VirtualBox - Drag lags and jerky (How to fix it?)

[LCF-AT]

Hi guys,

I would like ask again about VirtualBox and having those laggy drag / window minimize - maximize, scrolling etc issues. In the past I had those problems too on my old computer using VB with XP & Windows 7 and I really didn't liked it and also not to debug in VB. I'am still using VM (Win 10 x64 / same as main) and have same issues somehow. I just would like to know whether there are any hints to make this disappear and to make the work flow more liquid like it works on main system too. I'am also just talking about that problem only so I'am not talking about some mouse slowness or something so this works 1A. Had anyone some same issues and got fixed it anyhow? I tried to change some settings to increase memory / processors but this has no effect to make it better. Just don't know whether it could get better or not and would also like to know how it works for you (same as on your main system or also worse etc).

greetz

[Teddy Rogers]

I don't have much experience with VirtualBox. With similar experiences in VMWare I found having the latest graphics drivers installed and fitting all of the virtual machine in host RAM helped...

Ted.

[Nacho_dj]

Could you upload some video to show these effects? I normally use both VirtualBox and Vmware and have not any issues with them. Just to clear it up a little...

Thanks!

Nacho_dj

[LCF-AT]

Hi guys,

so I think I have latest drivers so far but what do you mean with "fitting all of the virtual machine in host RAM helped" Ted?

Yes I made 2 videos of my main system & VM OS (same OS on both). So the strange thing is that both video looking pretty same what makes me wonder. Could it be that this lagging can not be recorded? I did record the video on each OS itself with an app. Maybe I need to record the problem from outside (main OS) to see this. Hhhm. Anyway, below the 2 video I made. Just check whether you have it same or better etc. First video of my main OS....

....below the second video from my VM OS....

....do you see any probem here? Not on first view right. I will later record another video from main OS so there it should be visible then.

greetz

[Byfron]

2 hours ago, LCF-AT said:

Hi guys,

so I think I have latest drivers so far but what do you mean with "fitting all of the virtual machine in host RAM helped" Ted?

Yes I made 2 videos of my main system & VM OS (same OS on both). So the strange thing is that both video looking pretty same what makes me wonder. Could it be that this lagging can not be recorded? I did record the video on each OS itself with an app. Maybe I need to record the problem from outside (main OS) to see this. Hhhm. Anyway, below the 2 video I made. Just check whether you have it same or better etc. First video of my main OS....

 

....below the second video from my VM OS....

 

....do you see any probem here? Not on first view right. I will later record another video from main OS so there it should be visible then.

greetz

Anyone realized the backround lmao lel

[Nacho_dj]

You're right, it seems everything is fine for your machine. 🤨

Maybe a recording with a mobile will show somehing else...

Cheers

Nacho_dj

[LCF-AT]

Ok I made another video from main OS to VM OS. Now you can see it better a little that stop / go issue when its moving. All in all in VM its more bad as I told before and looks like there would be some hang or later re-action time or so. What about you Nacho? Can you do the same test like I did and check whether its working better / or not for you? More liquid and smooth etc or do you have it same jerky (stop & go).

greetz

[Nacho_dj]

On my VirtualBox it is pretty similar, I see some kind of little steps for moving, not totally continue... VM is configured for 2 CPUs ans 3GB RAM. Host gets much more a continuous movement, though. It seems we'd have to play with such limitations when using any VM.

Cheers!

Nacho_dj

[fearless]

https://www.tomshardware.com/how-to/set-up-virtual-machines-with-virtualbox

[demberto]

I personally have always had better experience with VMWare. Input issues seem to be common if not in fullscreen. If you are in need for one-off disposable VMs, Windows Sandbox is good and fast (you need to config it to allow virtualised GPU access to make it feel smooth).

Or... you can try QEMU, its way too much work (and time spent) for questionable benefit tho.

Edited November 8, 2022 by demberto

[LCF-AT]

Hi,

yes I see that Windows Sandbox works really smooth without any stop & go's (jerks) and that smoothness I would like to have in VBox too. I also see that in VBox the CPU usage jumps to the max many times and keeps there a longer while. I like using VBox but I wish a better basic performance. Somehow I can not get it better by playing around with all those system, memory and CPU settings.

greetz

[demberto]

I take it that you are using the latest version? V7 reimplements DX with D3D11 support -> massive GUI improvement (probably you are using CPU rendering rn).

Also try disabling HyperV

[LCF-AT]

Hi demberto,

so I'am using the latest version before version 7 what means I'am using version 6.1.38 for x64 Windows 10 system. I did not update to version 7 yet because I found many problem posts of users who did install version 7 and I wanna just wait til it works good for the most before I give it a try you know.

