Improve Your Windows Virtual Machine's Performance
Hardware components are the main reasons computers function. However, there’s little you can do by yourself with those raw resources they provide. Windows can take care of this for you, since it’s nothing more than a way for you to communicate and interact with your PC.
This doesn’t make Windows flawless by default, since it’s just a result of heavy programming, but you need an operating system whether you’re performing work-related activities or simply enjoying some leisure time. However, ambitious projects or general testing can put your system and personal files at risk, and this is where virtualization technology comes in handy.
Specialized applications like Oracle VM VirtualBox and VMware Workstation take a bit of system resources, create an isolated environment, and let you perform all operations on Windows as you normally would, but without affecting your system’s integrity. Since you can find anything on the web, here you get to know how to pump a little more performance into a virtual machine.
Getting more power out of VM VirtualBox
If you only keep a single drive volume for every activity you perform on a computer, the hard disk drive is put under a lot of pressure, since every application uses one location, just as a lot of cars are trying to move around in a crowded parking space. Before setting up your Virtual Machine, it’s best to do the following:
Step 1: Launch Oracle VM VirtualBox, but don’t start or create any machine.
Step 2: Go to Preferences from the File menu.
Step 3: With the General section opened, click the Default Machine Folder drop-down menu and choose Other.
Step 4: Navigate to a drive you don’t use too often, Make a New Folder, select it and press OK.
Step 5: Hit the OK button in the Preferences menu to save changes, and you can now set up a new machine.
When a directory is scanned or generally searched, memory chunks are heavily used and result in performance spikes if used by something else in the meantime. If you’re using Windows Defender to protect your system, the following steps serve as an example to add exceptions to the scan process. Don’t worry, other AV solutions can be tweaked in similar ways.
Step 1: Open up Windows Defender by pressing Win + S and searching for it.
Step 2: Switch to the Settings tab.
Step 3: Select Exclude Files and Locations from the left pane, and click Browse.
Step 4: Navigate to C:\Users\YOUR_USER\VirtualBox VMs and select the whole VirtualBox VMs folder.
Step 5: Press OK to confirm. Now, press the Add button that’s bellow Browse to exclude that directory. Save changes so all is in order.
Just so the Virtual Machine can function, you need to reserve some disks space for VM VirtualBox to isolate it. Besides size, there’s an option to make it of dynamic size, which means that it simply expands only when needed. This ends up in heavy HDD usage, so it’s better to give it a dedicated chunk of space.
Step 1: Start Oracle VM VirtualBox and don’t start any machine.
Step 2: Press the New button to set up a new appliance.
Step 3: Configure each step until reaching the Hard Drive prompt. There, choose to Create a Virtual Hard Drive Now.
Step 4: Select VDI (VirtualBox Disk Image) and press Next.
Step 5: From the Storage on Physical Hard Drive prompt, choose Fixed Size:
Note: The amount of space you decide to allocate is taken from the free space you have, so make sure there’s enough.
Step 6: Give the new drive a name, and move the slider to set size. Somewhere around 30 GB will do, but you can add more, depending on what you need to test.
Step 7: Hit the Create button and install the new virtual machine.
The resources used by VM VirtualBox are not created out of the bloom, but depend on your system’s configuration. The more resources you allocate, the faster your virtual Windows runs, but just make sure not to pass the critical levels, and leave some for your actual OS. Allocating resources can be done both before and after setting up a machine.
Before installing a machine:
Step 1: With Oracle VM VirtualBox running, press the New button.
Step 2: Choose a name and OS version, and press Next.
Step 3: Move the RAM slider to get at least 2 GB (2048 MB), or even to 4 GB (4096 MB) if you can. The more, the merrier.
Allocating to an installed machine:
Step 1: Right-click the target machine in the left panel and select Settings.
Step 2: Switch to the System section from the left panel.
Step 3: In the Motherboard tab, adjust the Base Memory slider to set RAM size.
Step 4: Move to the Processor tab and max out the Execution Cap slider, while making sure the Processor(s) slider doesn’t go over the critical (red) level.
Step 5: Switch to the Acceleration tab and Enable VT-x/AMD-V, as well as Nested Paging.
Note: VT-x and AMD-V are Intel and AMD processor extensions that allow system virtualization. Newer processors are fitted with such features, but most of them need to be enabled from the BIOS.
Step 6: Open the Display section from the left panel.
Step 7: Give the virtual machine more Video Memory through the dedicated slider, and Enable 2D and 3D Acceleration if you decide to test programs that depend on your video card.
After you install a fresh copy of Windows, you need to go grab hardware component drivers so they work correctly and at full capacity. The same goes for a virtual machine, and installing its own set of drivers gives a little boost in performance.
Step 1: Launch Oracle VM VirtualBox and boot up a virtual machine.
Step 2: Once loaded, access the Device menu from the window containing the virtual machine.
Step 3: Choose to Install Guest Additions or Insert Guest Additions CD Image if it’s already installed.
Step 4: Follow the prompt steps to install the Guest Additions, and then insert it once a machine is running.
Note: These tools as well as Oracle VM VirtualBox receive periodical updates, so it’s recommended to install them when prompted.
A computer doesn’t need to rest, and as long as it’s connected to a power source, it continues to run until external intervention. The same goes for virtual machines, which can be put on Pause when not used, and Resumed from the point they were left off.
Step 1: Save any changes performed in the virtual machine, just to be on the safe side.
Step 2: Under the Machine menu, click on Close, or simply press the X window button at the top right corner.
Step 3: When the prompt appears, choose to Save the Machine State, and press OK.
Step 4 (resuming): Simply start the machine as you normally would, and everything is back the way you left it.
On an ending note
Running Windows in a virtual environment lets you perform any kind of activities you normally would, without affecting your actual operating system. This means it’s going to get clogged at a certain point, and now you know a few ways of preventing, or at least delaying that from happening.
