OSX Host, Win2K Guest, host reports high system CPU use, guest reports low cpu use, in VB 3.1.2

[Ian E. Gorman]

When running Windows 2000 installed for 2 CPUs in 2-CPU machine with IO-APIC, OSX reports close to 100% CPU use while Windows reports close to zero. However, the Activity monitor does not show a task with high CPU use.

When running Windows 2000 installed for 1 CPUs in 1-CPU machine without IO-APIC, OSX reports high CPU use only when Windows 200 reports hig CPU use.

Similar tickets: 4322, 4922, 5744 (earlier versions of VB)

[Ian E. Gorman]

log file from running W2K in 2-CPU vm with io-apic

[Sander van Leeuwen]

Please retry with 3.2.10 and reopen if required. You shouldn't have this high overhead issue with IO-APIC guests as your CPU supports the hardware solution to deal with this efficiently.

[Ian E. Gorman]

I tried again with VirtualBox 3.2.10 r66523 darwin.x86, and Windows XP SP1, updated to SP4, then updated online, from Microsoft.

When XP is running the idel task at 90% to 95%, VirtualBox guest additions vary from below 2% to about 5% and the host system (Mac OS) is running at 100%, with more than 90% (Mac OS reports this as 180% on the sum of two processors).

[Ian E. Gorman]

log for VirtualBox 3.2.10, reopen

[Ian E. Gorman]

The 90% that I reported for Mac OS was the CPU usage fo VirtualBox.

[Frank Mehnert]

Still relevant with VBox 4.1.6?

[Ian E. Gorman]

This problem appears to be fixed in version 4.1.6 running guest Win 2K with 2 CPU in host Mac OS X 10.7.2 (Lion). The Mac OS X process that corresponds to the Windows VM appears to use approximately 7% plus the CPU percentage reported by Windows. For example, if the Windows 2K system reports 3%, Mac OS X will report somewhere around 10% for that VM. Thanks.