A Few Basic New User Questions (Not Covered in Manual)

[Zach]

Off-Topic: You need to update your anti-spam "What's the latest version of VirtualBox?" registration question.

So I have only been playing around with VirtualBox (v.3.2.12) the last couple of days, and today, of course, I upgraded to the just-released-today 4.0.0. It's this upgrade and the issues I have encountered that mostly inspired me to register here today. I do, however, have a couple of non-version specific questions.

As a preface, though, let me say that VirtualBox rocks my socks off! I've been creating and using VMs off and on for years (mainly via VMware), but since Windows 7 came out, I've been using Virtual PC. The speed and responsiveness of VirtualBox is absolutely phenomenal. After installing the "Guest Additions" with its, among other things (integrated mouse support, rah!), nVidia GPU hardware support, I literally cannot tell the difference between my host system (Windows 7 64-bit) and my guest system (Windows XP) in terms of speed and responsiveness. Anyway, sorry for the digression, but I just wanted to say thanks and great job!

General Questions

1. Multiples Cores
   I have an Intel i7 980x CPU, i.e., 6 cores (though, because of the hyperthreading, the OS reports 12 cores). One question relates to that last comment: When setting up my VM, if I specify 4 processors, will VirtualBox actually use 4 of my 6 real cores, or will it just use 4 of my 12 virtual cores? Put another way, if I want to let my guest OS use 2 of my 6 available cores, should I set it to 2 or 4?
   
   Also, is this even advisable? I'm only adding multi-core support to help (potentially) the guest OS, not any specific application I run under VMs (mainly development tools). So I am wasting a core by doing this?
2. Memory
   Why when creating a new VM does the setup "recommend" only 192 MB? Is this a glitch, or am I missing something? My host system has 12 GB, so I up the recommended setting to 4 GB, but am I wasting RAM doing that? I mean, like with the dynamic disk drives, will the RAM actually increase dynamically when needed so I should just leave it at its default 192 MB? (Side-note: For fun, I actually created a VM with that recommended setting, and Windows XP installed fine, hence why I question my natural impulse to increase the RAM allocation.)
3. Snapshots
   Is a snapshot just a copy of VirtualBox's settings, or is it literally like creating a disk image (like one does with Ghost)?

v.4.0.0-Specific Questions

1. Intel ICH9 Chipset Support
   My northbridge is an X58 (not really relevant, I know) and my southbridge is a ICH10R. Should I just stick with the default PIIX3 emulated chipset? I tried creating a new VM using the new ICH9 option, and WinXP (SP3 slipstreamed in already) installed and ran fine, but when I let Windows do its auto-update thing (59 updates since SP3, sheesh!), the system refused to boot (I'd get a BSOD), even in safe mode. So one of those 59 updates seems to conflict with your ICH9 driver; that, or I had no business running ICH9 on my ICH10 and one of the updates exposed the incompatibility. I don't know which.
2. Old v.3.2.12 VM No Longer Accessible
   After upgrading VirtualBox to v.4.0.0., my previous VM, once it booted, told me I needed to upgrade my "Guest Additions" as well. So perhaps it was the procedure I did this that caused the problem, but what I did was uninstall it first (via the guest's Add/Remove programs), rebooted in safe mode, and then installed the new version.
   
   At that point, after powering down, I got the following:
   
   
   
   Bug? Not a big deal (for me) as, like I stated at the top of the post, I only started playing with VirtualBox a couple of days ago, so I had nothing on the VM yet anyway.

[tb2571989]

Hi Zach,

I'll do my best to answer what I can.

Creating a new VM the "reccomended" memory is the minimum memory that you guest, in this case XP, needs to run. If you change the OS to Vista, 7, or 2008 you will see the reccomended memory increase. You can set a VM to use 2GB+ which it will use but ultimately it depends on what you need to do in the VM, will 512MB or 1GB suffice.

A snapshot, AFIAK, is a store of the hard disk in the current state. I think it does create a new disk image, although not using snapshots I'm afraid I can't give you a good answer.

In regards to the Multiple core and other questions I don't know but will hope some of the other foums users can help.

