virtualbox.org

Hello all,

I have recently installed Virtualbox on my macbook pro and I am very happy with it after a frustrating experience with Parallels Desktop which slowed down my mac to about cheap netbook level.

Anyways, it's working great but I just wanna know what happens to my virtual machine once I close the lid of my mac or put it to sleep. I have tried it and win7 comes back instantly as soon as I see the screen. This makes me assume that the VM keeps running in the background somehow consuming my battery? Or is Vbox just that fast with everything?

Thanks!

I think it's just your Mac being that fast coming back from sleep. When a system goes to sleep state (be it Windows, Linux or Mac OSX), all processes are suspended in RAM and the hardware goes to a power saving mode. Whenever the system awakes again, the hardware goes back on and the processes are resumed. You can always verify that your system is in sleep state by checking the power indicator. It is either off or flashing lightly with a pulse. If it stays on all the time, then it's not entering sleep state.

flobbo wrote:Hello all,

I have recently installed Virtualbox on my macbook pro and I am very happy with it after a frustrating experience with Parallels Desktop which slowed down my mac to about cheap netbook level.

Anyways, it's working great but I just wanna know what happens to my virtual machine once I close the lid of my mac or put it to sleep. I have tried it and win7 comes back instantly as soon as I see the screen. This makes me assume that the VM keeps running in the background somehow consuming my battery? Or is Vbox just that fast with everything?

Thanks!

I don't know about Mac laptops, but VB keeps my iMac from sleeping when I ask it to. I have to quit VB first.

Hello,

thanks for the answers. That's interesting with the iMac. I know that VB takes more time to come back when I quit it and save the machine state. Really wondering how that works with regular mac sleep. Will play with it and post my findings here.

Cheers

My experience on SL 10.6.4 is that VB puts the guest(s) in paused state just before the system goes to sleep. On resume, VB automatically resumes the guest and both these processes are nearly imperceivable to the user. Try to put your Mac to sleep with the lid opened (from Apple menu) and you will notice the guest goes graying before the screen power off and then still gray for half a second on resuming.

I'm using VirtualBox on OSX Snow Leopard, both with windows and linux guests, and never had a problem in putting the mac to sleep. Virtual machines are ready to be used when OSX resumes, I can see them being paused by VirtualBox before the mac goes to sleep and resumed as soon as the mac resumes. Don't worry about your battery, VirtualBox is not consuming it while your mac is paused.