In news:jnk5op$rvq$(E-Mail Removed),
glee wrote:
> "BillW50" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
> news:jnk071$p3t$(E-Mail Removed)...
>> In news:jnjq9d$jm9$(E-Mail Removed),
>> glee wrote:
>>> "J. P. Gilliver (John)" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
>>> news:(E-Mail Removed)...
>>>> snip
>>>> (Can't they be "told" it's a single-core processor they're running
>>>> on?) [Avira seems OK here.]
>>>> snip
>>>
>>> Avira is the only AV that I can get to run on really old XP systems
>>> with 512MB RAM or less and an older processor, without it bogging
>>> down the entire system.
>>>
>>> How do you mean, "tell" the program it's on a single core?
>>
>> I monitor all of my processes all of the time for CPU usage. And
>> Avast 7 will run on anything from Windows 2000 and up. And AnVir Task
>> Manager says in the last hour, Avast hit 17% for a second and the
>> rest of the hour it was under 1%. As far as the average user is
>> concern, they couldn't even tell it was actually running.
>
> Yes, but is that with 256 to 512 MB RAM as in my example? It's not
> *only* CPU usage involved. As in the case of many apps, it's a combo
> of both RAM amount and CPU. Avira seems to be the best one for very
> low RAM systems, from my experience, anyway.... on a number of
> clients' machines.
>
> I know with Avast 4.x on older single core processors I've tried it,
> no matter the RAM amount, definition updating would nearly max out
> the CPU at the end of the updating. I can't say if there is an
> improvement in that area with Avast 6 and 7, because I don't use it
> on any machines. From what you've posted in your other replies, it's
> been improved.

Well you got me there. I do have two Toshiba 2595XDVD laptops with only
192MB of RAM installed. But I don't use them for anything really. And I
don't update the AV or anything since I don't even use them connected to
anything anyway. But they should have Avast 4.8 still on them and I
never uninstalled.

Everything else of mine has 1GB or better of RAM. And I just checked
with AnVir Task Manager and Avast only taken a 1.4MB hit on the drive
for 3 seconds in the past hour. It did hit the drive again a few times
10 minutes later, but only about 200MB this time. It didn't do an
automatic update in this time so I'll keep an eye on it and see what
happens when it does.

--
Bill
Gateway M465e ('06 era) - OE-QuoteFix v1.19.2
Centrino Core Duo T2400 1.83GHz - 2GB - Windows XP SP3

In news:jnk7ld$7qm$(E-Mail Removed),
Paul wrote:
> J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:
>> In message <jnjq9d$jm9$(E-Mail Removed)>, glee
>> <(E-Mail Removed)> writes:
>>> "J. P. Gilliver (John)" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
>>> news:(E-Mail Removed)...
>>>> snip
>>>> (Can't they be "told" it's a single-core processor they're running
>>>> on?) [Avira seems OK here.]
>>>> snip
>>>
>>> Avira is the only AV that I can get to run on really old XP systems
>>> with 512MB RAM or less and an older processor, without it bogging
>>> down the entire system.
>>
>> (Good to know - I think - that I'm using a light one.)
>>>
>>> How do you mean, "tell" the program it's on a single core?
>>>
>> I was referring to the suggestion someone made that most AV 'wares
>> these days assume they're on a multicore system, and cause heavy
>> load if run on a single-core system. I was wondering if they might
>> have a setting to prevent them trying to multiprocess. (Probably
>> not, as presumably it should be possible to do it - the detection of
>> whether multicore or not - automatically, so if they don't, they're
>> not going to bother.)
>
> In Windows, you can use Task Manager and the "Affinity" setting,
> to force an executable to stay on a particular core. On a multicore
> system, that would effectively reduce the loading on the system.
> On a single core system, Affinity is not going to help you as
> you only have one core to begin with.
>
> Task Manager also has "priority" settings, and you can experiment
> with cranking down the priority setting. If two processes want to
> run 100% on the same core, they split 50:50. If you drop the priority
> of one process by one notch, then one process might get 75% while
> the other gets 25%. So priority doesn't prevent one from running
> entirely, it just changes the balance between the two. If you use
> too extreme a setting, sometimes a potential side effect is a
> deadlock in the system. So don't get carried away.
>
> But an AV program, isn't going to tolerate being manipulated like
> that. AV programs are pretty sensitive, and they have to be able
> to defend themselves against any potential malware attack. Undoing
> Task Manager changes, would be childs play for them. They're
> armor plated.

Oh man! Manually adjusting the priority almost never works well. What
works better is software designed to automatically adjust the priorities
on the fly. As they automatically lower them if they are using too much
and bring them back up when they are using too little. Why Windows
doesn't have something like this built in, who knows.

