I need to run certain programs on Windows 10.
Most of my activity is on Linux Mint so I installed Windows 10 as a guest under VirtualBox on Linux.

It was never fast but tolerable ... until recently.

I allocated two cores of my 4-core processor and 8Gb of dram to it

It is now painfully slow.

I am posting this here in the hopes that it might resonate with someone that has had and solved the same issue.

TIA, Alan

--
Linux Mint 21.1 kernel version 5.15.0-75-generic Cinnamon 5.6.8

pinnerite <pinnerite@gmail.com> wrote:

>I need to run certain programs on Windows 10.
>Most of my activity is on Linux Mint so I installed Windows 10 as a guest under VirtualBox on Linux.
>
>It was never fast but tolerable ... until recently.
>
>I allocated two cores of my 4-core processor and 8Gb of dram to it
>
>It is now painfully slow.
>
>I am posting this here in the hopes that it might resonate with someone that has had and solved the same issue.
>
>TIA, Alan

I think the reality is that Windows 10 isn't meaningfully less
hardware-hungry than Windows 11 - I encountered that fact on my old
computer, in 2021, I had been running Linux for two years, not wanting
to participate in Microsoft's public beta test of Win10, and in that
time, between 1809 and 20H2, it had massively grown into the codebase
we have today, with current builds of Win10 and 11.

Why it worked better for you, before, I honestly don't know, but it's
inevitable that it eventually won't. Windows is always supporting
relatively recent hardware. Linux is more than superior, in the
abstract, I like running Win11 for its conveniences and niceties, but
there's simply no comparison to the performance of Linux, which still
performs well on old hardware.

--
Joel Crump

On Sun, 18 Jun 2023 22:50:04 -0400
Joel <joelcrump@gmail.com> wrote:

> pinnerite <pinnerite@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >I need to run certain programs on Windows 10.
> >Most of my activity is on Linux Mint so I installed Windows 10 as a guest under VirtualBox on Linux.
> >
> >It was never fast but tolerable ... until recently.
> >
> >I allocated two cores of my 4-core processor and 8Gb of dram to it
> >
> >It is now painfully slow.
> >
> >I am posting this here in the hopes that it might resonate with someone that has had and solved the same issue.
> >
> >TIA, Alan
>
>
> I think the reality is that Windows 10 isn't meaningfully less
> hardware-hungry than Windows 11 - I encountered that fact on my old
> computer, in 2021, I had been running Linux for two years, not wanting
> to participate in Microsoft's public beta test of Win10, and in that
> time, between 1809 and 20H2, it had massively grown into the codebase
> we have today, with current builds of Win10 and 11.
>
> Why it worked better for you, before, I honestly don't know, but it's
> inevitable that it eventually won't. Windows is always supporting
> relatively recent hardware. Linux is more than superior, in the
> abstract, I like running Win11 for its conveniences and niceties, but
> there's simply no comparison to the performance of Linux, which still
> performs well on old hardware.
>
> --
> Joel Crump

Cold comfort but thanks,

Alan

--
Linux Mint 21.1 kernel version 5.15.0-75-generic Cinnamon 5.6.8

On 6/19/23 06:39, this is what pinnerite wrote:
> On Sun, 18 Jun 2023 22:50:04 -0400
> Joel <joelcrump@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> pinnerite <pinnerite@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> I need to run certain programs on Windows 10.
>>> Most of my activity is on Linux Mint so I installed Windows 10 as a guest under VirtualBox on Linux.
>>>
>>> It was never fast but tolerable ... until recently.
>>>
>>> I allocated two cores of my 4-core processor and 8Gb of dram to it
>>>
>>> It is now painfully slow.
>>>
>>> I am posting this here in the hopes that it might resonate with someone that has had and solved the same issue.
>>>
>>> TIA, Alan
>>
>>
>> I think the reality is that Windows 10 isn't meaningfully less
>> hardware-hungry than Windows 11 - I encountered that fact on my old
>> computer, in 2021, I had been running Linux for two years, not wanting
>> to participate in Microsoft's public beta test of Win10, and in that
>> time, between 1809 and 20H2, it had massively grown into the codebase
>> we have today, with current builds of Win10 and 11.
>>
>> Why it worked better for you, before, I honestly don't know, but it's
>> inevitable that it eventually won't. Windows is always supporting
>> relatively recent hardware. Linux is more than superior, in the
>> abstract, I like running Win11 for its conveniences and niceties, but
>> there's simply no comparison to the performance of Linux, which still
>> performs well on old hardware.
>>
>> --
>> Joel Crump
>
> Cold comfort but thanks,
>
> Alan
>
I have my Win10 VM vdi file residing on my SSD. Makes it run faster than on an HD.
--
Linux Mint 21.1 Cinnamon 5.6.8
Al

