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VirtualBox Windows 10 / 11 performance issues

Intro

It's possible to have severe performance issues using VirtualBox on Windows. This is usually caused by Microsoft forcing their own Hyper-v hypervisor to startup with Windows in the background. This blocks direct access to intel's and AMD's virtualization on the CPU's. VirtualBox is therefore forced to fallback to Hyper-V, running all VM's as nested VM's on top of it.

This issue is indicated with a green turtle icon in the bottom taskbar of a started VirtualBox VM (as seen in the example image).

Solution 1:

I would highly recommend using a Linux OS for virtualization when possible! One of my preferences is Proxmox, which is free to use and supports a wide range of advanced features.

Solution 2:

1) Disable the Microsoft Hypervisor:

Type:
bcdedit /set hypervisorlaunchtype off

2) Disable Device guard:

On some Windows hosts with an EFI BIOS, DeviceGuard or CredentialGuard may be active by default, and interferes with OS level virtualization apps in the same way that Hyper-v does. These features also need to be disabled.

On Pro versions of Windows you can do this using gpedit.msc

Type:
set Local Computer Policy > Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > System > Device Guard > 
Turn on Virtualization Based Security to Disabled.

CredentialGuard is a subset of DeviceGuard, so disabling the former should be enough. If you cannot use gpedit for some reason then the equivalent registry hack is to find the key

Type:
HKLM|SYSTEM|CurrentControlSet|Control|DeviceGuard|EnableVirtualizationBasedSecurity|Enabled and set it to 0.

3) Disable core isolation:

Core isolation [includes] security features available on your device that use virtualization-based security. This is why they can interfere with VirtualBox and other virtualization tools. Disable them as follow:

Type:
On Win10 hosts, check Settings -> Device Security > Core Isolation Details and make sure all settings in this panel are turned off.

4) Windows rituals:

Reboot your system for the new configuration to take affect!

public/windows/virtualbox-windows-performance-issues.1731675889.txt.gz · Last modified: by timdv91