--
Bill
Gateway M465e ('06 era) - OE-QuoteFix v1.19.2
Centrino Core Duo T2400 1.83GHz - 2GB - Windows XP SP3

In news:jnk9bc$iaf$(E-Mail Removed),
BillW50 wrote:
> In news:jnk7ld$7qm$(E-Mail Removed),
> Paul wrote:
>> J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:
>>> In message <jnjq9d$jm9$(E-Mail Removed)>, glee
>>> <(E-Mail Removed)> writes:
>>>> "J. P. Gilliver (John)" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in
>>>> message news:(E-Mail Removed)...
>>>>> snip
>>>>> (Can't they be "told" it's a single-core processor they're running
>>>>> on?) [Avira seems OK here.]
>>>>> snip
>>>>
>>>> Avira is the only AV that I can get to run on really old XP systems
>>>> with 512MB RAM or less and an older processor, without it bogging
>>>> down the entire system.
>>>
>>> (Good to know - I think - that I'm using a light one.)
>>>>
>>>> How do you mean, "tell" the program it's on a single core?
>>>>
>>> I was referring to the suggestion someone made that most AV 'wares
>>> these days assume they're on a multicore system, and cause heavy
>>> load if run on a single-core system. I was wondering if they might
>>> have a setting to prevent them trying to multiprocess. (Probably
>>> not, as presumably it should be possible to do it - the detection of
>>> whether multicore or not - automatically, so if they don't, they're
>>> not going to bother.)
>>
>> In Windows, you can use Task Manager and the "Affinity" setting,
>> to force an executable to stay on a particular core. On a multicore
>> system, that would effectively reduce the loading on the system.
>> On a single core system, Affinity is not going to help you as
>> you only have one core to begin with.
>>
>> Task Manager also has "priority" settings, and you can experiment
>> with cranking down the priority setting. If two processes want to
>> run 100% on the same core, they split 50:50. If you drop the priority
>> of one process by one notch, then one process might get 75% while
>> the other gets 25%. So priority doesn't prevent one from running
>> entirely, it just changes the balance between the two. If you use
>> too extreme a setting, sometimes a potential side effect is a
>> deadlock in the system. So don't get carried away.
>>
>> But an AV program, isn't going to tolerate being manipulated like
>> that. AV programs are pretty sensitive, and they have to be able
>> to defend themselves against any potential malware attack. Undoing
>> Task Manager changes, would be childs play for them. They're
>> armor plated.
>
> Oh man! Manually adjusting the priority almost never works well. What
> works better is software designed to automatically adjust the
> priorities on the fly. As they automatically lower them if they are
> using too much and bring them back up when they are using too little.
> Why Windows doesn't have something like this built in, who knows.

What is funny is back in the Windows 3.x days, many claimed that
cooperative tasking was crap and preemptive tasking was great. And
Windows 3.1 didn't preemptive task anything but non-Windows applications
like DOS. I personally loved cooperative tasking and I thought it worked
really well. Although the tasking was dependent on all of the
applications to play nicely together. And the vast majority of them did.
The few ones that didn't well were not good programs IMHO and I wouldn't
bother using.

So now Windows 95 comes along and does preemptive tasking for 32 bit
Windows applications only. Many thought this was so great, I did not.
Now the applications had no say about how much CPU power they needed,
but now an OS who had no clue what the application was doing anyway did
say so when to start and stop (that is like having an idiot as a boss).
Now it is like you are working on something and you only needed a few
msec and you were done and the OS comes along and says you're done
before you finish. I never saw this as a good thing, despite my peers
back then.

Well, well, well... 17 years later with preemptive tasking and it just
isn't working so well. And all of those big promises how well life was
going to be and now it turns out that preemptive tasking just isn't
working well at all. Who would have guessed besides me who said it
wasn't going to work well? And where are those bozos who thought
preemptive tasking was our savior anyway?

Yes back in the cooperative tasking days, one bad apple that didn't play
well with others ruined it for everybody else. And now we have had 17
years of preemptive tasking and nothing changed. Still one bad apple
still ruins it for everybody. But it is worse now. It is like you are
about to take a bite of your favorite meal and get right to your mouth
and the OS says stop, it is somebody else's turn and you have to wait.
:-(

--
Bill
Gateway M465e ('06 era) - OE-QuoteFix v1.19.2
Centrino Core Duo T2400 1.83GHz - 2GB - Windows XP SP3

"J. P. Gilliver (John)" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed)...
> snip
> I was saying that if software is written to multiprocess, i. e. assume
> that it has multiple cores to run on, then running it on a single core
> will make it run inefficiently - and I was saying that ideally the
> software ought to run in a different _way_ - one thing at a time - if
> it is told (or, ideally, detects) that it is running on a single-core
> system.
> snip

