Tips for setting up VirtualBox?

[Gregory]

I've been using VirtualBox to sequester different versions of LabVIEW (usually much older ones) that some of our test systems are using. But, it always to run very slowly and with a lot of lag, so I wouldn't want to do much more than fix small bugs. Does anyone have any tips for VirtualBox settings to get LabVIEW to run smoothly? I give it the following resources:

32GB of RAM (half of my system's RAM)

128MB video memory (max allowed)

14 processor cores (max allowed)

Is there anything else I should look into?

[stevem181]

I've been using VirtualBox for many years and haven't seen performance issues, but there are always variables.

Is the IDE slow or is it just when running an application?

How resource intensive is your application?

Some Ideas:

- I don't know the impact Windows 11 may have - I have only used Win 10 so far.

- Check that there are no pending OS updates

- Make sure you have a few Gbs of hard disk free

- Try not scaling the video

- Try reducing the number of cores used (this is a WAG)

Open the Task Manager - Performance-> Logical Processors to see if any cores are saturated

Check Disk and Ethernet for unexpected activity.

[Intaris · Accepted solution]

The Hyper-V virtualisation is going to kill your performance.

There are plenty of online places to look with regard to fixing this, just google it.

You're essentially handicapping any amount of hardware support for virtualisation, that's probably a large part of why it's not running well.

Also: Don't give the VM all the cores, that will be seriously detrimental to your PCs performance and even to the VMs performance. Keep at least 2 cores for the host.

[Intaris]

Oh wait, I was maybe a bit too quick with my response.

Hyper-V is only problematic if it's active. If active and its slowing down your machine,t here should be a little green turtle visible in the Virtualbox taskbar.

https://superuser.com/questions/1778061/green-turtle-snail-mode-slow-performance-indicator-on-virtua...

If you exit full screen mode, you will see a taskbar on the bottom right of the virtualbox window. If you see a green turtle there, the paravirtualisation interface might be the problem.-

Here's ho mine looks: Notice no green turtle

[Yamaeda]

I'd lower the given resources so you don't starve your normal system. 8Gb memory, 4 cpu but a bit more graphics memory (1Gb?)

[Gregory]

Thank you all for the suggestions. Just booting up VirtualBox is very slow. The LabVIEW applications I've tried to open are pretty small and not resource intensive.

I've tried all the steps to get rid of the green turtle, but he still sits there mocking me. Looks like my task for the day will be to get rid of him!

[Gregory]

Thanks all, I followed Intaris' suggestion of getting rid of the green turtle. It seems like different things work for different people. What did it for me was following the directions in this post to turn off virtualization based security.

https://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?p=547662#p547662

The VM is very snappy now, thank you!

[Intaris]

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@Gregory wrote:

Thanks all, I followed Intaris' suggestion of getting rid of the green turtle. It seems like different things work for different people. What did it for me was following the directions in this post to turn off virtualization based security.

https://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?p=547662#p547662

The VM is very snappy now, thank you!

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The "Different things work for different people" is why I didn't provide any actual links. It seems to be a bit of black magic working out what works on any given system. Glad you got it working.

[Gregory]

Unfortunately the turtle came back after a restart, I guess I have to try some more stuff

[Gregory]

I was able to get rid of the turtle again, we'll see how long it lasts. I opened up "System Info". Look under Virtualization-based security, and if it's running, turn off item by item until they are all turned off.