Vista host slow using Virtualization


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Hi,

I am having this annoying issue when attempting to run Virtualisation software (mostly Virtual Box, but happens on MS VPC too) where the Vista x64 host OS will run extremely slow, but the guest OS seems to run quickly.

At first I thought that the issue might be the 2GB of RAM that I was running, so I upgraded to 4GB. After upgrading the RAM I was expecting that I could comfortably assign 2GB of RAM between the host and guest without any issues. Unfortunately I've found that running any guest with more than 1GB seems to slow the Vista host right down, assigning 2GB or more will literally slow the Vista host OS to a crawl, the most simple task of bringing up task manager or switching tab in Firefox will take about a minute or longer.

When I am at work and using my 1.8Ghz 32-bit XP Pro box with 3GB of RAM Virtual Box runs quite quickly (both host and guest), even when assigning 1.5GB or even 2GB of RAM to a guest.

I guess that Vista must be using the page file way too much, possibly because of this new "caching" business, I did try disabling "Superfetch" but it seemed to make no noticeable difference.

I am using:

ASUS F3Jm laptop

Intel Core 2 - 2.0 GHz

4096 MB RAM

Windows Vista Ultimate x64 SP1 with all updates installed

Virtual Box 2.0.6 (x64 build)

The virtualised guest OS is running off a USB hard drive but I still notice the same slowdown when running from the laptop's internal 250 GB hard drive.

Has anybody had a similar problem to me?

Or can anybody help me solve this issue?

I've tried disabling Superfetch, Windows Search and a few other misc services but this didn't help.

Thanks

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  Quote
I've tried disabling Superfetch, Windows Search and a few other misc services but this didn't help.

I suspect disabling Superfetch would slow down your Vista machine more than speed it up. Disabling Windows Search indexing probably won't help either, unless you had configured it to index the VM image files or the VM software. (by default it won't be doing that)

Personally I've been using VMWare Workstation on a Vista 32 host w/ 4 gigs RAM without any issues, but here's some stuff you could try checking out:

- Does the virtualization software you use have an option to keep all VM memory in RAM, vs swapping memory to the hard disk? VMWare Workstation has that option & it runs much faster when it keeps all VM memory in RAM.

- Do you have any software installed that that might slow down the VM software, like anti-virus, etc?

- Are you running any other software that requires a lot of RAM or CPU?

- Does Virtual Box actually support Vista 64 as a host? According to http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/End-user_documentation "A supported host operating system. Presently, we support Windows (primarily XP) and many Linux distributions on 32-bit hosts and on 64-bit hosts."

Thanks for the reply, I am using Norton Internet Security now, but when I first started I was using AVG (paid subscription). The new Norton is pretty lean, and I don't notice any difference between Norton and AVG in terms of Virtualisation performance.

Also, I am not sure that you get me... I am saying that the Vista HOST runs slowly (ie. the real OS, not the virtual one). The virtual machines actually run really quite quickly and are very responsive while the REAL Vista OS in the background is SLOW!!!

It's so much a problem if I want to use the Virtual OS by itself but I want to be able to constantly swap between Virtual and Real machines.

My theory for the slowness is that Vista caches files in memory, so even though I have a nice system with 4GB of RAM, Vista tries to fill up as much as it can with cached files, then when I launch a Virtual Machine it probably shovels a lot of data into the page file to make room for the VM, and Vista is in-discriminant on whether it's putting cached data into the page file, or if it's putting in data that the system needs to run.

It's annoying because I've bought Windows Vista Ultimate, and I've shelled out for extra RAM and it looks like I have to go back to Windows XP 32-bit to get anything done! Thus far all Vista has done is slow my productivity with all it's annoying quirks and bugs.

I might search to see if there is a way that I can force Vista to cache less information, if I could always keep 2GB free then launching a VM should be no problem, does anybody have any clues on how I could tell Vista to keep 2GB free at all times?

  Quote
I am saying that the Vista HOST runs slowly

Yup, already understood that part..although now I'm not sure if you understood my response :p

  Quote
My theory for the slowness is that Vista caches files in memory

Unless this is specific to Vista 64 I don't see how that could possibly affect VM performance. Did you do any customizations to your page fle on your Vista host? Or other tweaks? I have a feeling the more you start to tinker with the Vista host's services, page files, etc. the worse this'll get..but it's your PC so do what you like :)

Maybe try running your VMs with Norton disabled just to rule it out?

My Vista 32 host has no issues running Vista, XP, etc. as guest OSes. Didn't need to reconfigure anything in the Vista host. (though I'm using VMWare for the VM machines which may work differently vs Virtual Box/VPC)

  lars77 said:
Yup, already understood that part..although now I'm not sure if you understood my response :p

Sorry... this is why I hate text as opposed to conversation.

Anyhow, gonna dig around, will try with Norton off just for the sake of it and see what happens.

I did also try a clean install of Windows Server 2008 to see what would happen and I got similar results, perhaps this is something with 64-bit systems?

how much memory are you allocating to the VM?allocating too much will slow down the host as it will have less to work with and be forced to page stuff out,also keeping the VM in ram is best to keep it speedy.also just leave it at balanced unless your running on a laptop.

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