I'm pretty sure no software writers and developers give a rat's nose if
you have an older single core system or less than 1GB RAM. If you do,
as far as they're concerned, you need to upgrade your hardware. They
simply don't write for older hardware, just like, for the most part,
they don't support older operating systems with their newer versions.
--
Glen Ventura
MS MVP Oct. 2002 - Sept. 2009
CompTIA A+

In news:jnkigv$9r7$(E-Mail Removed),
glee wrote:
> "J. P. Gilliver (John)" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
> news:(E-Mail Removed)...
>> snip
>> I was saying that if software is written to multiprocess, i. e.
>> assume that it has multiple cores to run on, then running it on a
>> single core will make it run inefficiently - and I was saying that
>> ideally the software ought to run in a different _way_ - one thing
>> at a time - if it is told (or, ideally, detects) that it is running
>> on a single-core system.
>> snip
>
> I'm pretty sure no software writers and developers give a rat's nose
> if you have an older single core system or less than 1GB RAM. If you
> do, as far as they're concerned, you need to upgrade your hardware.
> They simply don't write for older hardware, just like, for the most
> part, they don't support older operating systems with their newer
> versions.

True, but it bites them in the ass. As it is a two way street. I have
seen this over and over again. When programmers don't care about the
user's wishes, their income end up dropping. Only experienced
programmers realize this. The newer programmers don't get it and have to
learn the hard way. But they will blame it on something else of course
and might never learn.

Microsoft had played this game and balanced it very well all the way up
to XP. Then things changed. I personally think all of the older
programmers retired and there are only new programmers left who doesn't
know any better. So this is going to be a real test for Microsoft to see
how fast those newbies can learn this hard lesson.

It isn't all about Microsoft of course, that was just an example. There
are some software developers out there that still get it. Although I am
not sure if the future there will be any left.

--
Bill
Gateway M465e ('06 era) - OE-QuoteFix v1.19.2
Centrino Core Duo T2400 1.83GHz - 2GB - Windows XP SP3

Per BillW50:
>When programmers don't care about the
>user's wishes, their income end up dropping.

I had a really good (second-longest employed contractor in the
place) run at a major mutual fund based, I think, completely on
my attention to user's wishes. I'm not that great a developer,
but my motto the expression that a former co-worker coined: "I
don't sell programming. I sell happiness."
--
Pete Cresswell

In news:(E-Mail Removed),
(PeteCresswell) wrote:
> Per BillW50:
>> When programmers don't care about the
>> user's wishes, their income end up dropping.
>
> I had a really good (second-longest employed contractor in the
> place) run at a major mutual fund based, I think, completely on
> my attention to user's wishes. I'm not that great a developer,
> but my motto the expression that a former co-worker coined: "I
> don't sell programming. I sell happiness."

Aww... I love it! ;-)

--
Bill
Gateway M465e ('06 era) - OE-QuoteFix v1.19.2
Centrino Core Duo T2400 1.83GHz - 2GB - Windows XP SP3

BillW50 wrote:

>
> What is funny is back in the Windows 3.x days, many claimed that
> cooperative tasking was crap and preemptive tasking was great. And
> Windows 3.1 didn't preemptive task anything but non-Windows applications
> like DOS. I personally loved cooperative tasking and I thought it worked
> really well. Although the tasking was dependent on all of the
> applications to play nicely together. And the vast majority of them did.
> The few ones that didn't well were not good programs IMHO and I wouldn't
> bother using.
>
> So now Windows 95 comes along and does preemptive tasking for 32 bit
> Windows applications only. Many thought this was so great, I did not.
> Now the applications had no say about how much CPU power they needed,
> but now an OS who had no clue what the application was doing anyway did
> say so when to start and stop (that is like having an idiot as a boss).
> Now it is like you are working on something and you only needed a few
> msec and you were done and the OS comes along and says you're done
> before you finish. I never saw this as a good thing, despite my peers
> back then.
>
> Well, well, well... 17 years later with preemptive tasking and it just
> isn't working so well. And all of those big promises how well life was
> going to be and now it turns out that preemptive tasking just isn't
> working well at all. Who would have guessed besides me who said it
> wasn't going to work well? And where are those bozos who thought
> preemptive tasking was our savior anyway?
>
> Yes back in the cooperative tasking days, one bad apple that didn't play
> well with others ruined it for everybody else. And now we have had 17
> years of preemptive tasking and nothing changed. Still one bad apple
> still ruins it for everybody. But it is worse now. It is like you are
> about to take a bite of your favorite meal and get right to your mouth
> and the OS says stop, it is somebody else's turn and you have to wait.
> :-(
>

Preemptive multitasking, is to *guarantee* correct operation, and
keep the kernel standing on its feet. They didn't do it for fun.

It was done, to allow building systems with "uptimes" longer than 24 hours.

If you compare MacOS 9 (cooperative) versus MacOSX (preemptive), the
difference is night and day. Twice a day, with the cooperative one,
I'd be down in Macsbug, trying to keep my computer running. The
preemptive OS is like a breath of fresh air by comparison. I never
have to rescue it.

