Virtualbox Bug?!

Not sure how many of you out there use virtualbox vs vmware...however lately I have noticed that when running some guests in Virtualbox (even when they are idle) causes my CPU to jump to 100%, which is insane! I did some research on the issue and it turns out that you need to create a "dummy" guest with 4MB of RAM and 4MB of disk space, and just let it run at a halted screen while you work. This brings the CPU from 100% to 5% no joke. Seems that many people can reproduce this problem but there isn't a patch for it?! Anyone else annoyed/have this problem?

Find more posts tagged with

Save $250 on 2025 certification boot camps from Infosec!

Book now with code EOY2025

Button

Comments

Michael.J.Palmer

Haven't really had that problem yet, though it depends I guess on what you're running in the VB session and what you're running on the host probably. Right now I'm just using the VB sessions for lab work with Windows 7 and surfing the web.

MentholMoose

They've released three versions in the last two weeks or so. There were two releases of 3.2.4, so make sure you're on the current one.

That said I'm using VirtualBox on a Fedora 12 x86_64 host and have not seen any issue like this, though I've seen some bugs recently, as mentioned here:
http://www.techexams.net/forums/virtualization/54300-virtualbox-3-2-new-features.html

NightShade03

Yeah I am on the latest version....I guess you just have to expect a few bugs here and there when software is free

I'm running various linux guests on Windows 7 x32 Host.

Michael.J.Palmer

How much RAM are you alocating to the VB's and how many do you have open at one time?

Only thing I can think of that could max out the CPU like that is if you're over-utilizing your RAM with virtual RAM needed for the VBs and you're paging the hell out of your host. Of course, I'm sure you'd probably already look into that, but just an idea.

NightShade03

My laptop has bare min install of Windows 7. Its a dual core 2.54 GHz with 4GB RAM. The host is a centos 5.4 server (no gui) with 256 MB RAM. Trust me I'm not taxing the process. I really just think it's a glitch in VB....many people are having this problem according to Google so I know I'm not crazy.

Now when I load a full network into VB that's another story.....