Q:

Performance issues running Ubuntu 10.04 as guest OS in VmWare with Windows 7 host?

I have (portable) Virtualbox installed on a USB key running on a 64-bit Windows 7 host. I installed 32 bit Ubuntu 10.04 as a guest OS. 
During spikes in processor usage on the guest OS (based on looking at top), the Ubuntu virtual box freezes up for 5-10 seconds. The guest becomes unresponsive with the VirtualBox window showing as "not responding". There seems to maybe be a correlation between this behavior and network accesses. 
I've experimented with the number of CPUs allocated to the virtual box, added and removed RAM, and adding video memory -- all to no avail. I have not attempted disabling or changing the processor level virtualization (VT-x).
I'm wondering if there's anything particular about Ubuntu 10.4 that might be impacting this? Should I have installed 64-bit Ubuntu (or should it matter!?). Is there a VirtualBox setting I'm missing that would improve my experience?
Any help is appreciated.

A:

I suppose that running VirtualBox on a USB key is the problem. USB keys have slower write times than harddrives. So what happens is that the Ubuntu VM writes data to it's disk (which is also stored on the USB key I suppose) and the data can't be written fast enough on the key so the VM hangs.
If you copy the Ubuntu hard disk image to your harddrive and use this one to boot Ubuntu are you experiencing the same problems?

