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Hello,
I have just recently installed Windows 10 VM on my MacBook Pro.

The specs are as follows:
MacBook Pro (15-inch, Late 2011)
OS X El Capitan Version 10.11.6
2.5 GHz Intel Core i7
16 GB 1333 MHz DDR3

After installation of the Windows 10 VM it runs so slow that it is almost unusable. I allocated 2 cores to it, 64 GB of HD and set the ram at 8GB. I set power settings in windows to High Performance but none of this seemed to make much difference. It still runs extremely slow.

I only need Windows for one program (FL Studio). I would like to possibly use it for playing PC only Steam games down the line but for now I just need to bounce audio files from old music projects in order to mix/master them in Ableton Live.

Is there something I'm missing? I know the VM won't run at 100% but it should not be this sluggish.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you.

*Edit*
Also it wont start unless I choose "Headless Start". If I just click the green arrow start button or select "Normal Start" a window will open and remain black while the little preview screen will show Windows 10 lock screen. I have to force quit in order to close the VM at this point as it will remain frozen on a the black screen.

Please provide a VM log file. With the VM fully shut down, right click it in GUI. Select "Show Log" and save "VBox.log" (ONLY) to a zip file. Attach the zip here.

here is the requested Log.

You should eject the Win10 Install DVD which is still mounted.

You do not seem to have the Guest Additions installed. I would do so, after enabling 2D and 3D acceleration.

Otherwise the VM settings look good to me. I would look at your guests task manager to see what's taking all the CPU and I/O time. If it's a fresh Win10 install on a traditional hdd then it's a fact of life that it spends the first day or so chugging on Windows Updates, indexing the disk etc. It's also possible that your local network has some kind of problem (or is simply busy).

I don't understand what Guest Additions are or how to install it/them.
I checked and there is nothing mounted, just my external HD. The Win10 ISO which I downloaded from Microsoft is in the downloads folder.
What do you mean by I/O time. I'm not familiar with this term.
I also do not understand what you mean by local network.

The issue of the VM not starting still persists. It won't start unless I put it in Headless mode. Would this cause any issue with the performance. Also what could be causing this to happen?

BJLW wrote:I don't understand what Guest Additions are or how to install it/them.

See the first couple of chapters of the user manual.