For those of you using VirtualBox to run other operating systems on your computer, do not update to versions 2.1.4 or 2.1.2 yet. Don’t get me wrong, VirtualBox is a powerful and easy-to-use virtualization program; one that I could not live without. However, in my own experience of running XP Pro as the guest OS within Vista Business, VirtualBox (2.1.4 and 2.1.2) is hogging too much of the CPU. Reverting back to 2.0.4 fixed the high CPU problems. The changelog of the latest versions (2.1.4) does show fixes for various CPU related problems but it did not solve the high CPU usage in my environment. Others in the VirtualBox forum has indicated reverting back to 2.0.10 has also resulted in a fix. So if your virtualized environment slows down significantly on simple tasks within VirtualBox, check your versions!
Author
Ian Lee
Work from home dad, marketer and photographer. Fallen in love with basketball all over again as I coach my daughter's team.
3 thoughts on “VirtualBox Hogs CPU – Don’t Update Yet”
Great and interesting article and thanks for making me aware of it.
@Josh, Since 2.1.2 updated some core files, you cannot simply reinstall 2.0.4. There are 2 ways to go back to an earlier version. Option 1 requires a Guest OS install and Option 2 does not.
Option 1. Uninstall 2.1.2 and reinstall 2.0.4. Then reinstall your guest OS from scratch and re-setup VirtualBox.
or
Option 2. Uninstall 2.1.2 and reinstall 2.0.4. Then copy the backed up virtual desktop infrastructure (the 2.0.4 .vdi file) into the freshly installed VirtualBox and resetup. This should only take a few minutes if you have the backed up .vdi file.
Great and interesting article and thanks for making me aware of it.
How do I go back to version 2.0.4? I downloded and installed 2.1.2 before I know of the problem.
Thanks
@Josh, Since 2.1.2 updated some core files, you cannot simply reinstall 2.0.4. There are 2 ways to go back to an earlier version. Option 1 requires a Guest OS install and Option 2 does not.
Option 1. Uninstall 2.1.2 and reinstall 2.0.4. Then reinstall your guest OS from scratch and re-setup VirtualBox.
or
Option 2. Uninstall 2.1.2 and reinstall 2.0.4. Then copy the backed up virtual desktop infrastructure (the 2.0.4 .vdi file) into the freshly installed VirtualBox and resetup. This should only take a few minutes if you have the backed up .vdi file.
Hope this helps.