Program much slower in XP

[JC]

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.newusers (More info?)

At work we have a database program that I help manage. We were using 98 to
do this, and are in the process of switching over to XP.

Since we are moving from 400Mhz PCs running 98, to 2.4Ghz PCs running XP,
there is a nice speed and reliability boost as you would expect. The
exception to this is when I run the housekeeping utils on our database.

Initially the job is getting done with the increased speed you might expect,
but after a few minutes it slows down to a crawl. CPU usage, after being
pegged at 100% in the begining, it drops to less than 10%. The aggragate
effect is that the task takes much longer on the new PCs than it takes on the
old ones.

I have checked with our tech support, and noone I have asked has been able
to tell me why. Since they do not know why, they cannot suggest a solution.

It seems to me that XP is lowering the CPU priority of the task, after a
time, or religating it to the background. I have tried changing the
performance settings to adjust for best performance of Background services,
but this had no effect.

 

[george]

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.newusers (More info?)

"jc" <jc@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:B3A8C97B-DED0-41CC-9766-76648904B20C@microsoft.com...
> At work we have a database program that I help manage. We were using 98
> to
> do this, and are in the process of switching over to XP.
>
> Since we are moving from 400Mhz PCs running 98, to 2.4Ghz PCs running XP,
> there is a nice speed and reliability boost as you would expect. The
> exception to this is when I run the housekeeping utils on our database.
>
> Initially the job is getting done with the increased speed you might
> expect,
> but after a few minutes it slows down to a crawl. CPU usage, after being
> pegged at 100% in the begining, it drops to less than 10%. The aggragate
> effect is that the task takes much longer on the new PCs than it takes on
> the
> old ones.
>
> I have checked with our tech support, and noone I have asked has been able
> to tell me why. Since they do not know why, they cannot suggest a
> solution.
>
> It seems to me that XP is lowering the CPU priority of the task, after a
> time, or religating it to the background. I have tried changing the
> performance settings to adjust for best performance of Background
> services,
> but this had no effect.

Not that I proport to have a solution for this, but I seem to recall from
early days that the Windows process scheduler increases the scheduling
priority of a process if it is waiting for user-input and decreases the
priority if it is not (in favor obviously of those that are!).
I could imagine that if this happens repeatedly (ie. decreasing the
processing priority) you would end up with what you ar experiencing, given
that such houskeeping tasks usually do their work without any
user-interfacing needed.
I cannot say for sure that this paradigm has changed dramatically.
It has changed somewhat in that there are those 'Above...' and 'Below...'
choices possible these days.
Also, are you running a HT CPU type? Also worth checking into that direction
if you are.
Maybe you're onto something.

george

 

[JC]

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.newusers (More info?)

I'm not quite sure what you mean by "are you running a HT CPU type" the pc is
a Celeron. I won't be able to test changing the priority for a few days.

"george" wrote:

>
> "jc" <jc@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
> news:B3A8C97B-DED0-41CC-9766-76648904B20C@microsoft.com...
> > At work we have a database program that I help manage. We were using 98
> > to
> > do this, and are in the process of switching over to XP.
> >
> > Since we are moving from 400Mhz PCs running 98, to 2.4Ghz PCs running XP,
> > there is a nice speed and reliability boost as you would expect. The
> > exception to this is when I run the housekeeping utils on our database.
> >
> > Initially the job is getting done with the increased speed you might
> > expect,
> > but after a few minutes it slows down to a crawl. CPU usage, after being
> > pegged at 100% in the begining, it drops to less than 10%. The aggragate
> > effect is that the task takes much longer on the new PCs than it takes on
> > the
> > old ones.
> >
> > I have checked with our tech support, and noone I have asked has been able
> > to tell me why. Since they do not know why, they cannot suggest a
> > solution.
> >
> > It seems to me that XP is lowering the CPU priority of the task, after a
> > time, or religating it to the background. I have tried changing the
> > performance settings to adjust for best performance of Background
> > services,
> > but this had no effect.
>
> Not that I proport to have a solution for this, but I seem to recall from
> early days that the Windows process scheduler increases the scheduling
> priority of a process if it is waiting for user-input and decreases the
> priority if it is not (in favor obviously of those that are!).
> I could imagine that if this happens repeatedly (ie. decreasing the
> processing priority) you would end up with what you ar experiencing, given
> that such houskeeping tasks usually do their work without any
> user-interfacing needed.
> I cannot say for sure that this paradigm has changed dramatically.
> It has changed somewhat in that there are those 'Above...' and 'Below...'
> choices possible these days.
> Also, are you running a HT CPU type? Also worth checking into that direction
> if you are.
> Maybe you're onto something.
>
> george
>
>
>

