Subject: Re: Cygwin slow downs in WinME
From: "Paul Garceau" <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]
Date: Fri, 8 Jun 2001 16:43:41 -0700

On 8 Jun 2001, at 11:12, the Illustrious Travis Howell wrote:

> > Hi folks,
> >
> > I felt this needed to be addressed in the hopes that others reading
> > this might have a better sense of MS Millenium and a few of its' known
> > faults.
> >
> > On 7 Jun 2001, at 19:13, the Illustrious Travis Howell wrote:
> >
> > > Has there been any progress on the Windows ME slow downs problem
> > > often caused when compiling programs through Cygwin ?
> >
> > > Cygwin often slows the
> > > whole system down, especially sound (It stutters) and a few times
> > > has slowed it down so much that the clock loses small amounts of
> > > time! I have read a few similar messages about this problem on
> > > mailing list but no one has offered any work around or solution
> > > other than switching to Windows NT/2000.
> >
> > If you are locked in to Me, there is little anyone can do since most
> > technical folks (such as those that frequent this list) know that Me
> > is a heavily flawed OS to begin with and either stay with their Win9x
> > or upgrade to Win2k.
> >
> > I've used Me, Win9x and NT4.  What is consistent is that Win9x/Me are
> > always extremely sluggish when it comes to handling system resources
> > and tasks.  Cygwin, by its nature, has a lot of stuff it needs to do
> > in order to maintain compatibility between Win32 and a typically
> > Unixish user interface.  This often means high levels of overhead
> > (system resource) costs.
> 
> Exactly what are you refering to by system resources ?

	Specifically task handling.  Win9x/Me, given what I've seen with other 
Me and Win9x machines I've installed and operated, are not very good 
about cleaning up after themselves, especially when there are a lot of 
tasks being handled.

	Afaik, a significant amount of time and energy has already been put in 
to cygwin in terms of clean-up.  Even Cygwin can only do so much.

	So, after Win9x and WinMe have completed a cygwin based app/process, 
the OS then becomes responsible for handling the clean-up of any 
outstanding tasks or processes.

	You might want to monitor all of your processes and subtasks over a 
pre-set amount of time (eg. while a cygwin built app is running) and 
see what tasks are left over when the cygwin application completes.

	This would at least give you a better handle on what the OS is 
actually completing in terms of cleaning up after itself.  When a 
cygwin app ends, the OS is responsible for the clean-up of outstanding 
tasks or processes.

> 
> Yes I know there isn't much difference been Windows 9x and ME but there
> seem to be more changes behind the scenes, programs crashing for example
> are handed slightly better in Windows ME than Windows 9x. Yes Windows ME
> is aimed at home users but I have disabled the two main background tasks
> (System Restore & PC Health data collection) which often use up CPU in
> background.

[skip]

> > Another possible workaround, again if you must have Me, is to
> > reconfigure the system to do what you want it to do using the
> > extremely limited resources made available for such things by MS for
> > their Me systems.
> >
> > Part of this involves disabling automatic virtual memory management in
> > lieu of your own custom virtual memory management and defragging your
> > hard drives at least once a week (ie. if you want to have your
> > computer unavailable for the hour or two it sometimes takes for ME to
> > do a complete defrag using supplied defrag app, depending on the size
> > of the hard drive(s) in question).
> 
> I often defrag the hard disk but I can't see how these would help since
> it isn't just the hard disk slowing down. The whole system starts to
> stutter after compiling under Cygwin awhile even after finishing
> compiles and closing Cygwin down. It is almost like a Cygwin process is
> getting stuck and continuing to use up large amount of CPU every so
> often but nothing Cygwin related shows up under Wintop after Cygwin is
> shut down. Even stranger is none of the process's listed under Wintop
> are listed as using a large amount f CPU when the system stutters occur.

	This definitely sounds like a clean-up problem.  ie. System 
Accounting.

> > As I read through the other posts, you have a very large amount of
> > hardware operating on your system, and all of these slow ME down a tad
> > bit, thus the requirement for at least a Celeron or PIII/333mHz class
> > processor.  PIII is probably best (short of PIV) at about 700 or 800
> > mHz clock speed.
> 
> Well I just updated CPU to Celeron 850 from a Celeron 400 and compiling
> speed itself has really improved. It is the just the problem of the
> system stutters  often caused after compiling several Cygwin programs.

	Again, sounds like a clean-up problem.

> 
> > Your peripherals are really not the problem.  Especially when I see
> > you are using a Quantum Fireball 30G hard drive.
> >
> > It is the way that Me handles the peripherals (PnP?) that is causing a
> > lot of your slowdown.
> 
> Yes more PnP device do slow down the Windows ME boot up time slightly
> but does it really effect performance after start up ?

	Can't answer this with certainty.  Deductive logic, given the 
'stutters" you mentioned, indicates that it does.

	You are probably correct, but if Me is not cleaning up after itself 
appropriately, this can produce the "stutters" you mention.

> 
> > Rule of thumb, your "peripherals" are only as fast as the slowest
> > componenet within the system configuraton.  In this case, the slowest
> > (read "most sluggish") component is the OS itself.
> 
> Yes I heard that before.but I don't agree Windows ME would be the
> slowest part, would be the floppy drive for sure.

	Well, probably not in the case of the floppy, but as far as everything 
else is concerned, all system speeds are limited by how fast the OS can 
handle moving data from one place to another.

> > (Have you thought about using Mingw?)
> 
> I currently find it easier compiling MinGW programs through Cygwin with
> the -mno-cygwin switch of GCC compiler. The other program I regularly
> compile currently doesn't support MinGW. Also if MinGW doesn't have this
> problem then why does is occur just with Cygwin ?

	Cygwin is not Mingw, to use an old saw...Cygwin development requires a 
lot more system overhead than does Mingw ("bash" or "sh" for instance 
are not part of the standard Mingw development distribution), thus the 
reasoning behind not using Me or Win9x when doing Cygwin development.

	Of course, everyone is free to use whatever OS tickles their fancy 
(one of the biggest pluses of Cygwin), but all should remember the 
differences, in terms of systems performance, from one platform to 
another.

	Peace,

		Paul G.

ps. you are duplicating your posts to the list.

Nothing real can be threatened.
    Nothing unreal exists.

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