Why is idle windows VM using so much CPU?
- by Jeff Shattock
I have 2 VMs running as guests on a KVM virtualization platform running on Ubuntu 10.04. One VM is an Ubuntu 10.04 system, the other is a Windows 7 system. When both machines are completely logged out, the Linux machine uses 1% CPU, the Windows one 45-50%, according to top. The graphs in virt-manager seem to back this up. Theres nothing installed on the Win7 image that would be running in the background; its as fresh as can be.
Why is the Windows VM using so much more than the Linux VM, when both are logged out and idling?