virtualbox.org

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.

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

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.

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).