Search results for 'app:weblogs' matching tags 'Windows 7' and 'performance'

AHCI..

mikehall — Sun, 27 Nov 2011 06:00:00 GMT

Today, I finally enabled AHCI such that I can take full advantage of an external port on my Cooler Master CM 690 II case. I had tried enabling it when I first installed the GA-880 motherboard, and my drives would not start up.

Then, for some reason, the next tries saw the machine start, but, it would become hyper-active, the hard drive light staying on permanently. I had all but given up on ever having a hot swappable external drive port .

Today, it didn’t do any of the above., and once Genie Timeline had settled down, the system is strolling along at a nice leisurely pace. I have no idea why it is working. I did nothing but keep trying every now and again and I don’t remember downloading anything special or AHCI applicable.

Maybe failing memory and health has something to do with not remembering what I did.. Plugging a SATA drive into the port sees it recognised very quickly. Removing the drive is quick but the listing in Computer takes maybe two minutes to recover. I wish that I worked that well.

But hey, it works and that can only be good. It is a great way to back up. All desktop cases should have a similar drive port.

Disturbed sleep/hibernation

mikehall — Sun, 19 Jun 2011 05:00:00 GMT

Computers don’t wake from sleep or hibernation for ‘no reason’. There is always a reason. Here are some of them.

If the computer starts to go into sleep or hibernation, but immediately wakes up again, suspect a driver issue, especially with regard to video and network card drivers. The general fix is to upgrade to the latest drivers.

If the computer goes into sleep or hibernation, but wakes up at some period after, there is a device attached to the system which is set tot be able to wake the computer.

How to find it..

You will need to access the Command Prompt and run it in administrator mode. I have CP attached to the Start menu and set to run in admin mode, but don’t do this if your computer is used by others.

Locate Command Prompt, right click on it and select ‘run as administrator’
Type in this command <powerdfg –devicequery wake_armed> Omit the parentheses when typing the line
Press <Enter> and you will be presented with a list of devices which can wake up the computer

The most likely devices are USB mice/keyboards and network cards.

How to disable the unwanted functions.

Control Panel > Device Manager > go to each device > right click and select ‘Properties’ > click on the Power Management tab > Deselect ‘’Allow this device to wake up the computer’ > Apply and then OK to exit..

If you are wondering how to get out of sleep or hibernation mode after disabling the above, don’t worry. All you have to do is lightly press the main power button.

I haven’t found that applications scheduled to run at times when I have hibernated the system have any part in waking the computer. They are more likely to remain dormant until you ‘resume’ full operation, so I don’t feel that there is any need to change their settings.

Now you should be able to sleep well knowing that your computer is doing the same..

Image Resizer – The Simplest Way to Resize Images

Anonymous — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 05:00:00 GMT

If you have a bunch of photos shot at a huge 10 megapixels (and thus the huge file size) that you want to quickly share with your friends and family via email, Facebook etc., and if you are too lazy to fire up a slow-loading-and-complex image manipulation application, Image Resizer is possibly the best solution [...]

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© Windows Guides, 2010. Rich Robinson | Image Resizer – The Simplest Way to Resize Images

Computer Drivers The Basics

Anonymous — Wed, 05 Jan 2011 06:00:00 GMT

In this guest post, James Ricketts explores the basics of computer drivers. Find out more about James at the end of this post. Device Drivers – An Introduction Computer operating systems, such as Windows, Linux and Mac, and hardware components, such as sound cards, memory cards, and video cards do not speak the same language. To [...]

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© Windows Guides, 2010. Rich Robinson | Computer Drivers The Basics

Speed up USB and Computer Performance [Tips'n'Tricks]

Anonymous — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 05:00:00 GMT

USB has become a daily part of our computer life. Almost any gadget or external device use the USB port to connect to your computer. Many of us use so many devices that we have to add more USB ports to our computer, either via PCI or using USB Hubs. Some devices also rely on [...]

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© Windows Guides, 2010. Rich Robinson | Speed up USB and Computer Performance [Tips'n'Tricks]

[Competition] 10 Licenses for Predator ($29 Value)

Anonymous — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 05:00:00 GMT

Earlier this week we posted a review for the Security Program Predator (Read here). Richard Goutorbe, the developer of Predator was so pleased with the review, that he has gladly offered 10 licenses of the Professional Edition to be distributed amongst our Faithful Readers. So here is your chance to win a copy of Predator Pro. Competition [...]

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© Windows Guides, 2010. Rich Robinson | [Competition] 10 Licenses for Predator ($29 Value)

Disable Burn-To-Disk Function in Windows [How To]

Anonymous — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 06:00:00 GMT

The improved Disk Burn function in Windows 7 allows you to burn files to a disk on the fly, and it doesn’t close the session until you eject the disk. Which is a great tool to use if you continuously want to save backups of your files and documents. There might, however, be some reasons to [...]

