemed to make things worse. . .

Can anyone point me in the direction of any optimal settings to try? Or better versions of VB to run instead?
Perryg
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Joined: 6. Sep 2008, 22:55
Primary OS: Linux other
VBox Version: OSE self-compiled
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Re: Optimal Settings for XPsp2

Post by Perryg »

Windows unlike your MAC love memory. The more you give it the faster it does things. Basically because it does not need to swap the the hard drive as much. So giving it as much RAM memory is the best thing that you can do. Since you only have 1 gig of memory to start with you have given it about all you can. I do know that the amount of memory that you give Windows needs to be standard memory allocations 128, 256, 394, 512, 640, 768, 896, 1024, and so on. The video memory should be in lots of (4). 4, 8, 12, 16, and so on. You can also do some Google searches on how to speed up Windows. Keep in mind that as with all things your mileage may vary as they say but this should give you a start. Also adding more memory to the MAC can't hurt.
spoz
Posts: 2
Joined: 27. Apr 2009, 02:37
Primary OS: Mac OS X Leopard
VBox Version: OSE other
Guest OSses: XP

Re: Optimal Settings for XPsp2

Post by spoz »

Wow, thanks for your quick reply. . and what's more - your sound advice ;)
I fired up vb with all my apps running and thought i'd give it a go. . .when i had fiddled around with it before, I had just moved the sliders up and down without even thinking of manually plugging in numbers (let alone in the standard mem base numbers). .

I threw in 128 and 12 and the performance difference has already been phenomenal. . .thanks heaps. . appreciate your help Perryg! (I'll try a few different combinations and see what works out to be best)
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