As another user stated, you are one of the few with issues with snapshots.
They also noted you had issues creating a Win11 Vbox if not selecting Pre-allocate Full Size. In My Win11 Vbox I did not need to do that. Now note it also most of these were created under either Win10 or Win11.
I did do Win10 and Win11 boxes on both VMware player (free), but hard to get a download, and on Vbox
With vbox or VMware I never have it locate the whole size, because as you use it and needs space it allocates more as it needs it. I can even then set them all to 500GB HD space that way.
Most times I think many use Vms for Ubuntu and things like that which I have done in the past, not many issues there either.
Now I don't have access to Windows 7 anymore, as none of my devices would work any longer with that operating system.
I tried and stayed with a laptop, a well-known brand, with Win 7 and even things on that stopped working.
Windows 7 even updated a few times and included Edge browser, just to find out months later NO browser loaded worked.
Tried Chrome, Edge, and Opera. Since I could not get the laptop updated to Win10 I finally ran the battery down and did a system rest and disposed of it.
My one other system came with Win 8, 8.1, yeah blah, but it worked. When free updates to Win10 came, I updated.
After I got another system it only came with Win11 unless you wanted to wait extra time, I think I recall they wanted to add an extra charge as well.
Sadly Winn11 is a bust, even with 32gig memory and a nvme main drive as well as it’s a I9 things, at times, still seem to lag.
I know many will be forced over time from Win 10 to Win 11 as support for Win10 is still planned early next year, unless you're willing to pay for extended support.
I hope you get things figured out seems you have a system that works for you by coping the current states instead of snapshots, since it works, and you have been successful stay with what works.
I have little care for sound, but I know to even attempt to get sound I needed the VM set to Intel HD Audio at very minimum. In ubuntu, I did not even use sound.
I can see if I use the VM's more I may care more for sound, but really not sure even at that.
I noted that, so many are trying to hype Win12, which seems still mostly a pipe dream, but also what's to say it will be better, or it may even be worse than Win11.
One of the few things I liked about Win11, it seemed to accept more things and either had the driver ready or found it, quickly. For some reason, Win10 seemed to have more trouble for me in this respect.
