virtualbox.org

Hm, similar situation here. VB 3.0.8, 32 9.10 Ubuntu, Windows XP. Flash animation works really slow.

I'm using VB 3.0.8 now too, and the issue still seems present.
There must be a way somehow to get another 30 - 40% host cpu utilization in VB, leaving ~10 - 20% headroom for host processes.

I'm on 64-bit Lenny with a custom kernel. The VB guest performance is debilitating.

Same problem here: 100% CPU usage while watching video, playing flash sites (f.e. youtube)
I'm using VirtualBox 3.0.8 on a 32-bit Debian Lenny
Guest OS: Windows XP SP2

I would really really really like to know why virtualbox 3 is so slow. It's like having a 500mhz machine, when i paid for a core2duo@2.5ghz.
Not much point in using vbox to do any multimedia.. the audio latency went downhill in v3, I'm wait for 3.0.10.. if that doesn't fix anything then i'll likely drop using v3 and go back to v2 which i found ran faster, or, move to another virtualization software.

I have found anti virus and spyware programs can really make win VB crawl. I find it easier to take more snap shots in case on of these nasty buggers gets in. Try and disable the AV and AS programs if you have them, and see how it goes.

Thank for some ideas, I'll look deeper into what processing are resident.
Just updated to 3.0.10, seems a little better already.
Also going to update my host to a shiny new custom kernel soon too, so there's still hope

Similar problems here:
* Running Ubuntu 9.04 64bit
** Intel Core Quad Q6600
** 8GB RAM
** SATA Subsystem for HDDs
* Guest: Win XP Pro 32 bit

My windows is very slow on intensive and even low network access. Remarkable is that the Task Manager shows almost/mostly 100% CPU load. If I switch on "View -> Show kernel timings" (close translation, german original: Ansicht -> Kernelzeiten anzeigen) the task manager will show you with a read line how much time is used in the "system part" of windows, so things like drivers and stuff will be accounted here. So the "non system part" are services and tasks as we know them.

If you take a "normal" Win XP system, you will recognize almost no high red line in task manager.

So, let's take another step: go to http://www.sysinternals.com (which is now owned by Microsoft) and get yourself the "process explorer" tool. Download it, start it, (confirm the legal matter,) and have a look at the system load there. You will recognize - on network related access - much load in the "Interrupts" section, maybe some load in the DPC (Deferrred procedure calls) section. The difference to the standard task manager is the detail you get.

Please either confirm my explanations/predictions, so that I know what is happening at your system.

Let's continue... under this address: http://www.thesycon.de/eng/latency_check.shtml you can get a tool called "DPC latency checker". It once helped me identify some "wrong" situation with my VirtualBox VM. Its task is to show certain latency caused e.g. by device drivers using the above mentioned DPC method. If the program shows yellow and many red bars, you got the same situation I got here.

The conclusion of this... well actually that the system is quite irresponsive, which the "DPC latency checker reports as a delay of XX.x microseconds. The system takes too much time in the DPC or Interrupts execution and therefor the rest of the system has to wait very long. It causes high CPU load without any actual load.

So that's my report and theory about our current problem, which I would declare as a problem of the virtual network drivers.


I had this problem about a year ago, earliest when VirtualBox was updated and supported multiple CPUs per VM. I gave my VM 2 Cores (of my 4) and had a quite unresponive experience with Windows XP Pro. Backthen I figured out the guest was producing a high load on the DPC which was caused exclusively when there was HIGH load on the Host system. The host system was computing for http://www.mersenne.org, but the mprime-tool worked with very low priority values. When either I disabled the mprime tool or when removing all but 1 cpu in the guest, things went fine. Or if I bound Virtualbox to exactly the amount of CPUs (Linux: use "taskset" from "schedutils" package) the VM had, I could work flawless.

OK, that's all for the moment, please continue to share your experiences!

Greetings, forcemaker

are there news using 3.0.12?gonna upgrade in the w-e...

not fixed with .12

same here, no change.

same problem... any solution ?

I seems that NAT was broken; VM will receive a lot of packet if NAT is used, cause interrupts eat up cpu.
Use bridge instead

Hello guys,

Just thought I share my experiences. I am using VirtualBox 3.1.2 under Windows 7, with a Windows XP SP3 guest. After switching from bridge to NAT I too experienced high CPU loads. Using a packet sniffing tool I realized that the problem is due to some endless loop that send FIN/ACK packets over and over again.
I managed to track this down to the Windows Firewall being enabled in the guest.
I usually got 3-4 events per day where the CPU usage would go to 100%, but since completely disabling the Widows Firewall in the guest I have not had any more problems.

Hope this helps.


Cheers !

I was running a Windows 2003 and noticed the VBoxTray.exe high cpu times, completely freezing up the guest os at times. I had been having issues with the clipboard in the vm when connected via remote desktop from a Windows 7 host (the guest clipboard did not work, and rdpclip.exe on the guest also had high cpu times). I thought the two could be related since clipboards dont *usually* use up a lot of processor time , so I connected to the guest without sharing the host clipboard and things seem to be back to normal. Weird.