VBoxHeadless causes high CPU load for Windows 10 guest (Linux host)

[nbi]

Htop shows VBoxHeadless creating disproportionate level of CPU activity. So much so that my CPU temperature actually rises 15 degrees centigrade. This happens for each Windows 10 session, often when Windows is idle.

[nbi]

htop listing

[Frank Mehnert]

Does the same happen if you reduce the number of VCPUs to 3 or 2? Does the same happen if you disable audio for this VM? Does the same happen if you disable 3D support for this VM?

[nbi]

Ok, since testing with the March 1st build of Windows 10 I've noticed an improvement on this issue. There's still a lot of thrashing upon boot up, but the system seems to eventually settle down to where the performance graphs in task manager are flat. I still see spikes, but they are infrequent and short in duration. There is however ongoing disk activity reported by task manager although the system is idle - maybe that's an indication that something is wrong with VirtualBox's handling of storage.

I don't see any discernible improvements resulting from the 3 things you recommended. Reducing the number of CPUs is of course not a workaround/solution since Windows 7 guests don't require this. Audio is completely broken (see ticket #15189) so I might as well keep it disabled until I see reports that it is fixed. On 3D I've observed I'm better off with it enabled as the Win 10 GUI seems more responsive.

In conclusion this ticket can probably be closed as I'm no longer seeing the originally reported problem after upgrading to the March 1st build of Windows 10.

The storage observation is worth investigating further, but I'll not belabor that as it's probably already being addressed in another ticket. Thanks.

[Frank Mehnert]

In that case I will close this ticket.