virtualbox.org

Hi

I downloaded the latest version of virtualbox a couple of days ago and installed it. I also downloaded a current version of Windows 10 ISO.

I initially followed the wizard to create a "defaults" Win 10 VM. Installed Win 10 64 and guest additions and had issues where it would keep crashing and rebooting, with garbled video just before restarting as below.
Thinking this was some kind of video issue I decided to delete the VM completely and start again. This time I changed some settings on the VM, I increased RAM to 4GB, increased core count to 2, turned on 3D acceleration and increased VRAM to 256MB.

Installed Win 10 from the same ISO - and I could tell there were issues straight away - took 3 hours to install Win 10...

Now when I boot the VM it is horrendously slow - as in unusable - you can see each frame of transitions. It will then generally hang or BSOD.

Attached is a log file where I managed to start the VM from cold, get into Windows, open task manager and then shutdown. As can be seen in the log, this took 10 minutes.. In a previous attempt I couldn't even get task manager to open and it hung. After 20 minutes of no response (or log messages in virtualbox) I had to force power off the VM. I have a log of that session too if required.

Any ideas what is going on? I have run Win 10 in Virtualbox on much much lower spec hosts without issues. These are completely vanilla virtualbox and Windows - nothing installed or changed.

All help appreciated
Jules.

These are completely vanilla virtualbox and Windows - nothing installed or changed.

Sorry, Windows is not as 'vanilla' as you think. Someone has installed Hyper-V or activated the Hyper-V architecture by testing WSL2 or some similar function.

00:00:02.236537 ********************* End of CFGM dump **********************
00:00:02.236611 HM: HMR3Init: Attempting fall back to NEM: AMD-V is not available
00:00:02.247351 NEM: WHvCapabilityCodeHypervisorPresent is TRUE, so this might work...

The above indicates Hyper-V is active and 'blocks' VirtualBox's access to VT-x so it is attempting to use Hyper-V instead, resulting in the performance slowdown - Also indicated by the Green Toroise/Turtle icon you can see in your screenshot.

Please see viewtopic.php?f=25&t=99390 for further guidance. Hope it helps.

multiOS wrote:Sorry, Windows is not as 'vanilla' as you think. Someone has installed Hyper-V or activated the Hyper-V architecture by testing WSL2 or some similar function.

Sorry, I meant the guest OS was vanilla - I do indeed use WSL2 on the host.... So is the conclusion I can't use WSL2 and have virtualbox perform properly?

multiOS wrote:Also indicated by the Green Toroise/Turtle icon you can see in your screenshot.

ahh... I wondered what that icon was - it might be an idea to put this kind of issue front and center - that icon could mean anything. No idea it was shelled animal

You have helped a lot, many thanks. Not sure what to do as WSL is critical.

Jules.

Glad the puzzle is solved.

WSL2 uses Hyper-V so can't be active in tandem with VirtualBox (yet). The VirtualBox Developers are continuing to work on improving this, so maybe one day.

The viable options, for now are:

a) use the original WSL(1) which doesn't need Hyper-V and is still supported by Microsoft; or
b) 'Toggle' the Host between running with and without Hyper-V activated by repeatedly using the bcdedit command(s). This doesn't continually install/uninstall Hyper-V, but changes the Hyper-V state between 'comatose' and 'conscious'. However, the status change always needs a system re-boot as an active Hyper-V (Type 1 Hypervisor) has to be loaded/unloaded prior to the Operating System startup. There are ways of setting up a dual-dual boot style arrangement discussed here: https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/139 ... puter.html which means you can have the option of deciding which state you want during startup.

Yep, read all about it now. It didn't occur to me about WSL - and I had assumed virtualbox would flag if it saw hyper-v running... guess it does just not in a very obvious way.

I need WSL daily, whereas the VM is weekly - hopefully they can get it to play nicely one day. Until then will run the VM on a different host.

Thanks again.