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Short summary: 14.04 is much slower than 12.04 even with more RAM assigned.

I'm using latest VirtualBox 4.3.10 on Mavericks 10.9.2. How can I make it faster?

Goose
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davidhq
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  • Or try enabling hardware visualisation in BIOS xD – Dusan Milosevic Apr 22 '14 at 19:10
  • windows? don't understand what you mean... but I already found a solution (below) – davidhq Apr 22 '14 at 19:59
  • I'm kidding :D .. – Dusan Milosevic Apr 22 '14 at 20:17
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    ok :) now I actually understand the sentence... before I though it was serious and it didn't make sense... but to disappoint you I'm actually running a VM on something even better than Ubuntu... but I agree with you - if I had Windows as a main system, it would make sense to move it to VM ^_^ – davidhq Apr 22 '14 at 21:27
  • I have the same problem but on Hyper-V 2012 R2. Any idea? –  Apr 29 '14 at 11:43
  • Enable 3D acceleration setting works but breaks the ability to suspend your virtual machine. Well, you can suspend ok but when you resume it, the whole OS is locked up and frozen. When you turn off 3D acceleration, the virtualbox suspend and resume functionality work again. I'm using Virtualbox 4.3.12 on a Mac (mavericks). – abulka May 30 '14 at 02:46
  • @abulka Sounds like a bug somewhere, though not sure whether it is Virtualbox, Ubuntu or Guest Addons – Mikko Ohtamaa Jun 23 '14 at 11:17

6 Answers6

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Enable 3D acceleration from virtual machine setting worked! I haven't tried that because in 12.04 I didn't have that selected so I thought it should work without it.

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waspinator
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davidhq
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    After enabling 3D acceleration and restarting, my Ubuntu display was only 640x480 and an error like "Could not apply stored configuration for monitors" was shown. This went away after installing the VirtualBox Guest Additions and since then it seems to be working fine, just as 12.04 did. – FriendFX Jun 23 '14 at 00:03
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    Sorry but WHERE did you enable 3D acceleration? In Windows? In BIOS? In Ubuntu? In Oracle Virtual Box? – Dims Jul 07 '14 at 18:27
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    In Virtual Box! – davidhq Jul 11 '14 at 17:48
  • It didn't help for me at all – xyhhx Apr 21 '15 at 12:46
  • Helped me for 15.04, thanks! Why is this off by default? Oracle only knows... – Pavel Vlasov Jun 12 '15 at 14:06
  • Definitely helped on 14.04 – Håvard Geithus Oct 18 '15 at 16:35
  • for 14.04 Gnome Ubuntu, it really worked, improving A LOT the UX. – pomarc Nov 25 '15 at 15:31
  • Can't thank you enough. I am moving away from 12.04 to 14.04 and got into this issue. Thanks. – slayedbylucifer Feb 12 '16 at 13:01
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    I'd like to note, that in my particular case, I had a slow UI on a set up with 3D acceleration on, and turning it off was what sped it up, so if you already have this on and you're having a slow UI, try turning it off. – Goose Mar 22 '16 at 12:10
  • Unchecked by default, and unable to check it (grayed out v5.0.20). :-( – Wolfger Aug 02 '16 at 09:48
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    I dont think it made any difference to me. – prayagupa Sep 22 '16 at 17:48
  • @PavelVlasov So that user decides what settings they want! – Chinmay Sarupria Oct 21 '16 at 17:45
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    @Wolfger I had the same issue, I needed to turn off my client VM instead of just saving its state (File close -> send shut down signal) – berkeleybross Dec 28 '16 at 17:25
  • I have one VM that performs better with this on, and the other with it off. Doesn't make any sense; I cloned one from the other. But if I flip the switch for either the display performance plummets with trails and artifacts slowly littering the screen. Try both and pick whichever works better. – jack Nov 19 '20 at 00:05
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Also, I found the following helped for me. Enable the use of the Host IO cache for the SATA controller for the virtual disk.

miki
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Watch out for the "Execution Cap" setting under the processor setting for the virtual machine. I stumbled upon a user having it set to 1% when it normally should be at 100%.

You can find it under 'System'->'Processor'->'Execution Cap'. It's a slider.

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Sorry for my ugly theme.

Markus Rexhepi-Lindberg
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    Since when is a dark theme the considerd as an ugly theme? The rest of StackExchange should also be available as dark edition... – feedc0de Jun 26 '17 at 08:22
  • @danbru1211 You can make it available this way:

    https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/deluminate/iebboopaeangfpceklajfohhbpkkfiaa?hl=en-US

    https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/owl/

     – Wizek Jun 27 '17 at 14:40
  • how about number of CPUs? increasing that helps?? – Amir Jul 19 '17 at 15:35
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Run Oracle VB Select your VM on the LHS Settings -> Display - > Video tab, "Enable Features:" and check the Enable 3D Acceleration box Click OK

three_jeeps
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0

Disabling the background blur of the search panel with the Unity Tweak tool also improves the speed of the Ubuntu UI.

mace
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0

I have Variety installed from the PPA's and discovered it was slowing VirtualBox to a crawl at times. Disabling the autostart from both the Variety preferences and Startup Applications restored the speed.

Christopher
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  • How do check if I have Variety installed? I don't think I have it installed. It doesn't show up when I type in "variety" in the search box. If it is installed how would Disable it? – Yonatan Simson Jun 14 '16 at 09:05
  • It's not in the main distribution but a PPA. Peter Levi: the maintainer will show you how to install it from this link. http://peterlevi.com/variety/how-to-install/ – Christopher Jun 15 '16 at 11:59