Virtual Machines running very slowly

[GMullin]

Hi there,

Apologies if this turns out to be something trivial, but I hope you can help - I've been running Kali Linux / Metasploitable / Windows XP virtual machines using virtual box with no issues until a couple of weeks ago they all suddenly started going unusably slowly, taking ages to even log in and even then extremely laggy to use.

I'm running windows 10 on a HP Desktop with Dual core 1.9GHz and 8GB RAM

What I've tried:

Allocating more RAM / Vram to the VMs - Kali 2GB / 128MB Video

switching between 64-bit and 32-bit versions (my OS is 64 bit)

Uninstalling Vbox and removing all VMs, then re-installing them.

changing chipset from PIIX 3 to ICH9

enable I/0 APIC has always been checked Hardware clock in UTC time always checked Enable PAE/NX always checked Video - Enable 3D Acceleration checked, 128MB allocated Storage controller SATA, AHCI, Port count 1, Use host I/O cache checked Network adapter enabled, NATNetwork selected

I noticed that in the system settings, the 'acceleration' tab was suddenly 'greyed' out - this definitely wasn't the case previously. After some digging, I realised this was related to VTx acceleration, so I logged into my BIOS, enabled it and the acceleration tab came back - I checked the box, but unfortunately it has made no difference. Paravirtualization interface set to 'Legacy' (as it has been), Enable VTx/AMD-v checked, Enable nested paging checked.

Seems really strange as it was working perfectly well previously, so obviously something has changed... perhaps some windows update has caused problems, I have no idea.

I have the same setup running on other machines in the school I work at - older apple machines with a lower spec than my own, and it works fine on them!

Any assistance you can offer is greatly appreciated - sorry if I haven't provided enough info, please let me know what you need.

Many thanks,

George

[GMullin]

Kali log file

[Socratis]

This is not a bug, this is a question. It's usually better and faster, if questions like this one get first addressed in the forums (​https://forums.virtualbox.org/). More than 95% of the issues are resolved there, which keeps the developers focusing on the bug fixes and enhancements, and there is no need for another ticket to keep track of. For example, yours is most probably not a bug and someone from the developers has to deal with it and close it as "Invalid".

So, if you can, please open a new thread in the ​VirtualBox on Windows Hosts section.

Be sure to say that you came from the bugtracker and include the ticket #.

[Frank Mehnert]

The description was not 100% exact: Did this slowness start after you upgraded to VirtualBox 5.1.16 or did you upgrade your guest at the same time? Which was the version you used before when you did not see this slowness? I didn't see any misconfiguration in the VBox.log file.

Also, do you have guest kernel logs from VM runs with the old (fast) version and the new (slow) version and could you attach both guest kernel logs to this ticket as well?