[SOLVED] Virtualbox Always Freezing

**Kristopher** · February 7th, 2008

When I run Virtual box with a Windows XP VM, and run several programs (one at a time) i.e. Photoshop 7, download manager etc... it always freezes on me.

Sometimes i move the mouse and its fine, others i need to hold my laptops power button down to restart my whole system.

I tried giving it 1GB of RAM in case it was that but nope?

I am runing 1.5.0 on Ubuntu 7.10, any ideas what is wrong?

HP Pavilion dv6238ea Notebook PC | Ubuntu 7.10
2 Gb RAM | 120Gb HD | Nvidia Go 7400 256MB | Intel® Core™ Duo CPU T2250 @ 1.73GHz

**starfry** · February 7th, 2008

There's a kernel option you need to set on booting the HOST. Have you done this?
I can't remember of the top of my head what the option it but it is documented in the vbox user guide. I seem to remember it is something like "no hz"...

**update** what you want is to add "nohz=off" to the end of your "kernel" line in "/boot/grub/menu.lst" Like this:

kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.20-16-generic root=UUID=db6c0561-048a-4f13-af4a-4aeec22cc819 ro quiet splash nohz=off

**Kristopher** · February 8th, 2008

Thanks WOW such a difference and 100% better cool thank you so much.

**Kristopher** · February 21st, 2008

Ok that fixed that, but when i run Amarok and VB with XP it starts to freeze. Any ideas how to fix this? apart from dont run Amarok at the same time lol

**ol3ears** · March 2nd, 2008

I had/have the virtual box freezing problem (gutsy host / xp guest) dual core - 100% cpu utilisation on one core and seems to stop gnome irrespective of VIrtualBox task priority.
No problem on fiesty host / xp guest (suggests a nohz issue?) dual core
I have not done the kernal nohz thing on gutsy instead I bring VirtualBox up on one core
taskset -c 1 /usr/lib/virtualbox/VirtualBox
Seems to do the trick - though would be a bit limiting if you were attempting to run multiple guests

**Kristopher** · March 10th, 2008

I found what the issue was. Within Amarok if i have the send info lastfm that causes the freezes, with this turned off it runs 100% smooth and not one freeze now since my last post here

**Fire_Chief** · June 25th, 2008

Originally Posted by ol3ears

I had/have the virtual box freezing problem (gutsy host / xp guest) dual core - 100% cpu utilisation on one core and seems to stop gnome irrespective of VIrtualBox task priority.
No problem on fiesty host / xp guest (suggests a nohz issue?) dual core
I have not done the kernal nohz thing on gutsy instead I bring VirtualBox up on one core
taskset -c 1 /usr/lib/virtualbox/VirtualBox
Seems to do the trick - though would be a bit limiting if you were attempting to run multiple guests

Excellent!! This fixed my intermittent freezing issue as well. I had previously done the nohz switch in GRUB but I like this better. Thanks!