Running windows 7 VM from USB drive slow in windows 8.1 host

[marky9074]

I did a bit of searching but could not find anything applicable.

I am running two VM's from my USB stick. One is Slackware 14.1 the other Windows 7. Slackware works fine, Windows 7 runs like a dog and is painfully slow. Host machine is a Dell with Core i7 and 8Gb RAM. My goal was to use portable virtualbox on a stick so I could take my two installs anywhere and work without having to do any installs, but at the moment the windows VM is basically unusable.

Are there any tips of tweaks I can do to improve the performance? I could do some speed tests on the stick, but the fact linux works fine leads me to believe that the stick is up to the task.

Any help is much appreciated.

Cheers,

Mark

[socratis]

Slackware works fine, Windows 7 runs like a dog

but the fact linux works fine leads me to believe that the stick is up to the task.

How can VirtualBox help? Maybe it's a Windows issue? Plus, there are two other issues. You are misinformed that you don't have to install anything if you use Portable VirtualBox. You do, see their documentation. Second, Portable VirtualBox is not supported in the VirtualBox forums.

But, since I wouldn't like to have you go without a hint, did you deviate from the default templates when building your VMs? Is Windows try to update itself (it has issues)? Unless you assigned two few resources (RAM, HD) to the WinVM, I would start looking at your WinVM.

[dlharper]

In my experience, Windows often needs more RAM to run smoothly than does Linux. Windows 7 does tend to do a lot of disk swapping if it has significantly less than about 4Gb of RAM. (Rather less is required for the 32-bit version.) This will show up especially with a USB drive. How much RAM have you allocated to the Windows VM?

[marky9074]

Slackware works fine, Windows 7 runs like a dog

but the fact linux works fine leads me to believe that the stick is up to the task.

How can VirtualBox help? Maybe it's a Windows issue? Plus, there are two other issues. You are misinformed that you don't have to install anything if you use Portable VirtualBox. You do, see their documentation. Second, Portable VirtualBox is not supported in the VirtualBox forums.

But, since I wouldn't like to have you go without a hint, did you deviate from the default templates when building your VMs? Is Windows try to update itself (it has issues)? Unless you assigned two few resources (RAM, HD) to the WinVM, I would start looking at your WinVM.

I didn't realise Portable Virtualbox was not supported, and yes, I do realise that things are 'installed' at run time, then removed when closed, but my example usage was obvious - I am trying to run VM's from a pen drive, therefore the more portable I can make it the better.

I didn't say it was a VirtuaBox issues, I just asked if somebody had any tips or tweaks to make it run faster. The fact that the very same VM run from the workstation hard disk is fine (which unfortunately I didn't mention earlier), but runs like a dog on the stick implies that there is a performance issue running from removable media. However, as I also stated, Slackware runs fine. Windows is up to date (I check for updates every time I boot that VM). Please feel free to point me in the direction of some Portable VirtualBox sites if you think it would be more applicable to post there.

[marky9074]

In my experience, Windows often needs more RAM to run smoothly than does Linux. Windows 7 does tend to do a lot of disk swapping if it has significantly less than about 4Gb of RAM. (Rather less is required for the 32-bit version.) This will show up especially with a USB drive. How much RAM have you allocated to the Windows VM?

Thanks for the helpful reply. I'm running the 64-bit version, but only with 2Gb of RAM. I am pretty sure I tried it before with 4Gb, but will try it again now.

[Perryg]

There is a huge difference in Slackware and Windows. Slackware is designed to run on old equipment and processors, and Windows wants and needs a lot more.

In any account we do not support Portable VirtualBox. If you want to continue to use it then ask them for support