Maybe you can give me some more hints & infos how to setup my VBox to get the most / best results to prevent lagging (stop & go) like you can see in my videos. I tried to disable Nexted VT and Hardware Virtual.. in settings but I don't see any changes in VM OS after. Otherwise I don't have enabled HyperV on my main system if you mean this. Anyway, so this lagging is the most bad thing for me and this I would like to fix. Would be nice if you could help with some infos how to manage that if possible.

PS: "probably you are using CPU rendering rn" - What do you mean with that? Where is the settings for this etc? So I'am no power VM user or something just normal user using VM to test different stuff etc and I really would like to have my VM running smooth and nice & fast (handling). Thats all.

greetz

[demberto]

I just shifted to VMware because initially I wanted to run android x86 on my PC. VirtualBox absolutely shat at that, so I tried VMware player and stuck to that till now. I touch VBox very rarely, mainly while tinkering with how Android emulators like Bluestacks etc. work using VBox and be so smooth etc.

To begin with you need to use paravirtualised devices wherever you can. This includes network and hard drive. Use VMSVGA graphics controller, enable 3D acceleration. Try using lower resolution. There's some VBox port using D3D11 and its free too but I forgot its name. Also I take it that you have installed guest additions inside the VM? They improve the integration with host a lot.

You said CPU touches 100% quite a lot in VBox, what type of load is this? Single core or multicore? It might be UI rendering if its single core.

If you want to go balls deep into this, then in case you have two GPUs lying around (excluding iGPU) you can setup a GPU passthru to the guest using QEMU. If you have Linux on dual boot, you can actually try using QEMU + KVM to run Windows. It has much more fine tuning than what VirtualBox offers.

Edited November 15, 2022 by demberto

[LCF-AT]

Hi again,

thanks for your answer so far.

So I tried to switch to VMSVGA but I get a error message at the bottom that I can not use this option with 3D acceleration etc. What do you mean with D3D11 and where to setup this? Sure I have installed guest additions. Sometimes in VM there is much action on HDD usage and svchost processes but also if not the window movings are same bad (jerky). I just don't get it fixed or better. 

Try this: If you have running Windows 10 etc like I have on main system & VM too then just open any app window or explorer and then press on this app icon on task bar to minimize & maximize it back. So normally you have enabled the animations of that so that you can see it goes down and up and this happens on my main system 1A liquid without any waiting time etc. Now when I try the same in my VM then it lags. It need some time to react and then the animation is slower and jerky too. Thats the whole bad thing. Below a image of my basic settings I have so far.

So tried to change it with more memory and more CPU cores and more GPU memory etc but there is nothing getting better etc.

greetz

[demberto]

There is a VBox mod out there which uses D3D11 instead of normal VBox (pre v7) which uses D3D9. I forgot its name.

Did you try using VMware and get same issues? Maybe you can try VBox v7 to check if the lags are reduced. It will never be as smooth as host though, it will always be slightly jittery, noticeable artifacts sometimes.

I see you have made only a 30GB partition for Windows, are you using some modded version? 30GB for official is too less ig, with all the shit it comes with. Have you made this VMDK on an SSD? If not, I suggest you to do that if you have SSD.

I am afraid there's not much you can do.

[LCF-AT]

Hi,

I did not try out VMware on this PC just on my old PC where I got same bad lagging what you also can see in some of my older tutorials. Normally I should have enough CPU, GPU & Memory power to run few OS like Win 10 x64 at the same time but in VBox its always jerky whats really annoying. So I did install the offical Win 10 x64 ISO on my 30 GB partition. I did calcualte a little bit scarce but I also just wanted to use this OS just for testings only. Yes, I made this OS image on SSD main drive. As I said, only issue I have is that lagging what I told before already.

One more thing about Windows Sandbox. Its starting in just few seconds (really fast) and the performance is also great whats means all works quick and without any lagging and the same performance I would like to have on VBox too. Just see that in WSB the system uses 4 GB of memory and virtual processors of 6 (must be same like 6 cores of CPUs I have). For CPU its using any adapter without to show any memory usage. So whats the difference now? Only could try to give VBox OS also 6 cores but I think I tried this already in the past without any changes.

PS: So can I install VBox 7 next to VBox 6 (latest) I have or does it make any conflicts? Can I also use my same OS image then?

greetz

[demberto]

If you are able  to run WSB, HyperV is already enabled. WSB uses "Windows containers" technology which is more lightweight (hence fast), and its dependant on HyperV.

Make sure you are using Hyper-V (or Default) as PV interface

It can be possible that Hyper-V itself causes these issues, so try disabling it. Disabling it completely can get a bit tricky, it involves running a Powershell script.

