Win10 guest froze my Linux host for 10+ seconds, why?

[tom760]

Hi,

I'm using the latest VirtualBox for Ubuntu as of today (10/27/16), which looks like 5.0.24 from what the about page says, although it did say that as GUI version and maybe the back-end is different.

Anyhow I just saw in my Win10 guest VM I booted up, I started Windows updates and while that was going I clicked to start Google Chrome. Then it was taking so long to open and I for a little while I thought it was just the guest lagging. A little while later (guessing 10-30 seconds) I saw even my Ubuntu system monitor graph stopped scrolling and it froze my host except for the mouse cursor. Then like 30 seconds later it came back.

Any ideas what this would be from and how to fix it?

Also in general I'm curious for tips how to diagnose such issues to figure out the culprit. I'm a programmer and am curious like with debug type tools how to investigate the why behind how that happened.

Thanks

[socratis]

Without too much information given, it's only speculation at this point. Since both host and guest "froze", I'd suspect that the problem is with the host's lack of resources; either low on memory, or high I/O in the disk mainly due to swapping which is due to lack of memory (again).

I'd suggest a system monitor tool. You don't gave specifics about your host, except that it's Ubuntu (based?), but on my 12.04 I have the System Monitor and System Load Indicator running at startup. There are more monitors than I'd like, but one (or more) of them should fulfill your needs.

[mpack]

This sounds to me like standard symptoms of Windows Update running. If browser or email page loading seems to take forever, and Win10 is present in any capacity, then take a look at (Win10's) Start| Settings | Update and Security, see if it's downloading an update.

[tom760]

Sorry for delay responding.

It wouldn't have been because of RAM. I have 16GB of RAM on my host PC and it should have been below 50% usage.

[socratis]

it should have been below 50% usage

Should have? You don't know for sure?

I'm a programmer and am curious like with debug type tools how to investigate the why behind how that happened.

Again, you provided no diagnostics. We can't continue the discussion without them. The only thing that I can tell you, once more, is to install a system monitor on your host.