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Hello members. I've been running a Windows XP Pro guest machine on my Apple MacBook Air (current OS 10.9.5) without any issues. But recently I've been forced to update to a more current Windows operating system for business reasons. I chose to setup the new machine with Windows 7 Pro (32 bit). But once I got the Windows 7 Pro operating system installed (and updated my guest extensions) I notice that whenever I run the Windows 7 machine my cooling fan now runs non-stop. This is true even if I have no other programs or applications running. That never happens with the Windows XP machine. I'm concerned because long term this will have a damaging effect on my computer. I've compared the settings for both machines (XP Pro & Windows 7 Pro). The only difference that stands out to me are the Storage settings. Here's what I found:

Windows 7 Pro storage settings are -
Controller: IDE
IDE Primary Master: [CD/DVD] VBoxGuestAdditions.iso (55.56 MB)
Controller: SATA
SATA Port 0: Windows 7 Pro.vdi (Normal, 95.63GB)

Windows XP storage settings are -
Controller: IDE Controller
IDE Primary Master: Windows XP Pro.vdi (Normal 70.00 GB)
IDE Secondary Master: [CD/DVD] Empty

{FYI, in both cases during set up I used dynamic vs fixed storage option}

Is it possible these storage settings are causing the fan to run with one machine and not with the other? If so how do I modify and to what settings? Are these settings even right to begin with? Finally, if the storage settings are not the cause of the fan running non-stop, any ideas what it could be and what the fix is?

I really appreciate your thoughts and input. And even more so when you dummy it down to my level.

If I google correctly, a MacBook Air is a laptop. On laptops the cooling fan very likely is cooling the CPU. The guest does not have access to anything on the host to adjust the fan speed. (At least it isn't supposed to...) So if one guest makes the fan go high-speed and another guest does not, you'd look at CPU usage in the offending guest. Likely there's a process in the guest that is full-blasting the CPU usage, which would heat up the CPU, which would cause the higher fan speed to cool said hot CPU.

The storage setting differences between the XP and 7 guests are normal. You do mention this though:

once I got the Windows 7 Pro operating system installed (and updated my guest extensions) I notice that whenever I run the Windows 7 machine my cooling fan now runs non-stop.

A new install of Windows will be hunting hard for updates and causes lots of CPU usage in the first several hours of being on. This may be what you're facing. Let it go for a while and it will likely clear up in a day max.

FWIW, you should disable automatic updates in Windows 7. It slows the guest down quite a bit. Also, I have a Windows 7 guest on my iMac and it only uses 9% of the CPU at idle. It certainly never causes the fan to kick in. Then again, I've never had a Mac that the fans ran above idle.