Quasi-OT: How to double your CPU power. for free

Windows was using 50% of my Win7 CPU, idling, plus 1G of RAM. So I ran services.msc, and stopped Windows Update. Shazaam.

I really need to switch to Linux.

Cheers, James Arthur

Reply to
dagmargoodboat
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OSX 10.10.5, 2.26% system CPU overhead, User 6.38%, Idle 94.16%

I have five windows open, twenty some programs (Firefox - 14 windows open, Adobe Dreamweaver, Thunderbird, Dropbox, LibreOffice, Text Wrangler (ten windows), and a bunch of other programs I use), all idling in the background, 12 of 16GB currently in use.

John ;-#)#

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Reply to
John Robertson

Sounds like you've got something else wrong.

Another gone to the dark side. ;-)

I'll probably run Linux as a guest on my new laptop but I've never done such a thing before.

Reply to
krw

It has very little to do with the OS (esp any MODERN OS) and more to do with how the application is written.

Most applications should spend most of their time *blocking* on some awaited event (mouse click, keystroke, timer expiration, etc.). As such, consume ZERO CPU resources (though they will typically consume memory/virtual memory). E.g., I can have fifty "interactive" applications running and "zero" CPU utilization -- they are ALL "awaiting input"... waiting for the OS to decided that this mouse click or keystroke should be routed to them, instead of some other "window".

In effect, the application should be telling the OS, "let me know when any of these things in which I've expressed an interest happen".

A stupid application will *spin* instead of block ("Has a key been pressed? No?? OK, let me check again...")

Really *smart* applications won't even LOAD until needed (e.g., none of my web server, mail relay, FTP server, etc. are actually occupying any place in memory, at this moment; OTOH, when a connection is attempted to any of them, they will be loaded and control passed *to* them. Some time later, when they think they are no longer needed, they will kill themselves, confident that they'll be reloaded when/if the need arises)

If a process is spinning, one has to wonder what it is LOOKING FOR and why it EXPECTS that thing to be present -- even though it apparently isn't!

Reply to
Don Y

It's pretty painless these days if you aren't doing huge Excel things with VBA scripts and stuff like that. You can even get Visual Studio for Linux (though I certainly wouldn't run that outside a sandbox of some sort).

Sometimes it's slightly painful getting Windows apps to run under Wine (these should also be sandboxed), but mostly things just work. I don't recall any app failing to run eventually, but sometimes you have to copy a native DLL or two. The error messages are pretty informative, so you don't have to dig around too much to figure out which one it is.

I'm using two of those nice Supermicro 250 Gflops Opteron towers at the moment, one as a server running Centos 6.5 LTS (long term support) and the other running Qubes 3.2.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

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Dr Philip C D Hobbs 
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Reply to
Phil Hobbs

James said that the machine was idle, and that turning off Windows Malware^H^H^H^H^H^H^H Update fixed it. Sounds unlikely to be a spin loop.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

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Dr Philip C D Hobbs 
Principal Consultant 
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Reply to
Phil Hobbs

My Win7, idling with Firefox, Thunderbird, Agent, Max (our parts manager) and Dropbox open, averages about 2 or 3% CPU activity. I turn off all automatic updates, and set Windows to not check.

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

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Reply to
John Larkin

That is a bug in Windows that Microsoft does not want to fix because instead they want you to switch to Windows 10. With Windows Vista, it is even worse than with 7.

That is indeed a much better idea than paying extorsionists money.

Reply to
Rob

No, it is a Microsoft bug!

Reply to
Rob

Likewise. It is no different here. Mine idles with TB, a couple of browsers, Skype and a compiler at about the same ~2%. Just TB and it flickers between 0 and 1% - I have updates set to download as available but I choose when to apply them. Been caught out by MickeySoft patch Tuesday aggro too many times to ever permit autoupdates again.

A lot of the time mine isn't all that idle though with a couple of CPU cores working on something intensive in the background.

