Older version of virtualbox with less cpu usage?

Hi guys and galls,

Does anybody know of a version of virtualbox that doesnt have that exorbitant cpu usage problem.

Vbox version and additions 3.16.

I have a Windows XP host and guest. And in the guest with the additions installed my cpu fan races like mad. I installed speedfan on my host, with max temp at 68 degrees celcius.

The MS VPC2007 sp1 is much milder, with simular software installs as I have in vbox.

Cheers.

 

I don't see that issue on my install. If you want to try earlier versions
http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Download_Old_Builds_3_1
or even ask in their forum
http://forums.virtualbox.org/

 

One time I took my laptop apart to check a hardware problem and found that the fan duct was clogged with dust/dirt build up. After removing it my computer has been running smoother and ~5-10 deg.C cooler - it might be worth checking yours...

While that might help, it won't solve the problem. If your machine is old, it may just lack the resources to run virtualbox without struggling. If resources are not an issue, then maybe it's your computer's settings or the settings of your virtual machine (run some optimization programs on them, make sure the pagefiles are big enough, make sure vm has enough ram but not so much that your real computer is left to struggle, make sure there's enough hard drive space, a defrag may help (vm's get fragmented pretty quickly), and so forth).

There's also a portable version of virtualbox. I haven't tried it so I cannot recommend, but if you have an external hard drive available, why not give it a spin?

 

OK, thanks for the answers.

I found out that running a dummy virtual machine helps.

 

@Yoda1953:

Brother,what is a dummy virtual machine ?

I don't understand.

noor

 

Got this somewhere via google:

- Create a new virtual machine, call it “Dummy” or something
- Assign it as little resources as you can, like 4MB RAM, use a 10MB HD image etc
- Start this dummy virtual machine, skipping any virtual hard drive formatting
- That’s it! Just leave the dummy machine running at the screen saying “FATAL: No bootable medium found! System halted”

With the dummy machine running, VirtualBox sorts out its own processor affinity properly, and the CPU usage of your actual VM guest drops waaaaaaay down and becomes snappy & responsive again.

Using Process Lasso in the VM's helps too, or setting the affinity to 1 cpu or lowering the priority.

 

What a neat trick that is!

thanks Yoda1953!!!

rat

 

You were right! I took a look at my heat sink and it was clogged with dust.

A vacuum cleaner and paintbrush did the trick. Lower temperatures now.

Thanks.

 

For best performance, always place your virtual machines on a secondary hdd. Also I see better performance if first I have consolidated free space on the secondary disk. On some cases creating a rule in your antivirus to leave alone the VM helps but its not always wanted. IF you can also check vmware. Although I always support free and/or open source applications, I think that vmware ( there is a free version too ) has better performance. Consider that ram is also extremely important. Minimum for running smoothly a vm is 4GB total system memory.