Changing the HAL to Fix High CPU Usage For Windows Guests in Virtualbox
The new VirtualBox 4.0 seems to work flawlessly with this guide too, with no change or problems with the updated HAL whatsoever after upgrading.
I think VirtualBox is a great thing. Windows Guests are a lot of fun. But the more I've used Windows Guests, the more I realize how needlessly slow and unresponsive they can be, especially during high disk activity. The CPU usage is way higher than it needs to be.
I've culled this information from several different forums, and many different messages. I've simply put all I've learned together into a guide that works for me without any issue every time I test it. So I must give credit to all the forum posters out there. And for the record, I'm using VirtualBox 3.2.10.r66523 as of the writing of this guide. Future releases may fix this issue and render this post obsolete.
I have two workarounds for this problem, and the results are pretty significant. The first is to change the Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL). The second is to change the default IDE Controller to SATA (which will be my next post).
You can see the Windows HAL by opening Device Manager and expanding "Computer." On my Windows XP host, my HAL is called ACPI Multiprocessor PC which is fine. But on a Windows Guest in VirtualBox, this just hikes up CPU usage way more than it needs to be.
My computer hardware has a dual-core CPU and I believe this problem only affects mutli-core systems. So if you're using a single-core CPU, you can probably skip this post and go on to the SATA post.
The initial VirtualBox settings for my Windows VM are
Settings > System > Motherboard
Enable IO APIC ticked
Settings> System > Processor
1 CPU, Enable PAE/NX ticked
Settings> System > Acceleration
Enable VT-x/AMD-V ticked
Enable Nested Paging (not sure about this one, I have it ticked for now)
Settings > Display > Video
64 MB or higher of Video Memory
Enable 3D Acceleration ticked
Enable 2D Acceleration ticked
Important: all installation and system settings described below will apply to the GUEST Windows, not the host. Or the VirtualBox settings for the Windows Guest VM. Do not install anything or change any settings for your host OS.
Step 1 - Start VirtualBox and load Windows XP.
Step 2 - Download the file HALu-0.2.0.zip which is attached to a forum message, and extract it to your hard drive. It is important for some reason to put the folder HALu (which contains the executables) at the root drive C:\, for example
C:\HALu
Step 3 - Run the file C:\HALu\HALu.exe and choose "ACPI PC" from the drop-down menu. Choose "Update." Reboot when asked.
Step 4 - Reboot a second time. I'm not sure why, just do it.
Step 5 - Now, when you open Device Manager and expand "Computer," you'll see a new HAL called "Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) PC." But we're not quite done yet.
Step 6 - Open a Command Prompt and enter these two commands:
sc config processor start= disabled
sc config intelppm start= disabled
Step 7 - Shut down Windows. Open Virtualbox Settings > System > Motherboard and UNtick Enable IO APIC. Click OK to close the settings window.
Step 8 - Start Windows to see if it will load. Normally, it won't load without Enable IO APIC ticked. It should start, and Windows should load pretty darn fast compared to what you're used to for VirtualBox.
Once you've completed this guide, you're ready to enable SATA which will be my Next post.
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