pinnerite wrote:

> It is now painfully slow.

Is it slow because "something" is noticeably eating lots of CPU time
within the VM? lots of I/O, lots of memory

task manager/resource monitor/process explorer are your friends ...

On 6/18/23 21:04, pinnerite wrote:
> I need to run certain programs on Windows 10.
> Most of my activity is on Linux Mint so I installed Windows 10 as a guest under VirtualBox on Linux.
>
> It was never fast but tolerable ... until recently.
>
> I allocated two cores of my 4-core processor and 8Gb of dram to it
>
> It is now painfully slow.
>
> I am posting this here in the hopes that it might resonate with someone that has had and solved the same issue.
>
> TIA, Alan

Windows VMs have been painfully slow, even on a fast (4GHz) host
machine. I find that what makes the most difference is the disk. It
speeded up a lot when I changed to a NVMe.

--
Mark Lloyd
http://notstupid.us/

"A government solution to a problem is always followed by the creation
of at least two additional problems, either of which was worse than the
original problem which the government set out to solve."

Try VMWare Player. Full performance only after installing the VMWare
Tools.

On Mon, 19 Jun 2023 03:04:27 +0100, pinnerite <pinnerite@gmail.com>
wrote:

>I need to run certain programs on Windows 10.
>Most of my activity is on Linux Mint so I installed Windows 10 as a guest under VirtualBox on Linux.
>
>It was never fast but tolerable ... until recently.
>
>I allocated two cores of my 4-core processor and 8Gb of dram to it
>
>It is now painfully slow.
>
>I am posting this here in the hopes that it might resonate with someone that has had and solved the same issue.
>
>TIA, Alan

On 6/18/2023 10:04 PM, pinnerite wrote:
> I need to run certain programs on Windows 10.
> Most of my activity is on Linux Mint so I installed Windows 10 as a guest under VirtualBox on Linux.
>
> It was never fast but tolerable ... until recently.
>
> I allocated two cores of my 4-core processor and 8Gb of dram to it
>
> It is now painfully slow.
>
> I am posting this here in the hopes that it might resonate with someone that has had and solved the same issue.
>
> TIA, Alan

While it is easily technically possible for the OS itself
to slow down when virtualized, it could be VirtualBox as well.

It took me quite a while to get this. The problem was, SuperPI Mod1.5 XS
would not even run in the VBox guest OS. It would bail out (stop), with
no error message. So I had to stop using it, and start over with superPI 1.1 .
the first two lines, with version 1.5, are to allow comparing a newer version,
to the older version in the next group of lines.

https://www.techpowerup.com/download/super-pi/

1.8MB superpi210.zip ---- This one uses a .sys (service), not a good idea. Trips four lesser AVs at virustotal.
I have a "natural aversion" to this style of bloat :-/
It's my "days at the bomb squad" I guess, stuff like this makes me nervous :-/

60.4 KB super_pi_mod-1.5.zip \___ These, I have used before.
72.2 KB superpi_11.zip / Minimal shenanigans. These are binary edits of the Japanese authors original.
They lost the source, which is why the code was maintained at binary level.

