Visual Studio slow in Virtualbox

Question

Like really really slow.

I've got a 64 bit, 8 cores, 12 gig ram windows 7 host. I gave 4 cores and 4 gigs of ram to a 64 bit windows 7 virtual machine within which I am trying to run visual studio 2010 (and sql server - but that's it).

It worked for a few days but then the resource usage went off the charts - near 100% CPU at all times. I turned off windows 7 visual effects and it dropped immediately to normal levels. However any time I try to do anything in visual studio it spikes right back up.

Does anyone with a similar rig have a similar experience? I know people have pulled this set-up off successfully and have been very happy with it so I'm wondering if I just have a bad configuration somewhere.

I have the same machine and the same problem. I've found the VM starts getting slower and slower with time so I restart it often - it helps for a while. Does not matter if I use one or more cores. — Lukas Cenovsky, Apr 27 '10 at 21:42
This happens to me too on this machine. On my much slower laptop it does not. — George Mauer, Jul 24 '10 at 22:23

score 15 · Answer 1 · answered Mar 02 '10 at 20:38

15

Visual Studio 2010 uses GPU acceleration to do its GUI because it uses WPF for its forms. VM's don't pass through GPU tasks all that efficiently. In VS goto Tools -> Options -> Environment -> General -> Visual experience and uncheck the 3 check boxes in that fieldset and see if that does the trick.

I've found VM's will sometimes work fine with Aero and VS 2010 using the GPU but then for no reason started doing exactly what you describe. This works for me.

answered Mar 02 '10 at 20:38

jamone

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Thanks for the tip. all checkboxes unchecked but still having problems. Any other advice? – George Mauer Mar 02 '10 at 20:50
No :( that's always done it for me albeit I'm usually using Parallels or VMware Fusion since I use OS X as host. What VM software are you using? – jamone Mar 02 '10 at 21:21
My W7 VM client has all 4 cores turned on at 100%, 2D acceleration on. Uncheck the 3 check boxes under Visual experience works wonders for me - even faster than my "real" machine at work. – Barton Jul 15 '13 at 02:18

score 11 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 03 '10 at 17:17

11

Found a clue here.

It would seem that virtualbox 3.1.4 (my current version) freaks out when you tell it to use more than one CPU on windows 7. I set it to use 1 CPU instead of 4 and resource usage went back to normal.

Hope they fix this soon.

answered Mar 03 '10 at 17:17

George Mauer

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To be fair, its still insanely slow. Just better – George Mauer Mar 09 '10 at 19:58
This made a big difference. Windows 7 on OS X Yosemite / Virtual Box / Visual Studio Express 2013. 4 cores -> 1. – James Westgate Nov 14 '14 at 15:37

score 4 · Answer 3 · answered Jul 24 '10 at 05:06

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Disabling 3D acceleration under VM settings did the trick for me.

answered Jul 24 '10 at 05:06

Thiru

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score 4 · Answer 4 · answered Oct 21 '10 at 23:02

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My current settings are:

disabled 3D acceleration
disabled Remote Display Server
only 1 CPU

The VS 2010 speed is not excelent but also not so slow.

answered Oct 21 '10 at 23:02

Lukas Cenovsky

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When installing VS2013, the installation ran terribly slow. In addition to the above, I also set my VM memory to 6 GB; that seemed to fix the issue I eas experiencing. – Jim Lahman Jul 15 '14 at 21:01

score 1 · Answer 5 · answered Dec 02 '13 at 11:29

1

This issue might be because of the DPC latency issue:

https://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/6242

Either upgrade to v4.3.4 or disable the VT-x in your BIOS

answered Dec 02 '13 at 11:29

Phil Hannent

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Visual Studio slow in Virtualbox

5 Answers5