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Virtualbox freezes when opening two virtual machines

Posted: 12. Apr 2020, 12:00
by joethemango
Hi,
I am using virtualbox 6.0.10 and my main PC freezes when opening both windows 7 (32bit) and kali linux
attached is the virtual log of windows as i cannot see any errors on kali linux i am suspecting it is on the windows VB screen that causes the hanging problem.

Please help. thank you in advance

Re: Virtualbox freezes when opening two virtual machines

Posted: 12. Apr 2020, 12:27
by Martin
You are trying to run Windows 7 with 128MB of RAM?
According to the system requirements Windows 7 need at least 1GB and you don't have enough free RAM on your system to run both VMs at the same time.

Re: Virtualbox freezes when opening two virtual machines

Posted: 12. Apr 2020, 14:09
by mpack
Martin wrote:and you don't have enough free RAM on your system to run both VMs at the same time.
Or free CPU cores. This host has 2 cores in total, so really it will struggle with even one VM.

And don't forget graphics RAM: the current 18MB is nothing like enough.

If you want to run an OS with these constraints then it has to be XP or older, and even XP won't like it.

Re: Virtualbox freezes when opening two virtual machines

Posted: 13. Apr 2020, 21:50
by joethemango
thanks for your response Mark. I will try to increase those settings and will try again.

Re: Virtualbox freezes when opening two virtual machines

Posted: 13. Apr 2020, 22:19
by joethemango
i tried to adjust the RAM (1GB both) and video memory(128MB) of both kali linux and Windows 7 but i am still encountering the same problem.
i also attached the newest logs on both crashes.

my PC has 4 cores and i use 1 for windows and use 2 cores for kali linux.

Now i tried to boot window first and it goes fine then i followed it up by booting kali linux then my screen clock and mouse pointer started hanging afterwards.

Re: Virtualbox freezes when opening two virtual machines

Posted: 14. Apr 2020, 00:45
by scottgus1
joethemango wrote:my PC has 4 cores
Sorry, but the log and Intel.com disagree:
00:00:02.314906 CPUM: Physical host cores: 2
00:00:02.315366 Full Name: "=https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/e ... CPU M 350 @ 2.27GHz"
Only cores count for Virtualbox, not hyperthreads, so you have a two-core hyperthreaded CPU, which OS manufacturers cheat on in the 'task manager' displays to give you that warm fuzzy feeling for getting something more than what you've really got and think you got a good deal. :lol:

Your logs show both guests with one core each. I run two-core guests on my two-core-hyperthreaded laptop (theoretically not leaving a core for the host, yes) but the guest and host work reasonably well. If the guest goes 105% on both reactors I know the host will get sluggish. I suspect that the core-count and memory setting might be OK now.

Both guests are in your /home folder, which I'll wager is on your host OS's disk drive. This is an old PC; I guess the drive is a platter drive, not an SSD? If so, more than two modernish OS's on one platter drive will swamp the drive, and lead to sluggish behavior or crashes. It's happened to me before.

This PC is really tight running three OS's. Do you have another you can network to it and move a guest over? I suspect this is what Alice said to Ralph on The Honeymooners:
You're trying to do an impression of two pounds of baloney in a one pound bag.

Re: Virtualbox freezes when opening two virtual machines

Posted: 14. Apr 2020, 10:09
by mpack
I gave a link to the ark.Intel page on the i3-350M CPU in my previous reply (and again, just there) [*].

I agree that if two cores is all you have, and you want to run (say) Win7, then assigning both cores to the VM is a reasonable gamble. You gamble that the host and guest won't try to hog the CPU at the same time, and at the same time as some heavy interrupt load. Not ideal though.

But add a third actor and I don't see it going well.

p.s. The new logs still show graphics RAM under allocated. I would at least make it 48MB.

[*]It took me a while to find because the M seems to move around in the official naming.

Re: Virtualbox freezes when opening two virtual machines

Posted: 14. Apr 2020, 11:11
by joethemango
haha that 4 core got me, i am using fedora as main OS.
So all software that i installed will be found in the /home directory with different subfolders.
Where can i installed one of those ISO to avoid sluggish outcome when starting both OS?

[roo@localhost ~]$ df .
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/mapper/fedora_localhost--live-home 263983056 98925208 151578528 40% /home


Subfolders:

[roo@localhost home]$ ls -lrt
total 28
drwx------. 2 root root 16384 May 19 2019 lost+found
drwx------ 14 joethemango joethemango 4096 May 20 2019 joethemango
drwx------ 6 postgres postgres 4096 Jun 1 2019 postgres
drwx------. 29 roo roo 4096 Apr 14 10:51 roo

Re: Virtualbox freezes when opening two virtual machines

Posted: 14. Apr 2020, 15:20
by scottgus1
joethemango wrote:Where can i installed one of those ISO to avoid sluggish outcome when starting both OS?
On a different physical drive. It is a guess, though. Your PC may just not be able to handle three OS's at once. But if you can add a spare drive (SATA connected, not USB) then at least we could find out.

Re: Virtualbox freezes when opening two virtual machines

Posted: 14. Apr 2020, 18:20
by joethemango
you do know that this is an oracel virtual software we are trying to resolve and not an actual Hard drive?

Re: Virtualbox freezes when opening two virtual machines

Posted: 14. Apr 2020, 18:34
by scottgus1
joethemango wrote:you do know that this is an oracel virtual software we are trying to resolve and not an actual Hard drive?
You do know that you came to us for help, not us to you?
Look at my forum start date, then at yours, and ask yourself who probably knows more what they're talking about.

I stand by my suggestion. I don't know if the problem is three modern OS's on one platter drive, but running too many OS's on one platter drive has bit me before.

Cut your attitide or wither on the vine.

Re: Virtualbox freezes when opening two virtual machines

Posted: 14. Apr 2020, 18:45
by joethemango
Sorry to sound rude, but i dont mean it..what i mean was that i was talking to mpack,
He is more aware of the trouble.
I have installed the two OS in oracle virtualbox and i am using fedora as the host operating system.

If i open one virtual machine like windows 7 - The oracle virtual box works with no problem.

But when i open two virtual machines at the same time that is when the problem occurs.
i want to make some testing by making a virtual network where the two operating system can communicate so i would like to ask if there is workaround that i can do resolve the problem.
But do you mean there is no hope on making this work on a single host?

Re: Virtualbox freezes when opening two virtual machines

Posted: 14. Apr 2020, 18:59
by joethemango
attached is the host-only adapter option that i would like to utilize for testing purposes.

Re: Virtualbox freezes when opening two virtual machines

Posted: 14. Apr 2020, 19:09
by scottgus1
I read the thread through, too, and I believe I have a grasp of your problem. I see that you can run one VM but not two. You have a really low-provisioned computer for two extra OS's to run at the same time.
joethemango wrote:do you mean there is no hope on making this work on a single host?
Sure, if your computer is strong enough. In some way yours isn't.

The memory tweaks, processor count tweaks, and storage tweaks are all part of trying to figure out if your tiny computer can be made to squeeze out what you want to do with it. If you can't or don't want to consider a suggestion then that's up to you.

Re: Virtualbox freezes when opening two virtual machines

Posted: 14. Apr 2020, 19:53
by joethemango
Thanks for your response,but how do i make those tweaks for both memory and CPU?
i just really dont want to use more hardware(I mean buying a new computer or USB or SATA) for my testing and would like to have my mini computer to work since this is an old K42J asus laptop anyway.

Also can you please define how strong a computer should be to be able to do the standalone testing i wanna do for booting both Windows 7 and Kali linux in a single host using oracle virtual manager?