[Partial Fix] Slow boot, VERY sluggish XP, Vista guests

[stantheman286]

Hi,

I decided to continue my issue as a new post since it is a separate issue. I am running a Gentoo host using both an XP and Vista guest. I have installed both on my ext3 partition, and have also tried them on ntfs with the same result. For both:

1) Boot up takes about 10-15 minutes
2) Once loaded, everything will work for a few seconds, then the VM will freeze for 5-10 minutes.

I started in safe mode in Vista, and it seemed to get hung up on crcdisk.sys for a while. Some posts said it may have something to do with IDE drivers, but I don't have any special ones as far as I know. On XP in Safe Mode, it hangs at mup.sys.

Both guests are using 1.5 GB ram and XP has a 10GB drive while Vista has a 20GB drive. Upping the RAM to 2GB has no effect.

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated. I am ALMOST there !

Matt

[stantheman286]

Just a little update, I've tried installing VirtualBox OSE instead of virtualbox-bin. I tried installing the additions ISO, but I can't tell if they installed.

[stantheman286]

Well, I'm focusing on XP now solely. It hangs in safe mode at mup.sys. I've read a ton of things about this either being an IDE or HAL issue, but I'm not sure which one to follow. Does anybody have experience with this?

[stantheman286]

The issue looks to centered around an incorrect HAL. My XP setup hangs at "Setup is Starting Windows" which usually indicates it cannot properly detect the hardware. I am going to try and reinstall XP via repair and reset the HAL.

[stantheman286]

Well, specifying the HAL has seemed to work (at least for XP guest) and now everything sets up and loads faster. It boots in like 20 seconds! I still need to try it with Vista. I'm not sure how I can specify a HAL for Vista, but I figured I'd try from Device Manager.

FIX (XP for now):

1) Start your Windows XP VM with Windows XP setup CD mounted and enter setup.
2) When you see the "Press F6...." to install drivers, hit F5 and F7 (I'm not sure which it is) to specify a HAL.
3) To fix mine, I set it to "Standard PC" instead of "Other"
4) Run XP setup again (I did a full reinstall; a repair install might work too)

I guess this probably has something to do with my system stalling at this message on boot:

Code: Select all

Starting the Hardware Abstraction Layer Daemon...

Although it completes successfully, it takes almost a minute to get past this message.

I have work tomorrow, but I will try the same with Vista tomorrow.

Matt

[stantheman286]

Well, no luck with Vista yet...I know it is a hal issue, but I haven't been able to fix it with a repair install or manually changing the hal. Any ideas?

Also, my HALD still stalls on boot in Gentoo, probably related with the VBox issues, any help would be MUCH appreciated. Thanks.

Matt

[stantheman286]

UPDATE: Vista is still slow despite fixing the HALD issue (downgrade) and installing VBox 1.5.0 ...

[Ingo]

Have you tried to modify the switches in the VirtualBox GUI under Settings... General... Advanced Tab: Extended Features (ACPI, IO APIC, VT-x/AMD-V)? They depend on the HAL. Maybe your machines run without reinstalling the hardware abstraction layer.

[stantheman286]

Yep, I've tried disabling and enabling various combos of those 3 with no luck. Thanks for the suggestion though!

[smithpdo]

Perhaps your problem is related to mine.
Have you enabled the new serial port feature in version 1.5?
I did this and the guest then became horribly slow. Turning off the serial port feature restore normal performance.

[stantheman286]

Unfortunately, mine hasn't worked with either 1.4.0 or 1.5.0, and I don't have serial port enabled.

[s1L3nCe]

Well, specifying the HAL has seemed to work (at least for XP guest) and now everything sets up and loads faster. It boots in like 20 seconds! I still need to try it with Vista. I'm not sure how I can specify a HAL for Vista, but I figured I'd try from Device Manager.

FIX (XP for now):

1) Start your Windows XP VM with Windows XP setup CD mounted and enter setup.
2) When you see the "Press F6...." to install drivers, hit F5 and F7 (I'm not sure which it is) to specify a HAL.
3) To fix mine, I set it to "Standard PC" instead of "Other"
4) Run XP setup again (I did a full reinstall; a repair install might work too)

I guess this probably has something to do with my system stalling at this message on boot:

Code: Select all

Starting the Hardware Abstraction Layer Daemon...

Although it completes successfully, it takes almost a minute to get past this message.

I have work tomorrow, but I will try the same with Vista tomorrow.

Matt

I just had this issue today and I solved it with your guide! Thanks a ton!!

I made this Windows XP machine very recently on another computer. Today I loaded it back in a different computer and this sluggish issue started. I don't really know why. But, in any case, you helped me solve it. I'm very grateful