virtualbox.org

I'm running a Windows 7 64 host with a Windows 7 64 guest, 1 Gig memory. In the guest, I'm running Visual Studio 2010 and am seeing a lot of performance issues. Sometimes it locks up for quite awhile, but other applications within the VM still work fine. It gets this white overlay when its in this locked mode. I never experienced this when running VS 2008 on the same box with the same configuration. Is anyone else experiencing these sorts of issues?

Have you monitored your memory usage while using VS2010?
It sounds like you are swapping a lot and are starving the memory available.
How much memory is available to the guest? Look at the top of the VBox log file for the guest.

From Visual Studio readme on hardware requirements:
* 1.6 GHz or faster processor
* 1024 MB RAM (1.5 GB if running on a virtual machine)
* 3 GB of available hard-disk space
* 5400 RPM hard-disk drive
* DirectX 9-capable video card running at 1024 x 768 or higher display resolution
* DVD-ROM drive

So, I would up your memory (it's always good to exceed Microsoft's requirement a bit). Also, are you running with DirectX enabled? Remember you must install this in Safe Mode for it to work properly--at least I think that is still a requirement. You can run dxdiag in your guest to check the DirectX state.

I'm still just running VS2008 on an XP guest, so I don't know for sure how this will work, but I have concerns about running an application in a virtual environment that relies on your video card to run. BTW, I've heard people complain about the performance of VS2010 because of WPF on a non-virtual machine as well.

Did you ever figure this out? I'm having the same problem on VB 3.2.12 and a Win 7 32-bit guest. Everything works fine except VS 2010 which locks when loading with a white overlay. Strange.

I am running Ubuntu 10.10 64-bit with a Win 7 32-bit Virtual

I had this problem too, at first I thought it was a bad install of either the OS or VS.. So I reinstalled both fresh. I ended up getting the same white screen overlay as mentioned by a few of you. I did find a solution of sorts, if you power down your virtual and change the display settings by disabling 3d acceleration it seems that VS will load up just fine.

By disabling 3d acceleration you can also get win 7 experience assessment to complete (although you will be looking at a 1.0 because of graphics)

I had the same issue today. Removing 3D acceleration from the VBox drivers solved the problem for me. VS2010 (devenv.exe process) took 100% cpu load from one processor. Inside devenv.exe the thread with wpfgfx_v0400.dll was the problem. I tried it with increasing graphic memory to 128 MB but it didn't help. Because 3D acceleration is still experimental it seems to be better not to use it with WPF.

derekgreer wrote:1 Gig memory.

sblasingame wrote:From Visual Studio readme on hardware requirements:
* 1024 MB RAM (1.5 GB if running on a virtual machine)

Doesn't this answer the original question?

This is the exact setup I run in my production workstation at work 24/7.
It runs FASTER than windows 7 with all your other crap on it. It's snappy and instant. Since linux has block level caching, combine that with vast amounts of cheap ram + Windows 7 File level caching. Stuff flies.

The host is Linux Mint 11
Running the nvidia non-free driver (that automatically pops in the tray, not the web site)

Hardware Specs:
Core i7 960
10GB RAM
2 Hard drives (One for linux mint, the other holds the VHD's)
2 24' 1920x1080 Asus monitors
And some recent generation nvidia card (probably a 260, can't remember)

2 Guests running at all times:
VS2005 - 2GB Ram, 2 Processors, 96MB Video Ram, 2 Virtual Monitors (bad ass for seamless mode dual monitor setups)
VS2010 - 5GB Ram, 4 Processors, 96MB Video Ram, 2 Virtual Monitors (bad ass for seamless mode dual monitor setups)
To answer your question, YES VS2010 needs that much to run perfectly. I also don't install any other crap on those machines, not even antivirus. Just one task per machine to keep them fast and stable. I also do regular backups with windows backup of all my projects to a shared folder on the network (some cheap network storage device)

My host is left with 1.4 GB free. Enough to run some web browsers and apps simultaneously on the host. 0 swap file being used.

The amazing thing is, I really could have just got a 32GB usb stick, installed linux mint on it, and strictly used the hard drive to store data. Didn't even need the primary disk, in some cases the usb stick with outperform the mechanical drive because of caching and no seek time. Cloning the usb stick would have been a handy backup in case I want to get crazy on my machine

This may sound like a beast of a setup, but it's only about $700-800 with the 2 giant monitors, and totally worth your boss's money.

Ah, forgot to mention. There are some versions of virtualbox that DO NOT work right, as you mentioned with VS2010.
I know 4.0.12 works perfectly. I'm testing 4.1.4 right now, so far no probs but it's only been an hour.

before i see oracle logo over VirtualBox, i had both VS 2005 and 2010 and they worked fine, but from the time i update to ver 4.x.x since now, i experience that visual studio load with several white box'es, and after that , in next version, even that much didn't loaded :-s just a screen in middle
i'm wonder if i update to new version it fix or get worse, but even i pay for traffic i use , and i dont wanna spend in this lowly country for such...