Visual Studio slow in Virtualbox

Question

Like really really slow.

I've got a 64 bit, 8 cores, 12 gig ram windows 7 host. I gave 4 cores and 4 gigs of ram to a 64 bit windows 7 virtual machine within which I am trying to run visual studio 2010 (and sql server - but that's it).

It worked for a few days but then the resource usage went off the charts - near 100% CPU at all times. I turned off windows 7 visual effects and it dropped immediately to normal levels. However any time I try to do anything in visual studio it spikes right back up.

Does anyone with a similar rig have a similar experience? I know people have pulled this set-up off successfully and have been very happy with it so I'm wondering if I just have a bad configuration somewhere.

Answer 1

Visual Studio 2010 uses GPU acceleration to do its GUI because it uses WPF for its forms. VM's don't pass through GPU tasks all that efficiently. In VS goto Tools -> Options -> Environment -> General -> Visual experience and uncheck the 3 check boxes in that fieldset and see if that does the trick.

I've found VM's will sometimes work fine with Aero and VS 2010 using the GPU but then for no reason started doing exactly what you describe. This works for me.

Answer 2

Found a clue here.

It would seem that virtualbox 3.1.4 (my current version) freaks out when you tell it to use more than one CPU on windows 7. I set it to use 1 CPU instead of 4 and resource usage went back to normal.

Hope they fix this soon.

Answer 3

Disabling 3D acceleration under VM settings did the trick for me.

Answer 4

Thanks for the tips all, disabling 3D Acceleration made a HUGE difference!

Answer 5

On lesser-specced VMs (mine has 1GB of RAM), VS2010 won't even start. Disabling 3D acceleration made it work just fine, thanks for the tip!

Answer 6

My current settings are:

• disabled 3D acceleration
• disabled Remote Display Server
• only 1 CPU

The VS 2010 speed is not excelent but also not so slow.