Benches:

Host (W11Home) SuperPI Mod1.5 XS 32M 6m 01.073s
Guest VMWare-WS-V.16-Player SuperPI Mod1.5 XS 32M 7m 11.031s

These runs all worked <shocked>

Host (W11Home) SuperPI 1.1 32M 6m 09s (millisecond timer not implemented)
Guest VMWare-WS-V.16-Player W11 SuperPI 1.1 32M 6m 22s
Guest VBox 6.1.44 w. W10 Pro SuperPI 1.1 32M 6m 15s

When you do x86-on-x86 virtualization, it should be at
least 90% efficient. And these indeed, exceed 90%, so
this is a pass.

*******

The graphics are another matter entirely. When graphics
have to be completely implemented in software (fallback path),
that sucks the energy out of the VM.

*******

However, it's when a VM Guest freezes, that the shit really
hits the fan. Then it's a DNF (Did Not Finish in a race). I had
several of these on VBox. Including while installing W10 22H2.

I would say the VBox product is a "sick puppy". And Yes Sir,
I have played the fucking version game several times, in
each case being disappointed in the results. Same old, same old.
It's like going to the midway and the circus and being surprised
when you properly hit the target with the teddy bear, nothing
falls and you don't get it. Because, the game is rigged.

There was a time, a long time ago, when you could look in the VBox
log, see a problem with the Hardening at the start, conclude
you needed a version upgrade, and that fixed it. That's not the
case today. Versions do nothing. And the official support
policy sees to it, that each new version is less useful than
the previous one. V7 supports W10 and W11 guests, and that's it.
They don't test that MSDOS7 runs in there any more.

Vanguard has probable done more VMWare than I have, and
might have some ideas how reliable it is as a solution.
I've only got one thing loaded in VMware, and that's a W11
with working TPM.

Good luck,
Paul

On 6/19/2023 9:51 AM, Mark Lloyd wrote:
> On 6/18/23 21:04, pinnerite wrote:
>> I need to run certain programs on Windows 10.
>> Most of my activity is on Linux Mint so I installed Windows 10 as a guest under VirtualBox on Linux.
>>
>> It was never fast but tolerable ... until recently.
>>
>> I allocated two cores of my 4-core processor and 8Gb of dram to it
>>
>> It is now painfully slow.
>>
>> I am posting this here in the hopes that it might resonate with someone that has had and solved the same issue.
>>
>> TIA,  Alan
>
> Windows VMs have been painfully slow, even on a fast (4GHz) host machine.
> I find that what makes the most difference is the disk. It speeded up a lot
> when I changed to a NVMe.
>

If you bench inside a VM, and aren't using some whizzy passthru thing,
the rate is limited to around 600MB/sec. And, the rate at that
speed is not "smooth". It's quite bumpy.

This means your NVMe and my RAMDrive, are a total waste. The
reason I use a RAMDrive, is not for the speed, it's for
the lack of "wear life".

It's the Linux hosted VMs that run at 600MB/sec. The
Windows ones are slower than that. In some cases much
slower. It does not matter how NVMe your physical is,
if the software insists on serving it 512 bytes at
a time.

In the past, I've had VMs that interfaced to the host at
around 5MB/sec to 10MB/sec. Hosting-software-limited.

There is Paravirtualization and there is native mode.
And even with Paravirtualization, it never runs at full speed.

Back in SoftWindows era, we used to amuse ourselves, by
sitting next to the monitor, and watching individual rows
of pixels being drawn. That's how pathetic the software
used to be.

[Picture]

https://i.postimg.cc/WpG3JY03/host-vs-guest-disk-speed.gif

I agree there are some speedup effects from storage
selection, but they're seek-speed based. A hard disk has
a pretty slow seek, everything else is much better. The
"heads" move around with zero effort on the rest. Any feeling
of speedup we're getting, has a lot to do with seek.

In the picture, the Host has a measured access time of "0"
while the Guest is seeing "0.3 millisecond".