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Regards, 
Martin Brown
Reply to
Martin Brown

Then in your case that CPU is spent at the time you have selected for the get updates, maybe in the middle of the night.

You can force the issue by clicking the "check for updates" button. It is most noticable when the system is *not* uptodate at that time.

For fun, install a new machine with the latest service pack, *then* click the "check for updates". It will buzz several hours at full CPU use.

Reply to
Rob

Obviously Microsoft programmers don't test, and probably don't even use, Windows before they release it. The UI comes with absurd, blatant bugs.

Windows is OK, and is cheap and comes all set up, with Word and stuff, if you buy a Dell or something.

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 
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Reply to
John Larkin

An Xubuntu install can turn a formerly useless $199 Acer netbook with a Core-based Celeron running Win 10 into a very useful computer, capable of doing real work!

Reply to
bitrex

A long time ago I read some statement by then head of the company Bill Gates that their programmers don't work on fixing bugs because that does not make the company money. They only work on new features for the next version. I think he also claimed that most customers never notice bugs so it is not worth paying attention to fixing them.

This particular bug is of course different. It never was a problem in the Windows Update function all the way through XP, Vista and 7 and suddenly it became a problem when Windows 10 was released. (it may even have started with 8.1)

The excuse was that the update catalog got longer because of the new additional version, but that would have been something that they could have worked around. However, that would not make them money so they didn't.

Reply to
Rob

That counts as something wrong. Obviously not everyone sees this behavior.

Reply to
krw

That is because hardly everyone is looking...

Reply to
Rob

Good grief! Several here looked and saw no such thing.

Reply to
krw

Since last Tuesday, I've been getting calls from customers complaining that their machines are running slow. What's happening is that Microsloth is switching form distributing zillions of small individual updates, on multi-megabloat "roll-up" type updates. Each update includes a fairly large number of updates with no control or choice if you want to install or remove any particular update. These monsters take considerably longer to download and install than the previous individual updates, resulting in the slothish performance.

From my point-o-view, all the various popular operating systems are largely the same. They do the same things, have the same problems, offer the same opportunities to screw up, and have similar learning curves. I would say about 90% the same differing only in syntax, politics, price, and philosophy. However, that 10% is where most of the problems are hiding. Now that Microsloth has again limited your ability to control what's happening with your machine (yes, it is YOUR machine, not theirs), Linux is starting to look attractive.

Personally, I'm increasingly switching to ChromeOS, on several Chromebooks and one hacked laptop, for the productivity apps (office, web browsing, email, games, webapps, etc) because of the speed and nearly zero overhead. Updates are automatic, no virus scanning, automatic backup to the cloud, very fast bootup and shut down, and 6 hr battery life. It's not for everyone, but at the price of refurbished Chromebooks, methinks it's worth considering: Hint: Get a 4GB RAM machine with an Intel Celeron or i3 Processor. The Nvidia Tegra CPUs are too slow.

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Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com 
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Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

Den onsdag den 21. december 2016 kl. 00.03.37 UTC+1 skrev Jeff Liebermann:

MS wants to be sure every gets their latest latest spyware..

Reply to
Lasse Langwadt Christensen

You can hunt down the individual updates and do "offline" updates. But, there's a price to be paid (in terms of your time/sanity)

I let the applications drive the OS selection process.

Increasingly, my hardware designs are becoming simpler (in terms of component COUNT; though considerably more complex in terms of physical layout). My document preparation tasks remain unchanged. I can write code in damn near any "text editor"/IDE. And, can use "batch" compilers to build software projects.

So, the OS (*not* all the fluff that typically gets packaged WITH the OS) has a relatively low bar to cross. Knowing HOW things will behave is far more important than having support for the latest "OS technology" -- that the apps won't even care about!

Thinking twice (then twice AGAIN) about upgrading apps -- esp if they force you to a "newer" OS -- is often worth far more than any potential gains in terms of performance (from newer hardware, etc.)

[Of course, NOT having to interface with The Mindless Masses via things like office apps goes a long way to granting independence!]
Reply to
Don Y

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