CPU usage in Win98 and WinME

[NiPNi]

I have discovered the following when running System Monitor in Win98 and ME:

The CPU usage is between 50-70% when my computer does nothing at all. Whenever I move the mouse, the usage drops to 0-5% and stays there until I stop using the mouse. Then it goes up to at least the level it was at before I used the mouse, sometimes it goes even higher! This doesn't seem to slow down my computer at all, but it would be interesting to find out why it is happening. I have talked to quite a few friends reporting the excact same thing. Is it a bug in Windows or an incompatibility with my hardware (TBird 800, KT7-RAID, 256MB PC100, Adaptec AHA-2940AU, 3Com 905B)? I don't know... Any ideas?

 

[jaywallen]

Hi, zzzz.

I've noticed some difference between NT4 and W2K and their apparent CPU utilization behaviors. In NT4, I've seen an active process consume 100% of CPU utilization without affecting the system's ability to start new processes. What I mean by that is that 100% utilization shows in Task Manager, but when I start another process it gets the CPU cycles it requests without much if any delay. When I try to create this scenario under W2K it seems that I'm more likely to get somewhere around 30-70% CPU utilization with an active process like defragging, but again any new process that gets started gets the cycles it needs to behave more or less normally. I often also see the System Idle Process showing as greater than 90% at the same time. I understand that, except when a process is doing something very CPU-intensive like sorting a database or rendering a large image, the System Idle Process should stay at 80% or above. If it goes below this level and remains there for long, you should look at all of the running processes in Task Manager to see which one(s) are hogging the CPU.

I don't think your system should show 33% CPU utilization at "idle" unles you have some type of process running or a service which is being utilized fairly heavily. What's running at startup? There are lots of services (and apps) that perform port or device "polling" or file "indexing" functions that will use high levels of resources. Most of these are relatively well-behaved and will relinquish system resources (especially processor cycles) to another process when you start it. What happens when you're in this state and you start an application? Is there a noticeable delay or hang in application startup? If you watch this 33% CPU utilization for a period of time, what happens to it? Does it decrease, remain the same, increase? How about memory utilization?

Regards,
Jim

 

[NiPNi]

>>What's running at startup?

Nothing at all, it's a brand new, fresh Win98 installation, I haven't installed any programs yet. Of course except the ones that come with the Windows installation. I know Windows starts a few processes anyway, but 70%?

>>What happens when you're in this state and you start an application? Is there a noticeable delay or hang in application startup?

No, it's like all resources are available, everythibg works fine, it's just the SysMon reporting heavy CPU utilization. Whenever I need CPU (like moving the mouse), the utilization drops to 0-5%. That's what gets me so confused.

>>How about memory utilization?

Unfortunately, the computer I'm writing this on is far away from the computer in question (on the one in question I don't have access to the Internet), so I can't give you excact figures until tomorrow, but I don't think it uses more memory than it's supposed to with a fresh Win98 install. I can't imagine it's using more than 40-50MB (which is an awful lot for not doing anything at all, but we are talking about Windows here..).

 

[jaywallen]

DOH! My bad! I had W2K / NT4 on the brain. Despite the title of the thread!

First of all, I want to ask if you're checking the CPU utilization while the hard drive is still accessing at the end of the boot process.

Can you hit Ctrl-Alt-Del to bring up the Close Program / Task Manager (Whatever it's called in Win98SE) list? What's running?

Also, I'm not sure the Win9X SysMon is that accurate -- or useful, for that matter. If you right-click (right after booting up) on the My Computer icon, select "Properties", and click on the Performance (?) tab (Look around if you have to.), what does that dialog say about the % of resources that are free. (This is NOT related really to CPU OR MEMORY utilization but, rather, to free resources in the allotted 64K system stack.) New systems with OEM Win98SE images on them often show this to be 40-50%. A decent, fast system will operate just fine at this level and even with lower resources, though you can obviously eliminate some of the dross and make things better. The main reason for instability and the neeed for rebooting Win9X appears to be the fact that processes, once finished, do not (cannot?) properly reallocate resources to the stack. Once you're out of resources, you're out of up time.

It SOUNDS as though your system is behaving itself as well as you might expect from an OEM disk image running Win9X. A system that responds immediately to user input and does what is asked is likely to be "healthy". But if you give us the information requested, someone may be able to either assure you that all is well or suggest strategies for improving your system's performance.

Regards,
jaywallen

 

[NiPNi]

Okay, I've been doing some checking, but let's answer you first:

>>First of all, I want to ask if you're checking the CPU utilization while the hard drive is still accessing at the end of the boot process.

No, the hard drive has stopped, and everything is quiet. When my hard drives are active, SysMon reports 100%! Anyway, even when that happens, the systems responds and acts just as fast as when nothing at all is being done.

>>If you right-click (right after booting up) on the My Computer icon, select "Properties", and click on the Performance (?) tab (Look around if you have to.), what does that dialog say about the % of resources that are free.

It says that I have 85-90% of the resources left, depending on when I check.

But: as I said, I've been doing some checking. I went to http://go.to/kt7faq(excellent FAQ for KT7-(RAID) owners!), and there I found this:

"System Monitor reports 25% CPU activity with no processes running!
There appears to be a bug in the Windows 98 and Windows 98SE System Monitor application which incorrectly reports CPU activity. If you use a more sophisticated tool such as the excellent TaskInfo2000 (shareware but not crippled) you will see that whilst System Monitor reports 30% CPU activity, TaskInfo2000 reports 99.1% idle!!"

In my case, the SysMon reports a little more than 25%, but I guess it might be the same bug at work.

By the way, my computer isn't OEM. I built it myself, and installed Windows 98 the old fashioned way, which means there really is nothing but Windows and what comes with it running. Unfortunately, CTRL-ALT-DEL doesn't bring up the same menu in 98 and ME as in NT and 2k, all you get is a list of the programs running, and that's not the same as all processes. And you don't get to see the amount of CPU time each program is using. That's actually one of the features I like the most in NT/2k.

Anyway, I guess we'll have to blame the bug. I'll try testing with the TaskInfo program mentioned in the KT7 FAQ, and if I get it done before this thread is gone, I'll post the results.

 

[jaywallen]

That's very interesting. I suspected that SysMon was screwy, but, as you can probably tell, I ain't that familiar with Win9X.

I'm glad you posted that response. It's all good to know. And it certainly does sound like your system is a happy camper. 85-90% resources free under a DOS-based Windows is certainly indicative of a non-nonsense approach to startup time!

In the meantime, sounds like SysMon is about as useful as the fragmentation analysis under that OS. (I had someone tell me his Win98 system was telling him that he had zero percent fragmentation and that defragging was not necessary. You should have seen the file system and its distribution on the platters!)

Will look forward to reading what you learn from the new utility.

Regards,
jaywallen

 

[NiPNi]

Okay, I have tried TaskInfo2000 now (excellent program, it's like NT/2k's task manager, only a lot better!). When SysMon reported 50% CPU utilization, TaskInfo reported 90-99% idle. When I copied from one hard drive to another, SysMon reported 100% utilization all the time, while TaskInfo never went below 85% idle.

Conclusion: SysMon is worthless. The information SysMon provides is useful, but as long as I can't trust the results it gives, I see no point in using it. From now on, I'll stick to TaskInfo 2000 instead.

 

[jaywallen]

Hello, NiPNi.

Thank you for posting the information about TaskInfo 2000. Always nice to find a new toy! I'm going to give it a look just to see what it's all about.

Regards,
Jim