Why is Windows 7 running slowly in VirtualBox?

I am having performance issues with Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit) in VirtualBox when I run a resource-intensive program like Adobe Illustrator. Performance is pretty slow, but given my specs and allocation of resources, it should be able to handle such a task. My computer specs are listed below:

-Computer-

Processor : 8x Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-3770K CPU @ 3.50GHz

Memory : 16469MB (1610MB used)

Operating System : Ubuntu 13.10

Resolution : 1680x1050 pixels

OpenGL Renderer : Mesa DRI Intel(R) Ivybridge Desktop x86/MMX/SSE2

X11 Vendor : The X.Org Foundation

-Multimedia-

Audio Adapter : HDA-Intel - HDA Intel PCH

ATA Samsung SSD 840

ATA WDC WD5000AZLX-0

As you can see, I have 16 GB RAM, 8 CPU cores, and hardware virtulization enabled. I have allocated almost 3 GB of ram to Windows, 4 cores, and 72 Mb of Video Memory. This is all running on an SSD. When Windows 7 runs, I am not overloading my CPU, RAM, or other components as I check this on the host machine. As you can also see, I am running only the integrated video card. I don't know if this should affect my performance a lot for Illustrator, but if it does, I would appreciate the heads up.

Why is it running so slow? It constantly runs snails pace on simple operations.

Solution 1:

I experienced this problem on my PC, I thought it was a new version that had made my Windows XP, and Windows 7 Guests.

After much playing around, and finding nothing but other users complaining of same problem, I found the solution for me:

If the OpenGL renderer for the QT engine that VB uses OpenGL, All guests are unbearably slow (except when in text mode). If the renderer is set to RASTER, all of my guests run perfectly.

To test if this is your problem try passing the command line option -graphicssystem raster to the VirtualBox application. This will override the graphics system for VirtualBox. Good Luck!