4.3.x vs 4.2.x - very slow 2D and very slow "feel" overall

[birdie]

Hi,

Irrelevant: I have a Windows 7 64 host with 16GB RAM and I run a Windows XP SP3 32bit guest (2CPU cores, 2GB RAM, 3D acceleration is off, 2D video acceleration is on).

When updating from 4.2.18 to 4.3.0(2) I've noticed a massive slow down - while in 4.2.x applications launch immediately, in 4.3.x even mspaint.exe takes 2 seconds to launch. Dragging windows around, doing basic stuff - it all feels very slow in 4.3.x.

See below for further development.

Guest Additions' version doesn't matter (4.2.18 with GA4.2.18/GA4.3.2 -> fast, 4.3.2 with GA4.2.18/GA4.3.2 -> slow).

My guest OS is otherwise completely idle. Gonna find tests to verify it, but I've no idea which ones can fit.

[Ramshankar]

Could you please upload the VBox.log for the XP VM which you found was slow.

[frank]

And could you also test if you see any improvement with this test build? We fixed a number of performance problems here. Also, first check also if there is any svchost.exe process begging your guest CPU (task manager). I saw similar problems with other users and myself and after installing the latest MS updates, the problem was gone.

[birdie]

Actually I've just rechecked 4.2.x - it's similarly "slow" - 4.2.x and 4.3.x are both slow when the guest Windows XP SP3 OS has more than 1 VCPU (VBox.log here) - it affects both Windows 7 64bit and Linux 3.12 i686 hosts.

Slow 2D for 4.3.x additions has been recently fixed (when running in 1VCPU mode).