can having the .Net client installed cause app slow downs?

[Bob]

I made a major .Net app deployment last month and got some troubling user
feedback - some users say that since they started running the app, all their
other applications a running noticeably slower. At first I thought this might
have been a memory issue, but these machines have more than enough RAM (512 MB),
and my app is supposedly using only 12MB of that, according the Task Manager.
Aside from an obvious mistake on my part like having something in my app that
hogs CPU cycles even when the user isn't doing anything with it (I'm completely
sure this is not the case), would there be another reason for this behavior? Has
anyone else experienced reports such as these? Every once in a while my own
machine's (W2K) hard drive will suddenly start working even with no apps
running, and the whole thing locks up so that even CTRL-ALT-DEL doesn't get any
results until it's done whatever it's doing. Could this be related? Could having
the .Net client installed trigger this behavior?

TIA,
Bob

 

[Alireza Kheyrollahi]

This freezing thing may happen when garbage collector starts working. Do you
do anything to forcefully activate garbage collection in code?

 

[Bob]

Nope. But that sounds right - it probably is the garbage collector engaging at
random and inappropriate times. Perhaps if I do force it to engage regularly, it
won't save up all its work in one go and annoy users so much. I'd rather have my
app run a little slower than people calling me complaining about machine
lockups.

Bob