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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.
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So it turned out to be a simple problem, partly caused by selecting the wrong power plan. Make sure that the High power plan is selected when running virtual machines VirtualBox. After some more experiments, I found that by raising the minimum processor speed when running on mains power raised the CPU speed.
Enable 3D graphics acceleration to the VM. Right click the VM, Settings -> Display -> check the Enable 3D Acceleration tick box. Update: I switched to VMWare Player because it's much faster (even with a single core I didn't notice any lag).
When the VM is shut off it is no longer using any system resources besides disk space, and will therefore not slow your computer down unless you are very low on that.
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.
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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.
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