Strange problem (NT Kernel & System)

[swahn]

I have encountered a strange problem when installing VirtualBox-4.1.8-75467-Win. The problem is that when installing VirtualBox the process named "System" and with the description "NT Kernel & System" starts using around 15-25% CPU constantly and also starts loads of threads, around 175 and this is just of a fresh install of VirtualBox with no VM's.

I really want to use VirtualBox on this computer since it is my laptop and virtualizing computers is a great and I am using it alot at school. The computer is running Windows 7 64-bit and with a i7-2670QM CPU with HyperThreading if that could have anything to do with it. The problem is defiantly caused by VirtualBox since the computer is right from a fresh install and when uninstalling VirtualBox the problem disappears. Is there anyone that have encountered a similar problem?

Appreciate all the help I can get and let me just say the application is great and I would love getting it working but as it is now I will have to make do without it.

[Perryg]

Is this during the install or after VirtualBox has been installed?
What other processes are running during the install, such as bitdefender, Etc?

[swahn]

This is after the install and during the install avast! Antivirus is running other than that only drivers for the computer.

[Perryg]

What happens if you disable avast?

[NSNRob]

I'm seeing the same problem with VirtualBox 4.2 on Fedora17 host with a Windows 7 x64 guest. "NT Kernel & System" consume CPU and threads, leaving the guest almost unusable.

I've tried other options of enabling/disabling nested paging, enabling/disabling 2D/3D video accel, enabling disabling PAE/NX, changing storage controller attributes (IDE/SATA, PIIX3/4, enabling disabling use of host i/o cache etc... but nothing seems to change this. I've reinstalled several times and used different images to build, but all to no avail.

I've tried using the guest additions and leaving them uninstalled.

I've tried locking the Vitrualbox process to a single CPU on the host using the host's taskset command, but still the guest consumes CPU whilst apparently doing nothing.

I have an Windows XP guest that works perfectly and the Windows 7 x64 guest works as expected if booted into safe mode, but once the guest comes up to normal boot, something goes awry.

Apologies for hijacking, but I'm surprised more people haven't seen this. I've (hopefully) uploaded my latest VBox.log, but I don't think this shows much, if anything that even suggests a problem - unless the RTC frequencies are something - 1024Hz, 64Hz ?? (In this example, I started the guest, logged in and then initiated a shutdown. At 00:04:20 there's an RTC entry showing 64Hz. At 00:06:07 - I got fed up of waiting and used the "power off" option to terminate the guest

Any ideas? Anyone?

[Y E T I]

32 bit host and 64 bit guest is possible but there is a lot of overhead involved. perhaps this is your issue.