Arch Linux

Kardell

Member

From: London a new Babylon

Registered: 2007-02-20

Posts: 276

Virtualbox and Win7 guest - svchost high CPU and no updates

Hi All,
   I am not sure if this is the right board, if not please feel free to move it to the right place.
Do you experience the same issue as I am with Windows 7 guest on VBox host?
I have red many posts on the net and I cannot fix it.
This is 4th vm I have deployed to rectify the issue, no success.
I have even tried Windows 8 and it behaves the same way - initial check for updates makes one svchost.exe process to go highwire 99% and eat RAM up to 1.4GB.
I have tried and disabled IPv6, but no difference.
The networking bit is set to plain NAT.
Please let me know if you have come across similar issue.
I have updated my Arch to the latest, restarted, but still the same.
Thank you

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"Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it." Edmund Burke

Potomac

Member

Registered: 2011-12-25

Posts: 556

Re: Virtualbox and Win7 guest - svchost high CPU and no updates

it seems a bug related to windows update, I had the same bug for a windows XP guest two years ago,

https://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?p=994

http://blogs.technet.com/b/asiasupp/arc … h-cpu.aspx

Kardell

Member

From: London a new Babylon

Registered: 2007-02-20

Posts: 276

Re: Virtualbox and Win7 guest - svchost high CPU and no updates

Hi again,
  Thanks for that. I have even tried to install this from this month.
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3075851
Still the same behavior.

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"Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it." Edmund Burke

twelveeighty

Member

Registered: 2011-09-04

Posts: 1,456

Re: Virtualbox and Win7 guest - svchost high CPU and no updates

We are venturing well outside of Arch Linux or Virtualbox here, but since I experienced this issue as well and know how frustrating this can be on Windows VMs: be sure to disable the "Microsoft / Windows / Application Experience" entries in Task Manager. I also have the entries in "AppID", "Autochk", "Customer Experience Improvement Program", "Diagnosis", "Disk Diagnostic:, "Maintenance", "Offline Files" and "WindowsBackup" disabled.
There may be others I am leaving out, just walk through the subfolders under Windows in Task Scheduler and research the entries you wish to disable to ensure your not breaking the VM.

The key thing is that I found that I have to re-disable the Application Experience and Customer Experience Improvement Program entries EVERY time I run Windows Update. Even though I've turned off the Customer Improvement program stuff in Control Panel.

After doing this and making sure I use the Virtualbox "Save Machine State" instead of shutting the VM down, resuming a Windows 7 VM and being able to work with it fairly quickly is okay. The VM will still perform a couple of startup tasks that deal with Windows Update, which I can't figure out how that's triggered, but they typically do not last very long.