virtualbox.org

I've been using VirtualBox to run an XP guest on my Kubuntu 8.04 AMD64 SMP Linux host. There is one major impediment to switching over from VMWare workstation: the high CPU utilization. VirtualBox pegs one of my two cpus, even when the guest is idle. I've submitted a bug report, but the developers have not responded.

There are a couple of inconveniences in using 1.6.4, but the show stopper is the high CPU usage. One inconvenience is the extremely slow Cut/Paste in the guest. If I mark a region and select Edit->Copy, it takes about 10 seconds for the popup edit window to fully render. Likewise Edit->Paste in the XP guest is quite slow.

Am I the only one who is seeing the high CPU usage with an XP guest on a Linux host?

FWIW, the virtual XP file was converted from a VMWare virtual file, and I'm running with a bridged network connection.

Could you try to make the same VM from scratch and see if you have the same issues? I have Ubuntu 8.04 with XP (both 32 bit though) running with no CPU usage when idle. Copy and paste is fast as it should be. It might be the conversion from VMW to VB that is the cause of the CPU usage.

I don't know how to build an XP image from scratch -- I don't have the Windows XP CD. Any suggestions? My VMWare image is a legit paid-for licensed version of XP, but I no longer have the media I built it from.

There are other ways to get an XP install CD. Borrow one from someone or download one. The Licence key you used can be retrieved using Magic Jellybean's Keyfinder, in case you don't have it nearby.

Thanks, Sasquatch.

I'm beginning to suspect that VMWare tools in my VirtualBox image might be the problem. I cannot uninstall VMWare tools from VBox.

I still have my license key, so I'll download an XP iso & try building from scratch. I'll probably also rebuild the .vbi image from my VMware image, but after first removing VMWare Tools from the image.

--Doug

For even more performance, you can extract the ISO file, run nLite on the setup files and integrate some updates like SP3, remove unneeded components and add some tweaks.

Good luck.

Yep, the VMWare image was buggered up somehow, and that apparently is what was causing the 100% CPU usage and slowness. I completely rebuilt a vdi image from my VMWare image once more, using qemu-img convert and VBoxManage, and ended up with a .vdi image that exhibited the same bad cpu behavior.

So, I got an XP iso and built a new XP vdi image from it, and now and the virtual system is quite fast and without the excessive cpu utilization.

Thanks for the suggestions, Sasquatch. VirtualBox is pretty cool. Adios, VMWare Workstation.

--Doug