Fusion 3.01 + Snow Leopard + Windows XP + Windows Search 4.0 = Very high CPU usage

[Knurmia]

I've been running Fusion on my new MacBook Pro for about a month now and I have a major problem with CPU usage when running ONE Windows XP virtual machine. The CPU usage keeps almost all the time at 90-100% and this causes the battery to drain out in under three hours. The guest machine keeps running at 100% and according to Task Manager explorer.exe is to blame (see attached picture TaskManager). I'm using Unity, but changing to Single window doesn't change anything. After stopping and disabling all the non-essential services, I restarted the guest and now the CPU is running at a moderate level (TaskManager2). It seems that Windows Search 4.0 is causing the problem, but only in a virtual Windows XP. I could uninstall Windows Search, but Outlook 2007 is pretty useless without it. Other people have been having similar problems and I really hope this gets fixed in future versions.

Kristofer

[Knurmia]

Just an update to my post. After suspending the virtual machine and starting it again, the CPU usage is again at 100%. Restarting the virtual machine fixes the problem, but after starting a couple programs the problem was back. I guess it's time to see if Parallels works any better.

Update Jan 13th:

Just migrated the virtual machine to Parallels and I have no CPU problems. Even re-enabled Windows Search and everything is working fine (TaskManager3).

Kristofer

[ptrduffy]

I'd been having the same problems, and think I may have found a solution.

In my case the problem onyl appeared after I enabled file sharing and modified my 'My Documents' folder in XP to point to the vmware share to my Mac drive (I want to keep all my docs there). When I reset the 'My Documents' folder back to its default, the issue went away. I have to explicitly access docs through the file share now, rather than through 'My Documents', but that's a small price to pay for getting CPU (and battery life) back to normal.

Hope this helps.

[Knurmia]

I finally had some time to continue testing with the virtual Windows XP and removed all the mirrored folders. After rebooting and logging on to the virtual machine my Mac Desktop got cleared! Now all the stuff I had on the desktop is gone and because Windows thought it was a network drive, it didn't move the files to the Recycle Bin and they are also not in the Macs Trash. How can something like this happen? Changing settings on a virtual machine destroys files on the host system! I'm starting to think a refund is in order.

Kristofer