Major Seti slowdown, Please help

[titanmiller]

For the past few work units I have experenced an extremly drastic slowdown. I went from about 6.5 hours to 10 hours. I realy cant diagnose the problem either. According to seti spy I am only getting 100mflops and used to get 150+. I bought a wireless router (even though no broadband) and I initaly thought that might be the problem. But noticed after looking through a log that it was still fast after I intalled the router. So the cause is unknown to me as of now.
If you have any information you want to try to diagnose the problem let me know.

 

[Fingers]

do you have any antivirus software running?

check to make sure you have "turn off hard drives" to never?

check to see if you have any programs running that don't need to be.

edited for speeling

 

[ProviaFan]

Do you use a Windows NT-based OS? (That would include Windows NT4, 2000 Professional, or XP.) If so, check in the task manager (either CTRL+ALT+DEL and click on Task Manager, or right click on the taskbar and choose the same option) in the Processes tab (click in the heading for CPU to sort descending the list that shows what percentage of the processor's time is being used by each process) to see if some other unknown background process is stealing time from SETI. Consider running AdAware (I'm too lazy to look up the link for ya, so just check google) to see if you might have gotten a piece of shi - er - I meant to say - spyware (/me hates the stuff with a vengeance). Also make sure your antivirus program has up-to-date definitions.

 

[networkman]

What kind of processor/ram is this running on? Depending on the system, 100mflops might be quite speedy and thus nothing to worry about.

 

[titanmiller]

Thanks, I do not have any antivirus software but did do a web-based scan to see if a virus was the cause. I do have my HDD set to shut off after 30 mins but I dont think that is the cause because it has been that way forever and seti keeps it from going 30mins anyway. I try to run my computer with a minimum ammount of process but have left tasks by the name of winoldap and Rundll32 running but shutting them off seems to cause no problems so I will tell end-it-all to take them out as well. All that runs normally is explorer, setispy, systray, setidriver, and the acctual seti process. I will try to download adaware and see if that is the problem. the last two workunits I did were EXTREMELY similar the identification number was only 70 from the other and both had very simmilar properties, these WUs took 9 and 11 hours and the one I am working on now is going to be about 10. Thanks for the help.

 

[titanmiller]

Originally posted by: networkman
What kind of processor/ram is this running on? Depending on the system, 100mflops might be quite speedy and thus nothing to worry about.

640mb SDRAM and a 1.2ghz Athlon, before I got 150mflps and 300 during the last 20% of the wu.

 

[titanmiller]

Is it possible that my last few WUs have had massive ammounts of static to remove?

 

[Baldy18]

Turning off the hdds will severly hurt your production!:Q Set that to never and then see how much your times will improve, you will be shocked. Even though SETI writes to the disk once per minute for some reason I believe that it does not stop the hdds from shutting down and hurting production.

 

[Baldy18]

Originally posted by: titanmiller
Is it possible that my last few WUs have had massive ammounts of static to remove?

Check the Angle Range of the WUs. On Windows 95/98/ME WUs with an AR of .100 or lower will go much slower and WUs with and AR of 1.200 or higher will go faster than usual.

 

[titanmiller]

Thanks I'll set my HDD to never and look at the AR. Thanks again.
Edit: Done; AR=.529 on both

 

[titanmiller]

The only abnormal thing I can remember doing is stoppind defrag before it was done but I cant imagine that causing any conflicts.

 

[ProviaFan]

Originally posted by: titanmiller
The only abnormal thing I can remember doing is stoppind defrag before it was done but I cant imagine that causing any conflicts.

If you stopped the defragmentation process normally (using the proper stop button, as opposed to just pulling the plug ), then it should not be a problem. Though, I would suggest that you seriously consider Windows 2000 Pro or Windows XP, as those tend to handle DC projects better, and they can manage large amounts of RAM (which you have) much better than Windows 98 does.

 

[Baldy18]

Reading this could help improve the performance of your system.

 

[titanmiller]

I've been thinking about upgrading to XP but I just dont want to have to deal with reinstalling everything. I have 5 gigs of downloaded stuff and really dont want to lose it (especialy sence I have a (slow) dial-up connection). I guess this is just another thing to put on my LONG list of reasons to get myself a new computer. O-yeah if I touch my lamp and get a shock my computer does some funny things (not harmful things.....I hope). Static electricity would be an all or nothing thing as far as distroying a computer, wouldnt it?

 

[titanmiller]

Originally posted by: Baldy18
Reading this could help improve the performance of your system.

Thanks I had a quick look and looks very good, I dont have time to read it now but I sure will as it looks helpful. I have to go now and probably wont be here to reply again tonight. Thanks for the help!!

 

[titanmiller]

I guess I lied, I'm back for a while.
Here is a screenshot of a log of WUs
notice the last two

 

[onebadv6]

I went though the same thing just a short while ago. Saw a major slow down in times and had a hard time finding the cause. what it turned out to be was at some point the computer restarted or was restarted (maybe the wife) and the bios went back to the default bus and multiplier. For me it was 12x100 but I run it at 9.5x133. That change in bus speed is all the difference. you can see the chart here and it shows aprox when this happened and how quickly the times went back down after I made the change back to 133.

So you may want to check the bios

 

[titanmiller]

Originally posted by: onebadv6
I went though the same thing just a short while ago. Saw a major slow down in times and had a hard time finding the cause. what it turned out to be was at some point the computer restarted or was restarted (maybe the wife) and the bios went back to the default bus and multiplier. For me it was 12x100 but I run it at 9.5x133. That change in bus speed is all the difference. you can see the chart here and it shows aprox when this happened and how quickly the times went back down after I made the change back to 133.

So you may want to check the bios

That could very well be (especially concidering my static electricity problems) but I have a Compaq motherboard and the Bios gives no such options. The processor is still shown as 1200mhz (acctually 1205). Anyway to get around this?

Is there a jumper on the MB to reset the Bios?

 

[Ken g6]

Is there a jumper on the MB to reset the Bios?

I've heard that most pre-built system, e.g. Compaq, boards have bioses that disable overclocking. I happen to have one, too, and it doesn't even seem to have RAM cas settings. Any idea where we can get new bioses to flash our mobos?

Edit: if you need a virus scanner, go here and get the free one for DOS. It works even under XP!

 

[Assimilator1]

Originally posted by: Baldy18
Turning off the hdds will severly hurt your production!:Q Set that to never and then see how much your times will improve, you will be shocked. Even though SETI writes to the disk once per minute for some reason I believe that it does not stop the hdds from shutting down and hurting production.

I have my HDDs set to spin down,the HDD with SETI running never spins down because of the disk activity caused by SETI.I have this set to allow my 2nd HDD to go to sleep.No effect on WU times here

titanmiller
If you are using Win 9x/ME try this task manager to see where the cpu time is going to.SETI should get about 97-99% of cpu time with nothing else running.

 

[titanmiller]

Thanks for the help everybody! My times are somwhat back to normal although they are still about 20mins longer. But that is much better than 70% longer. I'll download the task manager too, thanks for the link!

 

[Assimilator1]

Let us know your results