VB performance - Win 10 guests

[MarathonIT]

Host computer is Win 10 1909 - 16GB RAM, SSD drive. Yes, the virtualization settings in the BIOS as set properly.
Guest is Win 10 1909 also. 4 GB; single vCPU

Win 10 guest is not just slow - it is unusable. 10 minutes after starting it up, the taskbar is drawn, but the desktop still hasn't completed.

Made sure VBox was the latest version. (as of Aug 2020)

I have read many articles, some here in the forums, some written by various tech writers responding to the complaints that are floating around out there. I've used VBox over the years and have always enjoyed using it, finding it easier than the native hypervisor management.

But no longer.

I removed VBox and installed the Windows 10 Hyper-V role. Created VMs using the same VHDs that i couldn't get working in VBox and they run just fine.

I am NOT condemning VBox, but based on the sheer number of people complaining about how it works with Win 10 guests, and based on the dozens of remedies out there (none of which worked for me), I have to assume that something has gotten out of hand in the VBox design (i.e. it's still usable but the average user can't configure it), or they haven't kept up with the changes that MS is constantly making to keep the industry off-balance.

So, if you want to find out if the problem you are having is with the VHD file, I recommend you at least try Hyper-V, at least as a troubleshooting step.

[scottgus1]

One other step that can help Virtualbox run 10 more easily is to be sure Hyper-V is completely turned off. A guest vbox.log can help tell if this has been achieved. Other configurations are: Use just two processors. Turn on 3D acceleration and max video RAM. Turn off Transparency Effects.