Visual Studio slow in Virtualbox

visual-studio-2010 windows-7 virtualization virtualbox
George Mauer picture George Mauer · Mar 2, 2010 · Viewed 17.5k times · Source

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

jamone picture jamone · Mar 2, 2010

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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