[gentoo-user] Windows 10 Pro 64bit in Virtualbox

[gentoo-user] Windows 10 Pro 64bit in Virtualbox

[thelma]

Is anybody running Windows 10 Pro 64bit in Virtualbox?
Is it stable?
Is it easy to resize? 

Currently I'm still using Windows 7 Pro and it starts much faster then Windows 10 pro 32bit 
But Windows 7 is no longer supported and eventually I'll have to select Windows 10 Pro 32bit or 64bit to run my programs. 

Re: [gentoo-user] Windows 10 Pro 64bit in Virtualbox

[Matthias Hanft]

thelma@sys-concept.com schrieb:
> Is anybody running Windows 10 Pro 64bit in Virtualbox?

No problems so far - except that it's not very fast (which
means "pretty slow").  I'm still investigating some speed
improvements, but it seems to be a common problem with lots
of hints (which, unfortunately, don't really help).

-Matt

Re: [gentoo-user] Windows 10 Pro 64bit in Virtualbox

[Michael]

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On Saturday, 22 May 2021 22:14:28 BST Matthias Hanft wrote:
> thelma@sys-concept.com schrieb:
> > Is anybody running Windows 10 Pro 64bit in Virtualbox?
> 
> No problems so far - except that it's not very fast (which
> means "pretty slow").  I'm still investigating some speed
> improvements, but it seems to be a common problem with lots
> of hints (which, unfortunately, don't really help).
> 
> -Matt

Win10 Home/Pro/Edu + VBox Guest Additions works fine.

Beware of Chrome which is notorious for slowing down MSWindows installations 
by scanning for any other software installed on the system.  Once you disable 
this, MSWindows works as expected.  Mind you, there's nothing wrong with Win7.  
I would think it runs faster compared to Win10, on the same host.

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Re: [gentoo-user] Windows 10 Pro 64bit in Virtualbox

[Mark Knecht]

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On Sat, May 22, 2021 at 2:02 PM <thelma@sys-concept.com> wrote:
>
> Is anybody running Windows 10 Pro 64bit in Virtualbox?
> Is it stable?
> Is it easy to resize?
>
> Currently I'm still using Windows 7 Pro and it starts much faster then
Windows 10 pro 32bit
> But Windows 7 is no longer supported and eventually I'll have to select
Windows 10 Pro 32bit or 64bit to run my programs.
>

Been running it for a couple of years now. No problems.

- Mark

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Re: [gentoo-user] Windows 10 Pro 64bit in Virtualbox

[Andrew Udvare]

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I use with a highly customised image made with NTLite where nearly
everything is removed, especially things like the antimalware, Cortana, etc.

This gives marginal gain in terms of boot up time, and general speed of the
UI (even with all animations disabled). It does however reduce the memory
requirement to about 1-1.5 GiB, which is nicer than average. However, that
barely fits a browser like Chrome or Edge.

I've been trying to perfect a minimal image setup for VirtualBox for a
while. It's taking a long time to test it.

On Sat, May 22, 2021, 17:02 <thelma@sys-concept.com> wrote:

> Is anybody running Windows 10 Pro 64bit in Virtualbox?
> Is it stable?
> Is it easy to resize?
>
> Currently I'm still using Windows 7 Pro and it starts much faster then
> Windows 10 pro 32bit
> But Windows 7 is no longer supported and eventually I'll have to select
> Windows 10 Pro 32bit or 64bit to run my programs.
>
>
>

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Re: [gentoo-user] Windows 10 Pro 64bit in Virtualbox

[Michael]

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> On Sat, May 22, 2021, 17:02 <thelma@sys-concept.com> wrote:
> > Is anybody running Windows 10 Pro 64bit in Virtualbox?
> > Is it stable?
> > Is it easy to resize?

I forgot to mention stability and resizing ...

In one case after a major update the Win10 desktop became terribly unstable, 
menus not showing up, everything on the desktop taking minutes to respond to a 
mouse click or keyboard press.  Eventually I realised the transparency had 
been enabled by the update and this was cause any desktop graphics to render 
partially and with a lot of latency.  Disabling transparency restored the 
previous normal desktop behaviour.  This was on a host with an old AMD-Radeon 
APU.  Other video cards and drivers may not have such a problem, but I thought 
it worth mentioning.

Resizing the C:\ drive partition is straight forward, in most cases.  You can 
use 'VBoxManage modifyhd' in a terminal to increase the virtual disk size, or 
the VBox GUI Virtual Media Manager tab.  Then use the Windows Disk Management, 
or boot the VM with GParted and resize the OS partition & filesystem.  
However, Windows 10 tends to create additional partitions as part of 
installation, or subsequent major updates.  These are called System Reserve 
Partitions (SRP).  Initially one is created at the start of the disk to 
contain bitlocker, boot and Windows Restore data.  After certain major 
updates, or if the Windows 10 installation was an in situ upgrade from an 
older Windows 7 installation, such an SRP can be placed after the C:\ drive.  
In one case, changing an installed system from MBR to GPT/UEFI also created an 
ESP after the C:\ drive.  It follows you won't be able to increase the size of 
the C:\ partition without moving any partitions following it out of the way 
first, increasing C:\, then restoring the moved partitions.  Since an 
otherwise 5 minute disk & partition resizing exercise can develop into a 
prolonged and pre-planned effort, you'd be better off sizing up the virtual 
disk before you start installing MSWindows.

