Extremely slow guest (win 7)

[cfbiehl]

Hi all,

I am trying to run a win 7 64Bit guest system with an early 2008 mac pro host (I have attached the log for details).
Whilst this is working well on the macbook pro it is too slow to use here. Even shutting it down takes 10mins.
In addition the mouse pointer drags massively and sometimes cannot even be seen.


System:
OS X Yosemite, 10.10.5
Mac Pro (Early 2008)
2 x 3 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon
12 GB 667 MHz DDR2 FB-DIMM
NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT 512 MB

[cfbiehl]

Following the recommendations from another post I have updated the guest additions and I have tried to run it with the latest VirtualBox release.

Unfortunately, the problem continues.

[mpack]

How many CPU cores did you assign to the guest, how many did you leave for the host?

[cfbiehl]

I assigned 4 to the guest and 4 to the host

[loukingjr]

I would try 2 cores for the guest. My sense is there is some problem with hosts with more than one CPU and VB. There have been a number of posts from users with multiple CPUs. I do know switching to 2 cores helped at least one user.

[cfbiehl]

Thank you, this helped partly:

Win 7 in general is running smoothly now. However, even trying to launch an installer for Avira puts the CPU usage to 100% without anything visibly happening.

[loukingjr]

That is something I wouldn't know about. I don't run anti-virus programs on guests. For that matter I don't run them on Mac hosts.

100% CPU usage on the host or the guest?

[cfbiehl]

I am sorry this was unclear:

The guest CPU is at 100% and it's just the installer not even the antivirus programme.
The host is working perfectly fine, pretty much unimpressed.

[loukingjr]

Well, my feeling is, if the guest isn't doing anything else it may very well use 100% of the CPU to install something if it doesn't need the CPU for anything else. But if it causes a problem then you should create a new post for it. We're supposed to create one post for one topic.

and you're welcome btw. I forget sometimes.

[cfbiehl]

Ok thank you!

What happens now is pretty much that the OS runs but the programmes don't or take ages to load and are very slow.
It is kind of still the 'slow issue' though.

[loukingjr]

You could try the test build and see if that helps. https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Testbuilds

Windows 7 has a fair number of services that run in the background such as indexing the drive, checking for updates etc. You might want to do a search on how to speed up Windows 7. I have noticed my Windows 7 guest occasionally runs slowly and I don't know why. Most of the time it's normal.

[cfbiehl]

Ok thank you I will try that.

[loukingjr]

YVW. BTW, on my iMac Windows 7 normally takes 5-10 secs to boot and 5 secs to shutdown. For some reason, this morning it took quite awhile and everything ran slowly. When it does that I just reset it.

[mpack]

Sounds like typical Windows Update issues. I usually turn automatic updates off - and select it manually when I don't need the time.

[loukingjr]

Just a followup, I rarely use Windows Guests, just to test VirtualBox as a matter of fact. Following mpack's comment I completely disabled Automatic updates. My Windows 7 guest no longer boots slowly, even once in a while.