virtualbox.org

first let me say that i'm new to virtual machines, had never used or needed one before, but discovered that a vm might allow me to run my legacy program within my new install of w8/64, using an xp guest. well vbox didn't disappoint, it was a snap to set up, even for a newbie like myself, and i was up and running with my legacy program in no time, vbox absolutely rocks. but here's the thing - when i first installed vbox it would boot very quickly; in fact i also created a shortcut to my vdi file which i use the most and it would boot very quickly as well (as opposed to loading vb first and then selecting the file, which i did for the first couple of weeks). but now, about two months later, it takes about 30 seconds for either vbox or the vdi file to boot. i thought updating to the newest guest additions pack might help but it didn't, also double checked to see if i had installed any other applications since the slow down but i haven't, so i don't know where to look next. am hoping that someone here might be able to offer some suggestions. a few notes:

1. once booted, it's fine, same nice speediness/snappiness as before.
2. i have vbox installed on a secondary internal drive, i.e. it does not reside on the os drive. in vbox settings all paths point to the secondary (d:) drive.
3. os is on a ssd, vbox is on a hybrid drive.
4. i'm running windows 8 pro / 64, xeon e3 1245 processor, 16gb memory.

thanks for your time.

? Creating a shortcut to a VDI should not start the VM. The VDI is just a disk image, it isn't a virtual PC.

A long boot time, especially if it appears to stop at the point where it would display the desktop, often means some problem with the network connection. The fact that it's happy after boot (i.e. once it's repaired the network connection) lends weight to that idea also IMHO.

thanks for the response....

actually i meant a shortcut to the *.vbox file (not the *.vdi), which loads my machine without having to first start the manager, something i didn't realize was possible until a few weeks after using vb. re a network connection, i read that some apps can cause problems with vb if the vb network isn't set to nat (as opposed to bridged, etc.) - mine has always been set to nat and nothing has changed network-wise on my system afaik. also, i wouldn't describe my boot issue as "appearing to stop at the point where it would display the desktop", it simply seems to be just a very, very, very long boot. for example, when i launch the manager nothing happens for about 30 secs and then, bam, it display. when i launch a machine, nothing happens for about 30 secs and then it starts to load, and goes through the actual virtual boot just fine. having said this, it occurs to me that my thread title might not be accurate - my virtual machine boots fine, it just takes a very long time before it starts going, before the boot process starts. the same with vb manager, it takes a very long time before it loads/displays. fwiw i thought that perhaps i had accumulated too many snapshots, which may be causing the problem, but i just deleted them all and no difference... anyway i appreciate your help, but at this point i think i'm just going to reinstall vb. the thing is, if the problem is in my vb settings, which i plan to keep, not sure what reinstall will do?

well i just did a reinstall and all is back to normal, very quick loads and, as usual, a very quick/snappy guest environment... really wish i knew what caused the problem, but can't say that i do, alas...

Just to clarify, are you saying that simply reinstalling VirtualBox (version?), but not reinstalling any of the guest OS's, was enough to cure this performance problem?

i installed v 4.2.12 which i think was the version i was already using... prior to the reinstall i uninstalled virtualbox keeping only three files (*.vbox, *.vbox-prev and *.vdi), which i backed up to another folder. after the uninstall i had to manually remove some remnants in the vb folder, then delete the folder altogether, and the same for the guest addition folder/files that had been installed in my user folder. after the reinstall i opted not to launch vb, closed it out instead, and then added the backed up machine (the three files) to the virtual machine folder. when i launched the new install (manager) i added the backed up machine and launched it, but got an immediate error about the machine having been set up with usb 2.0, and that the latest guest addition pack was needed. so i installed the ga pack, in both machines, and all was good to go. fwiw, now that i think about it, i did do something during the new install that might have been responsible for the return to a speedy load - while in the manager gui, under preferences, i defined the path to the vrdp authentication library rather than leaving it as the default. then again, i had never done anything to this setting before and all was fine for a while...

Just a quick note that the solution to the "USB 2.0" warning that you mention is to install the extension pack on the host. Installing Guest Additions in the guest will not help, since the GAs have no involvement with implementing USB.

Also, your vrdp path suggestion is precisely the sort of thing I had in mind, whether or not that was actually it. The basic scenario is that when first installed you guest OS autoconfigured itself to the network environment. Then somewhere down the line the network environment was changed in some way. On startup the guest discovers that it's network configuration doesn't work, and takes a while to repair the issue - but only until next boot (it doesn't replace the config). A total guess, but that's what the symptoms make me suspect.