So every night around midnight, my hard drive goes nuts and my computer slows for a few hours. I then start killing processess in the hopes of tracking it down, but I’ve been uncessfull till tonight. Tonight, I found two new tools to help debug said issues. The first is a monitoring tool that lets you see what your computer’s hard drive is doing. Check this out for information on how to use it.
My problem turned out to be something called system restore that goes through your entire harddrive looking for changed files to make copies of. I think it’s an attempt to replicate some of apple’s time machine technology. Anyhow, I’ve never used it, and it’s been pissing me off every night that I’m on my PC. I then found this post which describes how to modify the task (as well as see what other scheduled tasks you have on your system). By default it runs at Midnight and 30 minutes after you turn on your computer. Lame. I removed the entry for it to run after bootup and changed the daily run to 5AM. I figure that when it starts running, it should be a sign that I should go to bed. The more I learn about windows (vista) the more I want to go to redmond with a big blade and start stabbing developers.
Software
annoyance, scheduler, system restore, task, vista
I upgraded my network connection to Gigabit Ethernet and ran some tests which revealed that I had NO speed increase going from 100-mbit ethernet to 1000-mbit ethernet – both came in at 8MB/s. My tests involved timing the download of a large file from a linux server sitting next to the switch. I plugged in my Mac laptop, and the file flew across at 50MB/s. I asked one of my networking friends, and he pointed me to this article. It turns out that Vista purposely caps network traffic because there is a chance that the network traffic might make your audio playback skip if you have a really slow computer. I thought it was too stupid to be the culprit, but I tried it out. Sure enough…
Red – before registry tweaks to turn off audio throttlling service
Green – After following instructions in the link
Yellow – Theoretical Maximum
Personal, Software
bandwidth, gige, networking, vista
So I’m having applications of mine beep at random times. Actually, they are both compilers for embedded systems. When I click on a file in IAR and using AVR Studio the computer beeps. It’s really annoying, and it seems to have started on its own as the applications didn’t do that in the past. Well, it seems as if this is a feature. Windows includes a BEEP SERVICE! *grumble* You can find it under the system devices menu if you select view->show all. I turned disabled it and I think that fixed my problem. Whoever came up with that idea needs to be shot till he/she is dead.
UPDATE: this in fact has not solved the beeping problem I experience from using IAR Embedded Workbench. But I am still disabling the beep server.
Electronics
annoying, beep, vista, windows
