XP conversion to VM machine fails to auto-resize

[loukingjr]

Well, then, podnah, VirtualBox has a serious bug. It declares 16 CPUs and is green through 8.
In some cases dual CPU packages can slow you down rather than speed you up due to the way the packages communicate with each other - modulo the system's internal firmware.)
{^_^}

there is no bug. it is not declaring anything. It displays 16 "CPUs" because that is the limit VirtualBox can support. I have one i7, 4 cores, 8 threads and mine displays the same as yours. If either of us had 1 processor with 1 core and no threads it would still look the same. It is up to the user to know what they can use. When and if my Mac Pro ever shows up with a twelve core Xeon it will show the same thing.

You are correct about the possibility that dual CPUs can slow you down.

[jdow]

Respectfully, you seem to be ignoring two details.

You are probably correct that VirtualBox tops out at 16 CPUs and this machine happens to (apparently) have 16 CPUs. My laptop has 8. And VirtualBox declares 8.

I note on my laptop VirtualBox suggests a maximum of 4 CPUs be allocated. On this machine, the 16 CPU behemoth, it declares 8 is the suggested maximum judging by the green area of the slider control.

So, either the VirtualBox GUI application has a bug or the 8 CPUs I had allocated is acceptable.

None of this appears to address the apparent failure of the guest additions to properly initialize. Maybe some history of the machine it was derived from would help. (At this point the three days XP license grace period has run out I either need to revalidate the copy or use a fresh copy. The latter may be a good starting point.) The machine has an nVidia graphics card, the motherboard is a SuperMicro X7DA8 with SCSI enabled and only one Ethernet port in use. It normally runs on a 4 disk Intel ICH9 raid. I am not emulating the RAID. And the system does load and run with, so far, only the autoresize problem.

I don't know if that suggests anything to you folks or not. I hope it does. I'd like to resolve it so the hardware can be repurposed and the install can be used as a way of keeping some old software running.

{^_^}

[loukingjr]

if you say so...

I guess my i7 has 16 "CPUs" as well.

[jdow]

It would appear that it does. My dual i7 laptop does not. It shows as 8 cpus in device configuration. So it's apparently either dual quad cores without hyperthreading or dual dual cores with hyperthreading. The big machine is dual quad core XEONs with hyperthreading. With a dose of caution I did give the VM an execution cap of about 75%.

{^_^}

[loukingjr]

It would appear that it does. My dual i7 laptop does not. It shows as 8 cpus in device configuration. So it's apparently either dual quad cores without hyperthreading or dual dual cores with hyperthreading. The big machine is dual quad core XEONs with hyperthreading. With a dose of caution I did give the VM an execution cap of about 75%.

{^_^}

I give up.