Originally Posted By: tfabris
I know Linux isn't Windows. I'm just saying it's possible that VirtualBox can do unexpected things to a system even when it's not actively running.

VirtualBox's kernel modules on Linux have historically been bad enough that starting in 2011, they've been flagged as tainting the kernel. I don't know if the code has improved since then. But it wouldn't hurt to verify if the stalls are happening even when VirtualBox's kernel modules aren't loaded.