virtualbox.org

Dear all,

I have a Win 7 32bit guest on a Ubuntu 14.04 32bit host. I have the guest additions installed. The host has 4 GB of memory of which 1.5 GB is assigned to the host. The log file is in the attachment of my post. My problem is that my Win 7 guest is really slow as it has a continous 90-100% processor use even when both host and guest are performing no tasks. This makes the guest pretty much unusable: even sending an e-mail takes a few minutes... I verified in the guest system information that the assigned memory is not the problem: it is never used (close to the) maximum.

I have already searched the internet and these forums for potential answers and have found some e.g. changing network settings for the guest and starting a dummy instance of the guest next to my actual guest. Unfortunately, these have not worked. Possibly this is due to the fact that these answers were 3-5 years old and thus pertaining to older VB versions.

I have run out of options, so I hope that someone here has ideas on how I can fix this, as it is really annoying. I have tried to provide all the required system information above and in the attachment. If anything else should be added, let me know.

Thanks in advance for any guidance,
Stijn

This is usually Windows update or AV.

mpack wrote:This is usually Windows update or AV.

Thanks!
If it's Windows update, is the only solution to disable updates and manually update from time to time?
And I am not sure what AV is, or what I could do about. Could you explain?

Cheers,
Stijn

AV = antivirus.

Normally the solution is to let it finish all the updates and scans that it wants to do.

Also: make sure you have "Show processes for all users" ticked, as Windows hides many CPU hogs in there.

Basic summary: CPU hoggage doesn't happen by magic, there is some process (or several) that is responsible.

Thanks for the suggestions! Based on them I have thought about it and tested a few things. It seems unlikely to me that Win7 is consuming the whole processor capacity primarily for updates and virus protection. That's because:

-When Win7 is at 90-100% processor capacity, I can switch to the Ubuntu host and it still runs smoothly when I e.g. open a new browser.
-The 90-100% processor capacity in Win7 does not go to (nearly) zero after a while. Not even after 20-30 min. Not even when I have finished installing updates.
-I have already set Windows Update to only check for updates and then ask me whether I want to install them.
-I have no AV installed, except for Windows Security Essentials.
-I have only two programs that start at Win 7 Startup: the Virtualbox Guest Additions and Windows Security Essentials.
-The highest processor use seems to be by things like svchost.exe and System, not so much from Security Essentials.

So it seems that Win7 very easily reachers maximum processing capacity, even though it has not so much to do. So then I thought maybe Win7 can not use the full capacity of my processor. Could that be it? I have a Intel® Core™2 Duo Processor T6600, which I found to be a model that does not support hardware virtualization. When I am in Settings > System > Processor of my VM, I can only select 1 CPU to be used. The 2 CPU option is greyed out.

Could that be the case? That Win7 can only access 50% of my CPU and is thus very slow? If so, is there anything I can do about it. (Other than buying a new processor. )

As with all kinds of hardware acceleration, if your hardware doesn't have that capability then it has to be done in software, with a certain cost in CPU.

So yes, lacking VT-x could have that affect, but it applies to graphics too - i.e. make sure you have the Guest Additions installed, otherwise the VM is doing graphics using fully software rendering too.

While re-checking that you have the GAs installed I notice you're using the Ubuntu fork of VirtualBox, which we really don't support here. I suggest you give the official version a try. Then remember to install the official GAs.

Ok, good to know. I had no idea that there is a difference between the Ubuntu-fork (UF) and the official VB (OV). So I will go ahead and try the OV. I ran into a problem though:

When trying to install the OV, Ubuntu says that it can not install the OV because of some conflicts with the UF previously installed. So installation of the OV is cancelled. So I guess I should uninstall the UF first. But I'm not entirely sure whether that will leave my virtual machine intact. Is that the case? Can I uninstall the UF, install the OV and then use the OV to run my existing Win7 VM?

I can't give any guarantees of what the Ubuntu fork will do - that's partly what "not supported" means. However apps generally can be updated and uninstalled without affecting document files, which is what VMs are on the host.

Thanks, it worked, the VM remained intact. I am on the latest official version now. It seems like the speed has increased a reasonable bit. But all in all the VM is still quite slow. Reasonably simple tasks like opening a PowerPoint, editing it and then e-mailing the result take me a lot longer than they would on my Ubuntu host or on any regular Windows PC. I figure though that's just the limit of virtualization, my hardware and especially the combination of the two. Therefore, I'll label the topic as [Solved]

mpex, thank you very much for all your help and suggestions. They helped me understand and improve the situation, much appreciated!

[Edit: I can't find an option to mark the topic as solved, so I'll leave it like this]