Virtualization, Cloud, Infrastructure and all that stuff in-between
My ramblings on the stuff that holds it all together
High CPU utilization with Windows XP SP3 guest under VMware Fusion
Posted by on April 23, 2009
I have had a curious problem recently, I am currently running Windows XP under Fusion on a MacBook Pro; since I did some software updates recently the fan was going crazy and running at up to 6000 RPM even when apparently idling not only was the noise annoying it seemed to eat battery power.
Handy utility here for monitoring Mac temperature and fan speed.
With a bit of investigation I found that the Windows Search service was installed whilst I did some updates to the XP VM – it was doing it’s initial indexing the C: drive of the VM in the background – as soon as I disabled the “Windows Search” service it used much less CPU, and as a result quieter, cooler and the battery now lasts longer 🙂
Luckily I had no real use for Windows Search in this VM, but if you are experiencing the same problem worth looking into what background services are running in your guest OS and remembering that higher CPU usage = more heat = faster fan.
Virtualization, Cloud, Infrastructure and all that stuff in-between 