October 2007 Archives

I recently noted that Vista has some interesting new behaviors regarding applications that are launched from the Startup folder.  By default, their I/O priorities are throttled back for a total of one minute from launch.  This is a good idea to keep lots of smaller or background-use applications from all starting up at once, but it doesn't seem to be such a good idea if you try to boot an application like Outlook, which is by nature I/O intensive, by putting it in the Startup folder.

To that end, I tried a few experiments.  I wrote a batch file to start up several major applications -- Outlook, Word, Windows Live Writer, AIM and at least one or two other things -- and put it into the Startup group.  Between each program launch, I instigated a forced seven-second delay by using the CHOICE command (a sneaky trick I picked up from somewhere).  I wanted to see if this would cause any difference in the amount of utilization or responsiveness.

When I used this to launch the programs in question, all of them were launched at the Very Low I/O priority -- and the end result was that they were all fairly difficult to work with during that low I/O period.

I then took the same batch file out of the Startup group and ran it from the desktop after a cold boot.  The programs in question all started up quite snappily and I could choose between any of them without difficulty -- and they were all running at Normal I/O priority, too.

So here's my tentative recommendations for what to put in the Startup group.  Much of this advice may be redundant but I'll elaborate where needed.

1. Include programs that run by default in the background and are not things you typically work with directly after logging in.  AIM, for instance, is a good candidate for this sort of thing.
2. Don't include major applications like Word or Outlook.  Launch those manually so you can benefit from those getting the maximum I/O priority.  (My above script seems to work nicely for group launching, although I had some minor window-focus issues that I think I can solve relatively easily.)
3. Don't include applications that will block other things until they complete heavy I/O operations.  Since they launch with very low I/O priority, they'll essentially be stuck until that bar lifts.

I love all-in-one utilities that do a bunch of things in as little space as possible.  Aside from allSnap, I recently bumped into another tool that I use as a regular adjunct to my Vista installs: PowerMenu.

PowerMenu adds four things to every single control menu for a window: a priority control, a transparency control, an "Always On Top" function, and a "Minimize to Tray" tool.  That's three or four separate utilities packed into one, and even though PowerMenu was originally written back in 1998 (!), it still runs extremely well with Vista.  Obviously I'd like to see it brought up to date whenever possible, but it works well enough right now that I can recommend it with little hesitation.

Today after I switched on my computer, Vista pinged me and let me know there was a download available that solved some previously-logged system issues.  Said download is detailed in Knowledge Base article 941649, and the rundown of items in it is extremely interesting.  Here's some selected quotes.

• "Extends the battery life for mobile devices."  This has been a common canard for Vista users, hasn't it?  My own experiences with battery life, through my Sony VAIO TX series notebook, have been very good, but I know the mileage has varied enormously.
• "Improves the stability of wireless network services."  I take this to mean it addresses the common issue people have where Vista has trouble locating a wireless network for a minute or so on end when you first boot up or after you come out of sleep mode.
• "Shortens the startup time of Windows Vista by using a better timing structure."  This hasn't been a huge problem for me, but I'm curious to see how it plays out across multiple systems.
• "Improves the reliability of Windows Vista when you open the menu of a startup application."  I wonder if this is a cousin to a problem I wrote about elsewhere before.  Vista does try to mitigate resource usage between multiple applications that boot through the Startup folder (read this article on the Microsoft Vista Compatibility Team Blog for more information), but they could still do a better job with it.
• "Shortens the recovery time after Windows Vista experiences a period of inactivity."  I think I have experienced this problem myself before, mostly when coming up out of a screen saver (another fix explicitly described in this package).

All in all, it's heartening to see these things being addressed before Vista SP1. I'll have another report later about how these fixes play out on my machines.

For the last month or so, I've been trying to track down a problem I've been having with Apple QuickTime on Vista, and I suspect the whole thing may simply be a fool's errand.

At first, I thought the problem was related to something I've seen reported in a number of circles: QuickTime has not played well on systems that use Intel SATA RAID controllers as the medium from which the content is played back.  Most of the symptoms revolve around playing back HD content: on my end, if I try to play back full 1080 HD content on my system, it drops frames and skips like crazy, and the CPU utilization tops out.  This, by the way, is on a dual-socket Opteron with 2GB of RAM and a 256MB AGP 8X video card.

On a whim, I browsed Apple's QuickTime support forum and encountered a couple of other people having the same issues.  Most of the folks polled were running NVIDIA graphics or disk controllers (my video's ATI), and the one generic suggestion was to switch QuickTime back into "safe mode" (i.e., no DirectX or Direct3D acceleration).  Not one of the changes to that setting made the slightest difference.  Another workaround was to copy the playback media to a non-SATA drive, but this isn't always a possible option.  If you play back QT content in the browser, for instance, it's copied to your local QT cache -- which is by default in your user profile and as far as I know cannot be moved somewhere else.

The problem was reported most egregiously on certain Intel disk controllers (and there's even been a fix supplied for it), but I'm starting to wonder if the same thing goes for other manufacturers as well.  My own system uses a Silicon Image brand controller and has the most recent drivers provided by the manufacturer, so barring a fix from Apple or Microsoft, nothing's going to change.  Actually, Microsoft has already rolled out a pre-SP1 patch for Vista that addresses a problem vaguely related to this.  I requested the patch and applied it, but it made no discernible difference.  I tried QuickTime Alternative to see if that made any difference, and as far as I can tell it didn't accomplish a thing.

Then my suspicions started to really ramp up.  Maybe the whole disk issue was a red herring.  I downloaded a number of HD clips in other formats--MPEG-2, VC-1--and guess what, they played back perfectly in Nero ShowTime, in full-screen, with barely 30% CPU usage and no frame drops.  And when I saved the QuickTime file to disc and played it in Nero, it worked perfectly there as well (albeit with higher CPU consumption).  Copying the file to an external IDE drive and playing it back that way didn't make it work any better in QuickTime, either -- but it STILL worked perfectly in Nero.

The only other thing I can think of is that somehow QuickTime is having trouble detecting how to work properly with DirectDraw (despite there being free video players that have absolutely no trouble figuring this out), which would sure explain why changing from DirectX to GDI ("safe") mode didn't accomplish a thing.  Maybe it's stuck in GDI mode for keeps.

For now, my solution is simple: anything I need to play in QuickTime, I just dump out to disk and play through Nero -- at least until Apple bothers to write something for the PC that's halfway viable.

Man!  How could I get this far and not mention Mozy?

Mozy's an online backup service that I profiled for InformationWeek earlier in the year.  I dubbed it the pick of the pack, not just because it works well and has a generous storage policy (2GB for free, and only $5 a month for essentially unlimited storage), but because it's invisible.  You install it, you point out what you want to back up, it runs silently in the background at designated times, and that's it.

I still use Vista's own backup tool to make local offline backups of a lot of stuff, but I use Mozy for the most crucial things: email, documents, etc.  And so far it's saved my bacon at least once.

[Full disclosure: The link I listed above is an affiliate link.  If you sign up with it, I get a little more storage added to my own account.  Everyone who signs up can create such a link to spread the love a little.]