El said:
@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>, (e-mail address removed)
says...
The thing is that programs like MS Money 2001 are
programmed to reserve all processing power, regardless
of need for it. There's no way that a glorified
spreadsheet needs 100% of a 3.2ghz processor. What I
want to do is to be able to perhaps mask the true power
of my system from these programs, and just limit them to
30% or something similar.
How would I go about lowering the 'priority' of certain
programs? Thanks very much for the reply.
Changing priority will (can) restore responsiveness. It will not
decrease the total load.
Some programs will automatically raise and restore the priority of the
active window process. This often improves the user "experience" but
will slightly decrease overall performance.
WireKeys from WiredPlane Labs is no longer freeware but IIRC WireKeys
Lite provides that feature among many others --
www.WiredPlane.com.
You can try one of those until someone chimes in with a more
focused/specific suggestion.
The easiest way to temporarily change process priority in Windows is
via Task Manager. I'm hesitant to provide more explicit directions
given your misconceptions because injudicious tinkering will cause your
system to be unstable. Please limit yourself to the following until
you are more knowledgable. The following instructions are for WinXP
but will work for Win95, etc., except the names may be very slightly
different.
* Open Task Manager (right click on Task Bar to open context menu and
then select Task Manager)
* Select Applications tab
* Select application (highlight row)
* Open context menu (right click) and select Go To Process. This will
display the Processes tab with a processes (row) highlighted
* Open context menu (right click highlighted process), select Set
Priority, and select a slighly higher or lower priority.
This procedure will change the balance between the processes, NOT the
overall CPU utilization (slight oversimplification).
The following scenarios illustrate that decreasing the priority of the
spreadsheet process may or may not substantially decrease its CPU
utilization. (Scenarios ignore possibility that an application may be
I/O bound some of the time and will incur paging/swapping overhead.
Calculations are merely illustrative.)
Background - Spreadsheet will use ~90% of CPU for ~1 minute. Image
editor will use ~90% of CPU for ~1 minute. Other processes use 10% on
average (i.e., 100% total CPU utilization for two minutes).
Scenario 1 - Spreadsheet and image editor run in parallel.
Each process will get ~45% of CPU time and take ~2 minutes. Total CPU
utilization is ~100% for ~2 minutes.
Scenario 2 - Spreadsheet and image editor run in parallel with
spreadsheet priority reduced and/or image editor priority increased.
This will shift balance between processes. Image editor will be more
responsive and complete sooner; spreadsheet will be less responsive and
take longer. Total CPU utilization will still be 100% for ~2 minutes.
The image editor may get ~60% for ~90 seconds while the spreadsheet
gets ~30% for ~90 seconds and ~90% for ~30 seconds.
Scenario 3 - Spreadsheet utilizing 90% of CPU for 1 minute.
Reducing the priority of the spreadsheet will make little difference.
Spreadsheet will still utilize close to 90% of CPU. If you do something
else (e.g., open NotePad) your system will feel more responsive. Total
CPU utilization will still be ~100% for ~1 minute.
Note - If you are playing streaming audio while working in Money, then
decreasing the priority of Money may improve streaming performance but
at the expense of the responsiveness of Money.
Note - Many programs use one process to manage user interaction and a
different process to crunch the numbers. The procedure described above
may or may not change the priority of the second task. This depends on
how thinks were designed and programmed.
Note - Some notebooks (and a few desktops) include a utility that will
force the CPU to run more slowly to increase battery life (and also
decrease heat).