You can try a more slim and lightweight WIndows mod as well, since 10 comes with a lot of crap. Some of it (like telemetry) can be disabled by O&O Shutup 10++.

You should also keep your host drivers updated with something like Driver Booster.

 

There are some steps you should probably try on a new VM instance (in case anything gets fornicationed up):

It is possible to use various paravirtualised controllers if you install the virtio-win-guest-tools (direct download link) inside the guest OS.

Guest additions provided by VirtualBox don't have drivers for these features nor does Windows have them by default. Both of these will definitely give you a better performance and remove any bottlenecks (if any) caused by them.

VirtualBox's manual has a shit ton of information for in-depth info on these topics. I think you should take a look around wherever "virtio", "passthrough" or "paravirtualisation" words are mentioned. This and this are useful sections you should read. Its outdated at certain places, but nothing of concern. VirtualBox v7 has an activity monitor, that should prove useful for finding what really are usage patterns, since VBox manual says all Windows CPU reporting tools are not as good (except Sysinternals ones).

19 hours ago, LCF-AT said:

So can I install VBox 7 next to VBox 6 (latest) I have or does it make any conflicts? Can I also use my same OS image then?

No, its way too close to hardware to be used even slightly portably. I think event VMWare can't be.

[LCF-AT]

Hi again,

so I got already same settings of standart & enabled Nested paging like on your images. I also tried to disable it before but I have seen no effects later in VM OS and did re-enabled Nested VT AMD option via powershell (I tried few days ago). I also used O&O and also W10 Privacy before too in Guest OS to disable trash but its not getting better.

I tried to install that custom virtio win in Guest OS inside and then I did turn off the Guest OS and did change the setting of Storage to virtio-scsi but with this setting the Guest OS will not load and stops with a blue screen with an QR Code etc. No chance to load the OS. I did switch back to my setting using AHCI and then it worked again to load my Guest OS but still bad performance. Not working for me so far if I done all steps correctly. Do you have some more ideas etc? As I said, I'am no power user of VM stuff but the most important expectations I have is to get the Guest OS working smooth & liquid like my main OS you know. Just imagine you would play a game on Playstation or something and it would lag, in this case all gamers would be pissed and don't wanna play that game anymore. No question, VBox and other VM tools are great tools but if the peformance is not good then it makes no fun to work with you know.

Example: I'am using a screensaver of Windows called bubbles "C:\Windows\System32\Bubbles.scr" and when I start this saver in my Guest VM then I can see a giant difference and the bubbles are moving totaaaaaaaaal slow in VM Guest compared to my main OS etc. Maybe you could try this out too whether you can see a difference in your case and how much the difference is. Otherwise I could make a video running the SSaver on my Main OS, Guest OS in VBox and WSB (not tried in WSB yet). But also if I show you the difference of speed of both OS then you will also recognize that this slowness can't be normal.

greetz

[LCF-AT]

Hi guys,

it's me again. So today I found out that Vbox 7 is also portable to get. I just did download this portable version and did run it into Windows Sandbox just to see whether it runs there and  it does after installing redist pack (vc runtime libs).

Now I want to run the VBox 7 portable on my main OS where I also have installed VBox 6.x and just wanna know whether its possible to use my Vbox 6.x VM files (vmdk) of Win10 also in this new VBox 7? Can I use / share it with both VBox versions? On internet I found some infos how to import that vmdk file..

https://osxdaily.com/2019/08/12/open-vmdk-virtualbox/

...but I'am not sure whether it would work to use same files for both versions. Just wanna ask before whether anyone of you did that already before I mess up my vmdk file / folder etc. So I don't wanna create a new vmdk file / HDD and install same OS again you know just for testing VBox 7 a little whether it works better or not. So can anyone of you tell me something about that maybe. Thanks.

greetz

EDIT: Are there any small vmdk files / packages to download on internet? Any ready simple OS xy or so? Otherwise do you know any OS iso images which are VERY small I could install with a tiny created HDD like 2 GB or anything? Just wanna install any OS for testing and thats all. Don't wanna install a big OS for that you know. Do you have any clues?

Edited November 26, 2022 by LCF-AT

[LCF-AT]

Hi again,

just have another question about "Windows Sandbox". So today I wanted to check out the Windows Media Player and I see its not starting in "Windows Sandbox"! Does anyone know what the reason for this is and how to get it run? Just look into this folder...

C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Accessories

....so there are some Windows tools and all I can run in WSB but the Windows Media Player does not start. Just some short flashing of mouse pointer and thats it. I was running the default shortcut of WSB "%windir%\system32\WindowsSandbox.exe" without any own configuration. Just would like to know why its not starting in the box.

greetz