Paul

On Mon, 19 Jun 2023 14:10:35 +0100
Andy Burns <usenet@andyburns.uk> wrote:

> pinnerite wrote:
>
> > It is now painfully slow.
>
> Is it slow because "something" is noticeably eating lots of CPU time
> within the VM? lots of I/O, lots of memory
>
> task manager/resource monitor/process explorer are your friends ...
>

I gave up on moving the VMs to VMware. The VM converted to an ova file
in VirtualBox was unwound in VMware but the VM started and crashed. I
tried everything.

I have several Disks that I can plug in with caddies.

I have two backups. I went back to a slow but satisfactory Win-10
backup. Tar'd and gz'd it and copied the result to my work machine.

Unwound and tested it and it was OK but slow. Not as slow as before. I
did a bit of work and then tried to save a modified spread sheet.

"Not enough resorces".

Now I keep most of my data on linux folders so 50Gb should be enough
for Win-10. Anyway I increased it beyond 60Gb and it worked.

BUT I seem to keep encountering those pale blue screens
telling me that Windows has encountered errors

"but don't worry. we'll fix them and reboot when we've done it" or
words to that effect. It gets to 100% and then just sits there until I
do a VBox reset.

I will try to remove unwanted files and hope for ther best.

--
Linux Mint 21.1 kernel version 5.15.0-75-generic Cinnamon 5.6.8

On 6/22/23 10:06, this is what pinnerite wrote:
> On Mon, 19 Jun 2023 14:10:35 +0100
> Andy Burns <usenet@andyburns.uk> wrote:
>
>> pinnerite wrote:
>>
>>> It is now painfully slow.
>>
>> Is it slow because "something" is noticeably eating lots of CPU time
>> within the VM? lots of I/O, lots of memory
>>
>> task manager/resource monitor/process explorer are your friends ...
>>
>
> I gave up on moving the VMs to VMware. The VM converted to an ova file
> in VirtualBox was unwound in VMware but the VM started and crashed. I
> tried everything.
>
> I have several Disks that I can plug in with caddies.
>
> I have two backups. I went back to a slow but satisfactory Win-10
> backup. Tar'd and gz'd it and copied the result to my work machine.
>
> Unwound and tested it and it was OK but slow. Not as slow as before. I
> did a bit of work and then tried to save a modified spread sheet.
>
> "Not enough resorces".
>
> Now I keep most of my data on linux folders so 50Gb should be enough
> for Win-10. Anyway I increased it beyond 60Gb and it worked.
>
> BUT I seem to keep encountering those pale blue screens
> telling me that Windows has encountered errors
>
> "but don't worry. we'll fix them and reboot when we've done it" or
> words to that effect. It gets to 100% and then just sits there until I
> do a VBox reset.
>
> I will try to remove unwanted files and hope for ther best.
>
One of my live Windows installs takes a good 68G on a disk of 100G.
--
Linux Mint 21.1 Cinnamon 5.6.8
Al

On 6/22/2023 10:21 AM, Big Al wrote:
> On 6/22/23 10:06, this is what pinnerite wrote:
>> On Mon, 19 Jun 2023 14:10:35 +0100
>> Andy Burns <usenet@andyburns.uk> wrote:
>>
>>> pinnerite wrote:
>>>
>>>> It is now painfully slow.
>>>
>>> Is it slow because "something" is noticeably eating lots of CPU time
>>> within the VM? lots of I/O, lots of memory
>>>
>>> task manager/resource monitor/process explorer are your friends ...
>>>
>>
>> I gave up on moving the VMs to VMware. The VM converted to an ova file
>> in VirtualBox was unwound in VMware but the VM started and crashed. I
>> tried everything.
>>
>> I have several Disks that I can plug in with caddies.
>>
>> I have two backups. I went back to a slow but satisfactory Win-10
>> backup. Tar'd and gz'd it and copied the result to my work machine.
>>
>> Unwound and tested it and it was OK but slow. Not as slow as before. I
>> did a bit of work and then tried to save a modified spread sheet.
>>
>> "Not enough resorces".
>>
>> Now I keep most of my data on linux folders so 50Gb should be enough
>> for Win-10. Anyway I increased it beyond 60Gb and it worked.
>>
>> BUT I seem to keep encountering those pale blue screens
>> telling me that Windows has encountered errors
>>
>> "but don't worry. we'll fix them and reboot when we've done it" or
>> words to that effect. It gets to 100% and then just sits there until I
>> do a VBox reset.
>>
>> I will try to remove unwanted files and hope for ther best.
>>
> One of my live Windows installs takes a good 68G on a disk of 100G.