Big upgrade releases every six months may require more temporary storage space 
to create a backup in case the upgrade fails.  If enough space is not 
available on the disk, the the OS will ask you to insert a USB drive to be 
used during the upgrade.  You can also create and attach a new virtual disk 
for this purpose.

Finally, there's the Windows 10 'Storage Spaces' replacing Dynamic Disks, if 
you want to create a RAID in software.  I understand you use it to add more 
disks/partitions, like you would with a RAID, but I have never used this to 
know what it can achieve in terms of resizing.  

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Re: [gentoo-user] Windows 10 Pro 64bit in Virtualbox

[thelma]

On 5/23/21 4:04 AM, Michael wrote:
>> On Sat, May 22, 2021, 17:02 <thelma@sys-concept.com> wrote:
>>> Is anybody running Windows 10 Pro 64bit in Virtualbox?
>>> Is it stable?
>>> Is it easy to resize?
> 
> I forgot to mention stability and resizing ...
> 
> In one case after a major update the Win10 desktop became terribly unstable, 
> menus not showing up, everything on the desktop taking minutes to respond to a 
> mouse click or keyboard press.  Eventually I realised the transparency had 
> been enabled by the update and this was cause any desktop graphics to render 
> partially and with a lot of latency.  Disabling transparency restored the 
> previous normal desktop behaviour.  This was on a host with an old AMD-Radeon 
> APU.  Other video cards and drivers may not have such a problem, but I thought 
> it worth mentioning.
> 
> Resizing the C:\ drive partition is straight forward, in most cases.  You can 
> use 'VBoxManage modifyhd' in a terminal to increase the virtual disk size, or 
> the VBox GUI Virtual Media Manager tab.  Then use the Windows Disk Management, 
> or boot the VM with GParted and resize the OS partition & filesystem.  
> However, Windows 10 tends to create additional partitions as part of 
> installation, or subsequent major updates.  These are called System Reserve 
> Partitions (SRP).  Initially one is created at the start of the disk to 
> contain bitlocker, boot and Windows Restore data.  After certain major 
> updates, or if the Windows 10 installation was an in situ upgrade from an 
> older Windows 7 installation, such an SRP can be placed after the C:\ drive.  
> In one case, changing an installed system from MBR to GPT/UEFI also created an 
> ESP after the C:\ drive.  It follows you won't be able to increase the size of 
> the C:\ partition without moving any partitions following it out of the way 
> first, increasing C:\, then restoring the moved partitions.  Since an 
> otherwise 5 minute disk & partition resizing exercise can develop into a 
> prolonged and pre-planned effort, you'd be better off sizing up the virtual 
> disk before you start installing MSWindows.
> 
> Big upgrade releases every six months may require more temporary storage space 
> to create a backup in case the upgrade fails.  If enough space is not 
> available on the disk, the the OS will ask you to insert a USB drive to be 
> used during the upgrade.  You can also create and attach a new virtual disk 
> for this purpose.
> 
> Finally, there's the Windows 10 'Storage Spaces' replacing Dynamic Disks, if 
> you want to create a RAID in software.  I understand you use it to add more 
> disks/partitions, like you would with a RAID, but I have never used this to 
> know what it can achieve in terms of resizing.  

Thank Michael for the update.  It is handy.
When you are talking about "transparency" you mean inside Windows 10, isn't it?

I've experimented with resizing Windows 10 32bit (currently installed) using gparted and it went very well, no problems.  
I'm not sure with switching to Windows 10 64bit will help or not.
 

Re: [gentoo-user] Windows 10 Pro 64bit in Virtualbox

[Michael]

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On Sunday, 23 May 2021 19:39:24 BST thelma@sys-concept.com wrote:

> Thank Michael for the update.  It is handy.
> When you are talking about "transparency" you mean inside Windows 10, isn't
> it?

Yes, under Settings > Personalization > Colors > Transparency Effects.


> I've experimented with resizing Windows 10 32bit (currently installed) using
> gparted and it went very well, no problems. I'm not sure with switching to
> Windows 10 64bit will help or not.

I've always run MSWindows 10 64bit, so I can't report on differences in 
performance, other than the obvious benefit in multitasking and hungry 
applications requiring more RAM than a 32bit will cope with.  As far as I know 
switching from 32bit to 64bit involves reinstalling, so this would be the time 
to also allocate the virtual disk space you think you would need and allow 
another 15G to 20G on top for future upgrades.

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