Occasionally Extremely Slow Video Performance

jwc · Post by **jwc** » 28. Sep 2008, 15:43

Here's an interesting one that I have never experienced before:

I have an Arch Linux host and a Windows XP guest. I'm running the latest version of VirtualBox, but have noticed this issue in version 2.0 as well.

After starting the machine (either from booting from being off or from restoring a saved state), I will occasionally (about 50% of the time) get very, very slow performance. I've done a few tests and noticed that the system only updates the screen after I have done enough actions (e.g. when I type 7 or so characters into OneNote, the screen updates, but it will not do so if I do not type enough). I cannot access the Start button either. Eventually, the performance degrades significantly so that the screen never updates. Sounds strange, doesn't it?

It gets stranger, though. If I save the state and restore it, the system is usually fine again.

Examining the process on my host system, I can see no wild memory usage. One time, I had an instance of Task Manager running while this happened. It showed no sign of wild CPU or memory usage within the guest, either. This problem seems to affect all configurations; guest RAM size, devices, etc. are irrelevant.

My processor is a Core 2 Duo T5750 (aggravatingly, it has no VT-X support, but thankfully, VirtualBox's software virtualization is about 20 times faster than that of VMWare). My Arch Linux setup is pretty standard. Everything is located on an XFS file system. Occasionally, I get arbitrary kernel panics and subsequent lockups when using VirtualBox, but I don't believe this is related to the issue I seem to be having.

Has anyone else experienced this problem? I'm just on a fact-finding mission here for now. I can post installed software on the guest, etc. at a later date if necessary.

Post by **baf** » 29. Sep 2008, 04:57

" Occasionally, I get arbitrary kernel panics and subsequent lockups when using VirtualBox,"
Feels to me like if you have a hardware problem possibly with memory. Try memtestx86 and let it run at least 3 times around (preferably overnight).

jwc · Post by **jwc** » 29. Sep 2008, 05:35

I forgot to mention that the computer is a brand new Dell XPS M1330, so I doubt that would be the issue. Next time I have a chance, I'll run the tests anyways. I haven't had a chance to go into the kernel logs and figure out what's wrong yet.

EDIT: After downgrading my instance of Xorg and the associated drivers and accelerators, the panics seem to have disappeared. However, I'm still having the same video problems.