Linux slow on VirtualBox

[Dragon7]

You have one weird system. I have no problems running multiple VMs, Linux or Windows or mixed, at the same time on my hardware. And it's just a dual core non-AMD-V host to boot. I do have 3 GB of RAM, but that doesn't matter much.

Just for reference, you DID detach the ISO after you installed the Guest OS, right? Else it will boot the live environment again.

I know! It’s really strange!

Yep, the ISO was out, also tried a couple of different distros just in case.

I also have a Quad Core with 4GB Ram running widows 7 and I can have multiple Windows and Linux gusts VM running at the same time with no problem. Also tried a couple of other computers including a duel core laptop with 2GB ram and no problem, its only the computer I really want it to work on that it does not work on!

There is one difference in my quad cores VirtualBox under the system divider there is a tab called Acceleration that has a “Enable VT-x/AMD-V” and “Enable Nested Paging” check box but the P4 1.7GHz does not have this tab. My guess is because the CPU does not support it, but I don’t think that is what is causing the problem.

Things I have tried:
Tried live disks.
Tried hard drive Installed.
Tried different distros
Tried to install VM guest from scratch on the P4 1.7GHz
Tried to install VM guest on my machine and then copy over the .vdi hard drive
Tried using more RAM (2GB) on host
Tried recompiling the Linux kernel to have a Timer frequency of 100 HZ instead of 1000 Hz
Tried multiple combinations of VirtualBox settings such as “Enable PAE/NX” and “use host I/O catch”
Tried disabling network and sound and everything I could inside VB in case it was messing with linux

I realise some of that shouldn’t make much difference but I thought that id try anyway.

I guess I’ll have to use Linux as the host and windows as the guest until I upgrade to a different mother board and/or CPU.
This is actually working nicely would prefer it the other way round though.

[Sasquatch]

There is one last thing you can try: reinstall of the Host. I know it's a drastic step, but it might actually solve it. It wouldn't be the first time it fixes something this odd. I remember I had the problem back in 1.5.4 or 1.5.6 where I had a Windows VM and it did not respond to the Windows key at all. I know that I didn't disable the key itself, because the install worked just fine from a different Host OS (copied/shared the VDI between them). Only after a reinstall of the Linux Host (the other was Windows Host, same PC) where the issue occurred, the problem was solved. This might be the same kind of issue, although a bit bigger.

[Dragon7]

There is one last thing you can try: reinstall of the Host. I know it's a drastic step, but it might actually solve it. It wouldn't be the first time it fixes something this odd. I remember I had the problem back in 1.5.4 or 1.5.6 where I had a Windows VM and it did not respond to the Windows key at all. I know that I didn't disable the key itself, because the install worked just fine from a different Host OS (copied/shared the VDI between them). Only after a reinstall of the Linux Host (the other was Windows Host, same PC) where the issue occurred, the problem was solved. This might be the same kind of issue, although a bit bigger.

Good idea but sadly I’ve already tried to re-format and re-install the host.

Today I resurrected an old Pentium 3, 700Mhz with 256mb of ram formatted it to windows xp, installed virtualbox and then made a linux vm with 64mb of ram and booted the linux vm. It took under 10 minutes to boot (at least twice as fast as the P4) and after it was booted it ran with very little lag (P4 linux vm lags so much you can’t type or even control the mouse) although hard drive light was on for most of the time, page file abuse.
(I know that I was seriously abusing the p3, it was just a test)

I’m still amazed that a P3 700Mhz with 256MB of ram runs and boots a linux VM faster than a p4 1700MHz with 1000MB of ram!

I think the only thing that it could be is the hardware(CPU, MB)