virtualbox just became slow
I've been happily running a virtualbox Windows XP machine (VM) on a Wheezy
host for eight months. However, the VM just became pathologically slow. For
example, if I boot the VM, call Photoshop 6, and open a small JPG, it all
works but takes several minutes. During much of this time the XP Task
Manager pins at 100% CPU usage, and the host's cooling fans are revving hard.
If I then ask to print the JPG, Photoshop (eventually) declares "There is not
enough memory for this operation". When the VM is idle, it shows about 5%
CPU usage and I see no unexpected memory hogs running. The Debian host runs
fine.
This disease roughly coincides with my upgrade from virtualbox 4.1.2 to
4.1.4, including the guest additions and extension pack. So I uninstalled
4.1.4 and put back 4.1.2 from snapshot.debian.org, together with its guest
additions and extension pack. I also put back a copy of the VM (xpvm.vdi)
and home vbox directories that I had saved on June 18th when everything was
fine. (I saved these as Linux files, not as a snapshot. I have successfully
started from them before). Finally I rebooted the host too. None of this
solved the problem.
The host is a Pentium 4 3.0 GHz with 2 GB of memory. The VM has the
recommended 192 MB of memory. This all worked fine until I ran apt-get
upgrade (including virtualbox) four days ago. I have a newer Wheezy machine
(i5 3.2 GHz + 4 GB) that is running about the same VM (also 192 MB) under
virtualbox 4.1.4 with no problem.
Any ideas how to identify the source of this slowness? Thanks.
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