That's your hiberfil.sys and your pagefile.

That's why I make a few adjustments here, to get those sizes down.
The simple one, is:

powercfg /h off

and the hiberfile space is eliminated. That is suited to a desktop computer only.

Virtual machines don't have Hibernate and Sleep, because the same functions
can be obtained with hosting software control buttons. The hosting software
is so clever, if the machine runs out of RAM, the machine "freezes" on purpose,
to give you time to free up RAM.

But there are many other times, that VM Guests are hell on earth, because
you can't tell what is going on inside them.

Paul

On Thu, 22 Jun 2023 17:37:17 -0400
Paul <nospam@needed.invalid> wrote:

> On 6/22/2023 10:21 AM, Big Al wrote:
> > On 6/22/23 10:06, this is what pinnerite wrote:
> >> On Mon, 19 Jun 2023 14:10:35 +0100
> >> Andy Burns <usenet@andyburns.uk> wrote:
> >>
> >>> pinnerite wrote:
> >>>
> >>>> It is now painfully slow.
> >>>
> >>> Is it slow because "something" is noticeably eating lots of CPU time
> >>> within the VM? lots of I/O, lots of memory
> >>>
> >>> task manager/resource monitor/process explorer are your friends ...
> >>>
> >>
> >> I gave up on moving the VMs to VMware. The VM converted to an ova file
> >> in VirtualBox was unwound in VMware but the VM started and crashed. I
> >> tried everything.
> >>
> >> I have several Disks that I can plug in with caddies.
> >>
> >> I have two backups. I went back to a slow but satisfactory Win-10
> >> backup. Tar'd and gz'd it and copied the result to my work machine.
> >>
> >> Unwound and tested it and it was OK but slow. Not as slow as before. I
> >> did a bit of work and then tried to save a modified spread sheet.
> >>
> >> "Not enough resorces".
> >>
> >> Now I keep most of my data on linux folders so 50Gb should be enough
> >> for Win-10. Anyway I increased it beyond 60Gb and it worked.
> >>
> >> BUT I seem to keep encountering those pale blue screens
> >> telling me that Windows has encountered errors
> >>
> >> "but don't worry. we'll fix them and reboot when we've done it" or
> >> words to that effect. It gets to 100% and then just sits there until I
> >> do a VBox reset.
> >>
> >> I will try to remove unwanted files and hope for ther best.
> >>
> > One of my live Windows installs takes a good 68G on a disk of 100G.
>
> That's your hiberfil.sys and your pagefile.
>
> That's why I make a few adjustments here, to get those sizes down.
> The simple one, is:
>
> powercfg /h off
>
> and the hiberfile space is eliminated. That is suited to a desktop computer only.
>
> Virtual machines don't have Hibernate and Sleep, because the same functions
> can be obtained with hosting software control buttons. The hosting software
> is so clever, if the machine runs out of RAM, the machine "freezes" on purpose,
> to give you time to free up RAM.
>
> But there are many other times, that VM Guests are hell on earth, because
> you can't tell what is going on inside them.
>
> Paul
>

It took hours for Win-10 to come up yesterday but once it had, I managed
to uninstall unwanted stuff like xbox things installed by microsoft.

When I rebooted, I got into safe mode by holding down Fn-8.
I wasz then able run msconfig.exe and turn off unwanted functions.
It is now tolerable.

Regards, Alan

--
Linux Mint 21.1 kernel version 5.15.0-75-generic Cinnamon 5.6.8