Dismal windows 7 perofrmance as guest

[vsreeser]

Running Kubuntu 14.04, uodated yesterday, virtualbox 4.3.12 (4.3.14 blew up). Host has 16Gb ram, 16Gb swap (rarely used but I have the space). vms are on a 500Gb exFAT partition. . Guest is windows 7 professional. allocated 225 Gb hard drive, 8192 Ram and max video (128). Installed virtualbox additions. I can now go to 1920x1080 on guest. Have 2 monitors so that is why I would want to go that high. The performance is bad. Anything I can do to speed this up? Trying to not have to dual boot. Would I gain performance by moving to another vm software? If so, which one. Have used vmWare in the past. Have not tried anything else recently.
Windows experience in vm has video at 1. It is 4.3 in straight windows. I was hoping to get at least half (2.1) Any other info you need?

[kubicle]

Installed virtualbox additions

Did you install the right version of guest additions for your virtualbox?
And did you also install them on the guest system (and not just the guest additions package on the host system)?

[vsreeser]

installed on the guest. and I updated additions before on host before installing on the guest

[kubicle]

installed on the guest. and I updated additions before on host before installing on the guest

And the version of the additions match your vbox version (I'm asking because your original post you mentioned switching back to 4.3.12?)

Unfortunately I don't run Windows guests myself, so I can't offer much in the way of troubleshooting the performance on those.

[SteveRiley]

Please upload the contents of the relevant .vbox file to Ubuntu's Pastebin and follow up here with the URL. Let's take a look at how you've set up the VM.

[vsreeser]

I wlll do that if still having problems. had some hard drive errors, so I saved important docs, pics, etc and did a nuke and pave

[vsreeser]

It won't allow me to use pastenim since it is an xml file. I believe the problem to be that I can only set video to 128Mb. Looking around to see if there is another vm osftware that will allow more. host video card is 2Gb. Looked into qemu. It won't allow me to set video but also won't allow me to use more than 4Gb for guest memory. There is a reason I have 16Gb on the host! Grrrrr. Will keep looking. any suggestions

[SteveRiley]

Try http://paste.kde.org then. I'm quite certain that your performance problems aren't related to the video memory size. Emulated graphics aren't nearly as sophisticated as that from hardware; 128 MB is the typical max that you'll see in most VM software.

[MoonRise]

I use VBox with WIN7. I don't seem to have issues. What issues exactly? I have 4 GB RAM set for it with video set at 256MB. Also 1 Processor. Now, I can't play any games. I've never been able to do that with any VM.

[life0riley]

I use VBox with WIN7. I don't seem to have issues. What issues exactly? I have 4 GB RAM set for it with video set at 256MB. Also 1 Processor. Now, I can't play any games. I've never been able to do that with any VM.

How did you get video set to 256MB? 128MB is the max I see.


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[MoonRise]

I've always had that. See below.

[life0riley]

My host is precise 32 bit and guest is Win7 32 bit. Is your host 64 bit? What are your system settings in VBox?

My Win7 guest defaults to a Windows 7 Basic theme. I wonder if there are any performance options in Win7 to make it run lighter. WinXP ran like a champ on my same host.


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[MoonRise]

Host 64bit. Windows7 Guest is 32bit. Basic Theme as I've never tried installing the Guest Additions that would allow the "fancy" stuff with Windows 7. Tried that once which has to be in safe mode and it was at the time that function had that issue of not being able to properly write a particular file. Can't remember right off what that was but I've stayed away from it as I have no real use for it. Maybe that is the difference? I've also had slight sound issues but that is of no bother to me as I use it only for non-Audio functions. But still, it responds quick and functions great here.

[life0riley]

Hmm... I have guest additions installed and they installed without issue. I plan to go 64 bit in the future, but my host needs a little upgrade like some more RAM. I'll have to monkey around with my Win7 VBox guest when I get home.


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[MoonRise]

I'm playing around with my VM Win7 now to check on sound issue. Just for kicks!