[Zach]

Thanks for responding! It's good to know there is at least one kind and helpful person here who isn't a card carrying member of the TL;DR club.

Memory: Yeah, I suspected it was something along those lines, only they should change the wording from "recommended" to "minimum required" or something.
Cores: Since I seem to be able to change this on the fly without issue, I guess I'll just play around with it and see what works out best over time.
Snapshots: Yeah, again, I suspected it worked like that, but the manual was not very specific as to what actually got saved. (Note: The User Manual is stellar and is very professional, and when considering all the time, effort, and resources that went into it, particularly since it is for an open-source product, one cannot help but to be blown away and very impressed.)
ICH9 Chipset Support: Upon further reflection, it occurred to me that my host hardware is irrelevant and that this emulation only pertains to the OS being hosted. PIIX3 worked flawlessly in my 3.2.12 VMs, at least for WinXP guests, so I'll just stick with that.
Loss of 3.2.12 VM: I will just consider this a bug in VirtualBox's 4.0.0 installer and move on.

I am actually strongly considering downgrading back to 3.2.12. There is one major bug in 4.0.0 that, though not a show stopper, is a major annoyance. For a WinXP guest, "restarting" Windows (from within the guest, of course) causes 1.) all the current Window session setting changes to be lost (changes in desktop, audio settings, configuration changes, etc. just like if one pushes the power button not giving Windows the opportunity to save the "last known good" configuration), and 2.) [and THIS is the annoyance] the Guest Additions app/drivers won't get loaded when Windows reboots. This is 100% repeatable across, now, 4 newly created VMs, so I am pretty sure this is a VirtualBox bug and not just some stupid operator error thing.

[mpack]

On snapshots: it actually does both of what you said, i.e. it copies your VM settings and it creates a new disk image. Note that it doesn't copy your existing disk image, it just freezes the existing image and does all new writes to a secondary image; the secondary image has a map saying which bits have been written to - for bits not written to the virtual controller fetches the data from the old disk. This linked image idea can be extended to create chains or trees of "difference disk" images.

Be warned (and this not covered in manual either): snapshots are fragile by their very nature. For example, any damage to the oldest disk image (which people have been known to manually delete them on the grounds that it's old) results in the loss of the entire difference tree or chain: because the oldest writes will tend to include basic disk partitioning, formatting and boot info, and perhaps also installation of the OS! So old or not, it was still being referenced.

For this reason and many others (some of which have admittedly been addressed in v4.0.0), most experienced users here I believe have abandoned snapshots.

[mpack]

2.) [and THIS is the annoyance] the Guest Additions app/drivers won't get loaded when Windows reboots. This is 100% repeatable across, now, 4 newly created VMs, so I am pretty sure this is a VirtualBox bug and not just some stupid operator error thing.

I can't reproduce that here [v4.0.0]. After restarting my XP VM mouse integration works just as well as it did before, proving that GAs have not been disabled or unloaded. Perhaps you should provide exact symptoms.

On the "settings lost" peeve. I'm not sure what settings you are talking about. If these are settings managed by the guest OS, then I'm not sure why you think VBox could have any influence on them... unless perhaps there was something unusual about your disk arrangement (immutable? still shouldn't exhibit mentioned behaviour, but perhaps immutable+bug...).

[Zach]

Perhaps you should provide exact symptoms.

I don't know how much more "exact" I can be without sounding condescending. The Guest Additions don't load, like they were never installed, nor do other emulated drivers get loaded.

Click this button (or accept a "Restart" prompt after a Windows or driver update):



And then when Windows boots back up, you get this (along with, as you mention, no mouse integration):



On the other hand, if I power down (click the "Turn Off" button shown above) then relaunch the VM manually, everything loads up fine. Again, this is 100% repeatable for me on every VM I have created since upgrading to 4.0.0.

On the "settings lost" peeve. I'm not sure what settings you are talking about. If these are settings managed by the guest OS, then I'm not sure why you think VBox could have any influence on them... unless perhaps there was something unusual about your disk arrangement (immutable? still shouldn't exhibit mentioned behaviour, but perhaps immutable+bug...).