Paul

On Sat, 28 Apr 2012 13:50:45 -0500, BillW50 wrote:

> In news:jnh8t5$22i$(E-Mail Removed), Stefan Patric typed:
>> On Sat, 28 Apr 2012 08:12:41 -0500, BillW50 wrote:
>>
>>>> [Big snip]
>>>
>>> I disagree that 900MHz isn't enough for any arbitrary video playback.
>>> As
>>>
>>> [snip]
>>>
>>> My Asus EeePC 701/2 netbooks are underclocked to 633MHz. And they too
>>> can keep up with arbitrary video playback without missing a beat under
>>> Windows XP, even on an external monitor running 1440x900. Oddly
>>> enough, Linux on the same machine can't even come close.
>>
>> Which Linux distro? The one originally installed? Xandros, I think it
>> was. Awful.
>>
>> I've got a EeePC 900 (900mHz Celeron, 1GB RAM, 4GB+16GB SSDs) on which
>> I installed Eeebuntu 3.x (an optimize version of Ubuntu for the EeePC)
>> wiping out the original Xandros, and it now plays any video, etc.
>> without problems. What a difference overall compared to Xandros.
>>
>> Stef
>
> Xandros, Ubuntu 8.10 netbook edition, Ubuntu 9.10 netbook edition, and
> Puppy Linux. And I really liked Xandros, especially in easy mode which
> boots in 20 seconds. Although the wireless to connect had taken an extra
> minute. You could only use Firefox 2.0 tops with Xandros without
> updating the kernel, and that makes Xandros unusable to me as is. As
> Firefox 2.0 displays webpages worse than IE6 does.

Xandros was just too old, too, on my 900. And there were no newer
versions. That's one of the reasons why I replaced it with Eeebuntu
3.0. Unfortunately, Eeebuntu was based on Ubuntu 9.04, which went End of
Life last year, and along with that the repositories were removed. And
as Eeebuntu used them, not having its own . . . Well, that makes it all
the harder to keep it usable. (If only for security reasons, I should
upgrade Chrome and Firefox and Flash as they are all at least two years
old.)

I suppose in the future I'll be forced to install another OS on the old
EeePC. (Or retire it to my junk closet.) Don't know what it will be.
Eeebuntu was the only version of Linux I found--at the time--that was
specifically configured from the ground up for the EeePC, so everything
worked out-of-the-box. And it did. No glitches at all. No fixes
required. No tweaks needed. I was delightfully surprised.

Stef

Thanks everyone.

As I mentioned, surfing the internet is slow right from the beginning
of reformat and install, and it just gets worse.

When I said "Ctrl+Alt+Del" doesn't work I was thinking in terms of
turning my PC off *after* it freezes up. (But obviously in XP that is
not what it is supposed to do). Nevertheless, it does usually brings
up the Task Manager, but that may freeze also, necessitating an
unplug.

In the "Task Manager" Firefox appears to use the most memory at over
235k. (Perhaps because I have a lot of tabs open at the moment). I
have 31 items under "Processes" and when I refresh a window it will
shoot up to 100% under the "Performance" tab.

BTW. The system has Windows XP SP2.(I no longer bother with Windows
updates). I even uninstalled Google Chrome because of scripts which
kept trying to run even though I was only using Firefox.

As for hard drives, I've used different ones after each install, and
always have two in the system. A 20G and a 40G. (Not including the
500G USB drive). I'm only using about 1/3 of the space on my 40Gig "C"
drive. http://i290.photobucket.com/albums/l...equoiaView.jpg

I'll ditch AVG and go with either Avast! again or Avira.

A pointer to how to turn off processes would also be appreciated. I
wish there was a way to avoid all scripts which are a main culprit in
freezing up my system. I only get individual options to stop the
script from running until the next one pops up.

Obviously this system cannot handle the internet efficiently anymore.
http://i290.photobucket.com/albums/l...arcAdvisor.jpg

I'm going to have to ditch this Dell XPS-Z Pentium III and build up
the hardware I already have, which include either a Dell 8400, HP
7955, or an ASUS A7V8X motherboard I can put in a case I have. All
have have a minimum of 2.8Ghz processors. I'll just have to make sure
the memory is maxed out or at least over 1G on whatever I system use,
and of course use a graphics card.

A dozen years ago internet speed on my 486 using dial-up beat the crap
out of the 1Ghz+ DSL systems I've used over the last decade. (Perhaps
I should dig out and stick to using Windows98 on one of these older
systems).

At the moment and as per "Speakeasy" my DSL speed is 1.57Mbps(Upload)
& .58Mbps(Download). According to Verizon I should get 3Mbps max, but
they conveniently don't say what the minimum is.

Thanks a lot.

Darren Harris
Staten Island, New York.