Virtualization on older computer

cereberus said:

I did some tests on minimum RAM to run Windows a while back, and it was able to run in 0.5 GB RAM but it was impossibly slow even in simple text editing - hit a key, wait 10 seconds, hit next key, wait 10 seconds etc.

To run VMs, RAM is most important, 8GB ABSOLUTE minimum, moderately decent CPU (not absolutely essential but helps a lot), SSD is also beneficial.


My 32 GB emmc travel laptop is capable of virtualisation but only has 4 GB which cannot be upgraded. I tried doing a Hyper-V VM once out of interest but decided hitting my face with a wet kipper would be less painful/messy (not that I want to talk about that in public LOL). I had to have the vhd on a usb drive which further reduced performance.

My older house laptop, AMD10, 12 GB RAM, 2xSSD (sata) would run 1 Hyper-V VM but struggled with 2 @4GB each. It was not the fastest but ok for testing Insider builds etc.

My main laptop i7, 16 GB RAM, 2x1TB NVME drives (1 having Optane memory) - now that runs Hyper-V vms really well. I can run 2 VMs simultaneously if both are allocated 4GB, but I find allocating a VM 6GB is better, and even this device struggles with 2x6 GB VMs as that leaves only 4GB for host (some of which is used for graphics).

Of course, all these figures are for Windows VMs. Despite popular belief, I have found full Linux distros like Ubuntu also need 4+GB in a vm to really run well.

If you use Linux with full GUI's and default applications installed then they can be almost as resource intensive as Windows -- the best distros allow you to install the bare minimum functional system and then you can install a desktop GUI and select your own packages. Ubuntu for example installs by default a full GNOME desktop with zillions of packages that I don't know what they are and I'd never use --even things like libre-office etc.

If you have a 32 bit computer and can find a version of vbox that runs on it you CAN contrary to beliefs run a 32 bit OS on it even if the CPU doesn't have the vt-x virtualisation technology (or equivalent AMD setting).

You can't though run any 64 bit VM's on it.

If it DOES have vt-x you can actually run a 64 bit VM on a 32 bit host provided the CPU is 64 bit capable however remember HOST and GUEST together can only use 4GB RAM so experience won't be good !!!.

Current VM systems need 64 bit machines just to install the Virtual software system on it before installing guests.

But : Who uses computers with only 4GB RAM these days -- even a cheap mobile phone has more !!!

Cheers
jimbo

cereberus said:

I did some tests on minimum RAM to run Windows a while back, and it was able to run in 0.5 GB RAM but it was impossibly slow even in simple text editing - hit a key, wait 10 seconds, hit next key, wait 10 seconds etc.

To run VMs, RAM is most important, 8GB ABSOLUTE minimum, moderately decent CPU (not absolutely essential but helps a lot), SSD is also beneficial.


My 32 GB emmc travel laptop is capable of virtualisation but only has 4 GB which cannot be upgraded. I tried doing a Hyper-V VM once out of interest but decided hitting my face with a wet kipper would be less painful/messy (not that I want to talk about that in public LOL). I had to have the vhd on a usb drive which further reduced performance.

My older house laptop, AMD10, 12 GB RAM, 2xSSD (sata) would run 1 Hyper-V VM but struggled with 2 @4GB each. It was not the fastest but ok for testing Insider builds etc.

My main laptop i7, 16 GB RAM, 2x1TB NVME drives (1 having Optane memory) - now that runs Hyper-V vms really well. I can run 2 VMs simultaneously if both are allocated 4GB, but I find allocating a VM 6GB is better, and even this device struggles with 2x6 GB VMs as that leaves only 4GB for host (some of which is used for graphics).

Of course, all these figures are for Windows VMs. Despite popular belief, I have found full Linux distros like Ubuntu also need 4+GB in a vm to really run well.

HI, thanks for the input.

I have installed VB 5.2.44-139111 after enabling the Virtualization on the BIOS.
I started creating the VB following the instructions at How to Install Windows 10 in VirtualBox: 12 Steps (with Pictures) .
I got up to step 9. At this point I am supposed to power on the VB and install the Windows 10 from the ISO image, but when I try to power the VB on, I get an error " E_fail 0x8000 4005" Comp. machine wrap interface : i machine ( 85cd948e-r71f-4289-281e-oca7cd48cd89).
In short, , I cannot power the VB on to proceed to the installation of the Windows 10 ISO image

Any idea what t is going on?

Thanks

Ittiandro

I think the Host is trying to enable something that is not there..

Try in an admin cmd:

Code:

bcdedit /set hypervisorlaunchtype off

Restart the computer.

My 12-year old computer has a roughly comparable CPU to the OPs. With 8GB RAM I can do a VM although even then it is slow at times. I am using a 32-bit version of VMware 12.0 Workstation Player.

Below you can see that I created a Windows 7 Home VM. You can see that the Edge browser running in the VM. Note the host computer has Windows 10 Home.

cereberus said:

OP is trying to run virtualbox in 4 GB of RAM.

I am not surprised it is having issues as it is a type 2 hypervisor and sits on top of Windows unlike Hyper-V which is a type 1 hypervisor and sits along side the host installation.

We have made it repeatedly clear that OP needs at least 8GB to run virtual machines.

The bcdedit command should not be necessary unless OP has setup Hyper-V in additional features (or sandbox).

Yes, I am aware that 4 GB Ram is problematic, but I tried, because I thought I understood Bree saying that it might work with only 4 GB RAM. , albeit very slowly. I did use the suggested elevated CMD command, but even so, it doesn't work. There might be other contributing factors. In the BIOS, for instance , there are two Virtualization modes: Intel Virtualization technology and Intel VT-D Tech. I was able to enable the first, but not the 2nd, which is inactive. May be this is a part of the problem. Or something in the settings. Anyway, at this point, I won't pursue this.

Thanks to you all for your help

Ittiandro

Bree said:

I tried VirtualBox in 4GB of RAM just to see if it would work at all, and if so just how bad it would be. While it worked, it was as bad as I expected. Both the VM and the Host were maxing out the memory in use and making excessive use of the swapfile, rendering both machines as slow as snails. But it did at least prove my machine (a Dell Latitude E4310) with its 1st gen i5 M520 was capable of hosting a VM, and that with a memory upgrade it may even become useable. And no, I have just checked. I don't have Intel VT-D Tech enabled in its bios, just Intel Virtualisation Technology.

Where on earth did you get VirtualBox 5.2? For my test I used 6.1, the current download from Oracle VM VirtualBox

I repeat, this was just to test what was possible, not what would be useable. At least 8GB is needed, preferably (much) more for a practical host machine.

Thanks Bree

I had already tried VB v 6.1, but i get a message that it cannot be installed on my version of Windows 10-32 , so I guess there is not much I can do. Perhaps I could install 2x 4 RAM modules ( I had already upgraded the RAM to 4 GB years ago, using the two available slots) but I don't know if if my MB allows the upgrade and if I can still find the older RAM modules I have from about 8-10 years ago.

Ittiandro