Ubuntu unresponsive / UI Breaks

[decisive]

Hello, I use the ubuntu guest to run vscode and google chrome. Most of the time everything is ok, but sometimes ubuntu gets unresponsive and I can't close any windows, then I have to hard reset.

Also when my monitor turns off due to inactivity, as I turn it on again, the following happens in ubuntu: resolution gets doubled, windows turn black and can't be closed, fonts disappear sometimes completely, sometimes partially. Then I also have to hard reset.

Any help is appreciated, thanks.

edit: changed title

[mpack]

You could try giving the VM more RAM. As I recall, VScode is notoriously resource hungry. You have 26GB available, you only give 4GB to the VM. I would make that at least 8GB (8192MB).

I would also reduce vCPU cores to two. Your host CPU has 6 cores total. You can't assign all of them to guest code and expect the host to carry on happily. Note that VirtualBox is a host app, it does not benefit from cores given to guest apps. 2 cores is usually the sweet spot for VMs, assuming that leaves the host with at least 2 cores for its own use.

Also, I see that the VM is located on drive D. This is fine if D is another local drive. Not fine if it's a USB thumb drive.

[decisive]

Thank you so much for your Tipps. Adding RAM actually made Ubuntu more stable overall. Reducing the cores from 6 to 2 though, made it a bit slower. As I understood it, I gave it 6 of 12 available CPU Threads and I had never performance issues on the host machine.

The second problem I mentioned, is still driving me crazy, though. It happens when the monitor turns off due to inactivity and I come back to continue working. In this case, the guest machine is still responsive, but the taskbar gets messed up, same as the top bar and Chrome and the only solution I found, is to blindly click my way to the power off button. You can see how it looks in the attachments.

Also the D: Drive is a SSD

Thanks for your help


Edit: I fixed the the breaking UI by disabling auto-resize

[mpack]

As I understood it, I gave it 6 of 12 available CPU Threads

That would be an incorrect understanding. Threads are not cores. You have six cores total, so you should not assign more than 4 to the guest OS. Even that is an unfair division, which usually leads to problems - though not as bad as assigning all six cores.

FAQ: Cores vs Threads.