virtualbox.org

I've got FreeDOS as a client OS inside of VirtualBox 3.0.10 in my Windows 7 Pro x64 machine.

As soon as the VM boots, one of the cores on my dual-core CPU goes to 97-98% and just stays there. If I run my Windows XP guest VM, everything's fine... CPU load is low. When I run FreeDOS, CPU spikes.

Under the Settings, for "Operating System" and "Version", I'm using "Other" and "DOS", respectively. Is there some other setting for these that I should be using? Or, is there some setting somewhere else that I need to adjust?

- Joe

That is standard behavior for DOS in a vm. It happens with other virtualization products as well.
You have to remember that DOS is a pretty primitive OS written for a pretty basic processor. It doesn't know about multi-tasking and multi-threading.