Well, for instance, unlock your taskbar, extend its height, and then lock it again. Doing a restart will have that Explorer session change lost. Or even simpler, right-click on the taskbar, enable your quick launch toolbar to be shown (or hide it if it's already shown), restart, and then you'll see (well, I see) that that change was lost and I have to do it again. Power down, though, and the change sticks as normal, like it should. It has to do with VirtualBox, I surmise, because like the above problem, somehow VB is not handling the Restart sequence properly as opposed to the power-off sequence. For instance, it's perfectly reasonable to suspect that maybe VirtualBox is shutting down the VM before Windows has a chance to finish all of its own shutdown tasks, one of which is saving its settings.

Well, it doesn't matter anymore. Based on all the glitches I have experienced (only a couple mentioned here in this thread), and based on the scores of posts now from other people having problems with 4.0.0, I think I am just going to revert back to 3.2.12 and wait for 4.1 to be released. For the couple of days I was using it, 3.2.12 was rock solid and worked flawlessly, so from my perspective, I'll just "not fix what's not broken."

Thanks for replying, though!

[mpack]

Well, I'm using XP Pro SP2 on v4.0.0. I am resetting it in the same way you are, but I do not lose mouse integration, and I do not lose the VirtualBox Graphics Adapter.

Also, the fact that you are also losing the network and audio cards is very odd, because these (AFAIK) are virtual hardware items, not GA apps. This tells me that you have a more fundamental problem in Windows which is losing your device manager configuration. I can't think of any mechanism in VirtualBox which could cause it. Is this a kosher install of XP?

[Zach]

Well, I'm using XP Pro SP2 on v4.0.0. I am resetting it in the same way you are, but I do not lose mouse integration, and I do not lose the VirtualBox Graphics Adapter.

Well, good for you! Want a cookie? I must admit that I have never understood that all too common "Works for me!" mentality. Your system is not my system, so it working for you does not negate the problems I am seeing on my system and is in no way constructive in helping me find a solution. Who knows... maybe its a SP3 thing? Can you say for sure? No, because you are only running SP2. All your claim is stating is that 4.0.0 works for your specific configuration. That's great--for you. For me, it's not helpful.

I can't think of any mechanism in VirtualBox which could cause it.

Okay, but that does not mean it's not the cause, though.

Yesterday, I went back to 3.2.12, and with it, the problem went away. I then upgraded again to 4.0.0 (hoping it was just a buggy upgrade install the first time), and the problem came back. Now I am back to 3.2.12 again.

Is this a kosher install of XP?

I won't even dignify that with a response.

-----------------------------------

Will a mod please lock this thread? I reverted back to 3.2.12 and consider the matter closed.

[chingasos]

Your system is not my system, so it working for you does not negate the problems I am seeing on my system and is in no way constructive in helping me find a solution. Who knows... maybe its a SP3 thing? Can you say for sure? No, because you are only running SP2.

I have nothing to help solve your issue, but
I am running XP SP3 host & guests on a machine with a single core athlonxp and I tried some of the tests you suggested above like enabling and disabling quick launch, as well as a few others like re-positioning desktop icons, resizing the icons, resizing the fonts, and changing the theme color and on my specific hardware and my specific installs of XP SP3 all settings are kept with a restart of the guest using VBox 4.0.0. In my specific case there is no such issue with VirtualBox 4.0.0 and XP SP3.

[mpack]

Well, I'm using XP Pro SP2 on v4.0.0. I am resetting it in the same way you are, but I do not lose mouse integration, and I do not lose the VirtualBox Graphics Adapter.

Well, good for you! Want a cookie?

I went to the trouble of doing this test for you and reporting the result, and this is how I'm thanked?

Debugging is best done by deduction from proven facts. The more facts you can establish, the better. My result reported earlier excludes the possibility that you have found a systemic fault in VirtualBox v4.0.0 which affects all users - which I felt was a fact worth reporting. I see someone else makes a similar observation. I also pointed out that your own reported results are not consistent with your own diagnosis - i.e. NICs and audio cards are not part of the GAs.

And why are you asking the mods to lock this thread? For one thing that is not your decision, and for another your reverting back to an earlier VBox version has not resolved the matter at all. Threads like this exist to benefit all readers, not just the guy who posts the first message.