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.newusers (More info?)

jc wrote:
> I'm not quite sure what you mean by "are you running a HT CPU type"
> the pc is a Celeron. I won't be able to test changing the priority
> for a few days.

Celeron?

Although I don't think (in your case with a 2.4GHz celeron vs. 400MHz) they
should be slower than any 400MHz PC, I do know that at anything requiring
calculations, the lack of cache on a celeron processor slows it down at a
very noticable rate. For example, I have processed video on a 1.8GHz P4
almost twice as fast as a 2.0GHz Celeron.

--
<- Shenan ->
--
The information is provided "as is", it is suggested you research for
yourself before you take any advice - you are the one ultimately
responsible for your actions/problems/solutions. Know what you are
getting into before you jump in with both feet.

 

[george]

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.newusers (More info?)

HT stands for Hyper Threading.
This type of CPU basically incorporates two CPU's (visible in Task Manager
Performance; the graph is split in two).
You can read up on this technology in the download document at
http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system/CEC/HT-Windows.mspx

hth

george



"jc" <jc@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:F5914E4D-9CAA-4A12-BA38-9637EB73B3F4@microsoft.com...
> I'm not quite sure what you mean by "are you running a HT CPU type" the pc
> is
> a Celeron. I won't be able to test changing the priority for a few days.
>
> "george" wrote:
>
>>
>> "jc" <jc@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
>> news:B3A8C97B-DED0-41CC-9766-76648904B20C@microsoft.com...
>> > At work we have a database program that I help manage. We were using
>> > 98
>> > to
>> > do this, and are in the process of switching over to XP.
>> >
>> > Since we are moving from 400Mhz PCs running 98, to 2.4Ghz PCs running
>> > XP,
>> > there is a nice speed and reliability boost as you would expect. The
>> > exception to this is when I run the housekeeping utils on our database.
>> >
>> > Initially the job is getting done with the increased speed you might
>> > expect,
>> > but after a few minutes it slows down to a crawl. CPU usage, after
>> > being
>> > pegged at 100% in the begining, it drops to less than 10%. The
>> > aggragate
>> > effect is that the task takes much longer on the new PCs than it takes
>> > on
>> > the
>> > old ones.
>> >
>> > I have checked with our tech support, and noone I have asked has been
>> > able
>> > to tell me why. Since they do not know why, they cannot suggest a
>> > solution.
>> >
>> > It seems to me that XP is lowering the CPU priority of the task, after
>> > a
>> > time, or religating it to the background. I have tried changing the
>> > performance settings to adjust for best performance of Background
>> > services,
>> > but this had no effect.
>>
>> Not that I proport to have a solution for this, but I seem to recall from
>> early days that the Windows process scheduler increases the scheduling
>> priority of a process if it is waiting for user-input and decreases the
>> priority if it is not (in favor obviously of those that are!).
>> I could imagine that if this happens repeatedly (ie. decreasing the
>> processing priority) you would end up with what you ar experiencing,
>> given
>> that such houskeeping tasks usually do their work without any
>> user-interfacing needed.
>> I cannot say for sure that this paradigm has changed dramatically.
>> It has changed somewhat in that there are those 'Above...' and 'Below...'
>> choices possible these days.
>> Also, are you running a HT CPU type? Also worth checking into that
>> direction
>> if you are.
>> Maybe you're onto something.
>>
>> george
>>
>>
>>