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© Windows Guides, 2010. Rich Robinson | Disable Burn-To-Disk Function in Windows [How To]

Change your DNS Server in Windows 7 [How to]

Anonymous — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 06:00:00 GMT

Windows 7 - The Pocket Guide | Get FREE books (Password: ilikefree)

Windows 7 - The Pocket Guide | Get FREE books (Password: ilikefree)With Google launching their new DNS Server not long ago, aptly named; Google Public DNS, I’ve been playing around with my DNS server to see which is the quickest! This guide will show you how to change your DNS server and verify the settings in [...]

The Windows 8 Task Manager? - GPU Usage monitoring becomes a requirement

jeffl — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 05:00:00 GMT

Over the past 2 weeks I have been conducting performance testing on Autodesk Inventor using three different Operating Systems. Essentially the results of the testing revealed that unless applications are optimized for specific hardware much of the horse power we buy goes unused and wasted. One has to wonder if the inherent monitoring tools we see in Windows are really giving us the full picture. Perhaps the easiest thing to point at is Windows 7 current lack of GPU monitoring.

Diagram of a possible Windows 8 Task Manager.

Essentially the next Windows version after Windows 7 will be tackling new hurdles that reflect the way we already use computers but will essentially help to bring huge performance increases which do not exist today. Perhaps the single most important reason why we have not been paying attention to the whole picture as it relates to bottle necks in performance is because we have not had the tools to do it. The saying "out of sight out of mind" brings on new meaning as it relates to monitoring and the GPU is one clear area that has been out of sight.

I certainly want to give credit where credit is due. The Windows 7 team made big strides in performance and my testing revealed improvements of up to 20% over Windows XP in intensive graphics rendering and stunning differences related to DriectX11. Simply on performance alone, Windows 7 makes the cost of upgrading for CPU hungry users worth the lower than ever operating system price.

As we look to the future of monitoring and performance, we are going to see better cooperative processing between GPUs and CPUs. This will mean we will need tools to monitor what is going on to help pinpoint and troubleshoot issues. We are also going to see the removal of what I call "Multi-Core management bottlenecks" through initiative like Barrelfish and we will need a way to monitor that.

I think more than ever we are seeing that hardware relies on the operating system to capture the inherent performance increases which exist under the covers.

Jeff Loucks
Available Technology

Big engine no gas - Multi-Core OS with native support for the hardware we buy still a future prospect.

jeffl — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 05:00:00 GMT

Well we can hardly say Multi-Core processors are new technology. Those who really know the ins and outs of the way applications run will tell you there is inefficiency in the way operating systems and the applications that run on them use the hardware. This inefficiency can actually make multi-core processors run slower than their single core predecessors for non-optimized applications. The most efficient applications are specifically designed to support newer technologies like Hyper-threading and Multi-Core but those are not the business productivity applications you would expect.

Yes, it is game development that is most preoccupied with the specifics of achieving maximum performance. This is in part because game development is highly volatile market which often builds code from scratch rather than reusing code that has evolved over 10 and in some case 20 years like Microsoft Office. To take advantage of the new power legacy code needs to be rewritten effectively from the beginning to support today's hardware. But therein lies the problem. Today hardware is getting increasingly diverse and what was dual(2) core 18 months ago is Six Core now and the count will grow. So the target is moving and companies may start coding against a future spec which may only exists for 18 months or less. Equally we now have multi-GPU processors which perform graphics computing faster and systems that can take advantage of this performance see massive gains in performance for real life applications like DNA, robotics modeling, Global Weather Pattern prediction and other areas.

Following the scale of predictability, constantly rewriting major application code to take advantage of hardware is impractical. So does that mean hardware vendors should go back to single core? Well maybe, but probably not. Let's look at the history of operating systems. Remember DOS (Disk Operating System), well it evolved to support a bridge between the user applications and the hardware. So architecturally, doesn't it make sense that the operating system needs to take better advantage of new hardware performance? It sure does. Enter http://www.barrelfish.org/ a joint Microsoft Research and Swiss ETH Zürich project. The goal is essentially to create a distributed Multi-Kernel operating system on your box which efficiently communicates through a light weight hypervisor. In other words, an operating system which uses the maximum performance of the underlying technology with out having application developers program specifically toward the optimal hardware.

The Multikernel Model - source: http://www.barrelfish.org/barrelfish_sosp09.pdf

This model is a massive oversimplification of the challenges faced in creating such and operting system. So how long are we talking about before true multikernel lightweight hypervisors rule the roost on our electron hatcheries? All we know at this point as Windows 7 prepares to launch is that incubation has begun on next generation. Windows Eight my Kernels.

Jeff Loucks
Available Technology