Can't Run Programs At The Same Time.

[Jim's_a_Thai_Fox]

Hi all,

I am a a PC monkey and as such am asking for advice regarding a problem on my PC that is seriously getting on my err...nerve

last night, I was burning a VCD for the girlfriend and wanted to listen to some tunes whilst doing so. The MP3 tunes from Windows Media player were slow and distorted. The CPU usage reported fluctuating usage between 20%-50%. This dropped to 0-1% after burning was completed (successfully).

Burning, in general, is painfully slow. It takes 90mins to burn a DVD lasting almost as long.

(I have used Nero 7, AnyDVD and Clone DVD...all with the same very long burn times)

For your information, I have (done) the following:

- Ran a AVG anti virus check. Nothing found.

- Ensured that the primary and secondary IDE channels both use 'DMA if optional' (running XP sp2)

- partitioned hard drives C / D / E with all program files only on C (back up applications on D)

- My PC is NOT online. I don't have a phone line and so my PC has been (relatively) safe from all the nasties I seem to read about. However, I have copied some software from the PC at work and as well as buying some games from the local Big C - they could be a problem???

Here is my PC spec:

Motherboard ASUS P5GD1 PRO

Intel Pentium 4 3.0GH processor

1 GB RAM - DDR (no idea what the DDR means, I suppose that's the brand?)

200 GB Seagram HD (partitioned as previously mentioned)

ASUS 128MB PCI video Card

DVD/CD Drive LITE-ON 16x DVD + RW

I would have thought that with a decent enough processor and 1GB of RAM that I should be able to at least run several programs without too much 'slowing down'. The slow burn rate is a pain in the bum, but I can live with it as at least it burns well. But only being able to run one program at a time without any adverse side affects, that is surely far from an ideal situation. I'm sure my old BBC 32k computer could have handled it back in the day

Does burning a disk really take that much out of a PC? (Pc's at work seem to burn things infinately quicker than my more powerful PC at home)

Any advice / info on how to solve the above problem is wildly appreciated. I am the PC layman of all laymen, so please try to taper any advice to my ability to understand only rudimentary PC lingo.

Thank you very much for any advice / comments

James

nakhon pathom

[Firefoxx]

Burning usually takes a lot of resources, and it's usually not recommended to do anything while burning. A typical 8x DVD burner will take around 7-8 minutes to write at its rated speed.

However, you shouldn't experience that much of a slowdown, at least not enough to make the burn process take 90 minutes. I'm guessing that it's the age-old problem of DMA not being enabled on your DVD writer. But hey, you already checked.... For one last check, are your DVD burner and harddrive on separate data cables?

Although your CPU may be fast, it's a single CPU, and therefore not that great for doing two things simultaneously. Maybe a dual-core CPU might help? I'm only guessing, right now.

Edited April 28, 2006 by Firefoxx

[Wallalai]

Although your CPU may be fast, it's a single CPU, and therefore not that great for doing two things simultaneously. Maybe a dual-core CPU might help? I'm only guessing, right now.

Multitasking has nothing to do with the CPU, it's the OS who is in charge of this, a dual-core CPU won't help.

Microsoft, and Apple would have you believe that their operating systems multitask (run more than one program at once). Using the term loosely, they do. Using the term strictly, they task switch only. Although more than one program maybe opened, you may notice that sometimes the system stops responding. Perhaps while mounting (detecting) a CD, or scanning a floppy drive. That's because of cooperative multitasking, as opposed to Linux's preemptive multitasking. A cooperative multitasker (such as Mac System or Windows) will give a program control of the system until the program chooses to give it back. Therefor, when a program is taking a while on a specific procedure, it can hang up the system, and deny other programs operating time. In a preemptive multitasker, a program is given a set number of clock cycles, then it is preemptived, and another program has the system for a set number of clock cycles. Linux is preemptive through and through. Mac System has absolutely nothing preemptive about it (although Apple claims the new OS will be partially preemptive). Windows 3.1 has a preemptive mouse only. Windows 95 is partially preemptive. Between Apple, and Microsoft, their only fully preemptive multitasker is Windows NT.

Bad OS -> change OS.

[Firefoxx]

Actually, a dual core does help with multitasking on XP. You can check out the typical review sites (anandtech, tomshardware, etc). Theory is good, but so is practice, and in practice, a dual-core CPU will help tremendously when doing two things at once. It might not solve Jim's problem, but it does help.

Although I keep an open mind, and I do use linux, changing the OS is not exactly practical or easy for most people. For linux, it requires re-learning a lot of things (although it's become a *lot* easier to use than before). For OSX, it requires changing your hardware (and let's not talk about the hacks). For both, it means giving up a lot of programs that you're familiar with and losing compatibility.

[Wallalai]

I agree, but M$ should make an effort to improve his OS. Having to buy a new CPU to be able to acomplish two tasks at the same time is a little bit...weird isn't it ?

[Guest endure]

Although your CPU may be fast, it's a single CPU, and therefore not that great for doing two things simultaneously. Maybe a dual-core CPU might help? I'm only guessing, right now.

Multitasking has nothing to do with the CPU, it's the OS who is in charge of this, a dual-core CPU won't help.

Microsoft, and Apple would have you believe that their operating systems multitask (run more than one program at once). Using the term loosely, they do. Using the term strictly, they task switch only. Although more than one program maybe opened, you may notice that sometimes the system stops responding. Perhaps while mounting (detecting) a CD, or scanning a floppy drive. That's because of cooperative multitasking, as opposed to Linux's preemptive multitasking. A cooperative multitasker (such as Mac System or Windows) will give a program control of the system until the program chooses to give it back. Therefor, when a program is taking a while on a specific procedure, it can hang up the system, and deny other programs operating time. In a preemptive multitasker, a program is given a set number of clock cycles, then it is preemptived, and another program has the system for a set number of clock cycles. Linux is preemptive through and through. Mac System has absolutely nothing preemptive about it (although Apple claims the new OS will be partially preemptive). Windows 3.1 has a preemptive mouse only. Windows 95 is partially preemptive. Between Apple, and Microsoft, their only fully preemptive multitasker is Windows NT.

That was obviously written before W2K, XP and Mac OSX were released as they all have full pre-emptive multitasking. Isn't Linux good enough in itself without you having to mislead people?

Edited April 28, 2006 by endure

[monty]

Do you re-encode the vcd files when burning? e.g. from divx to mpeg1 vcd format, or DVD to vcd? This will keep your (and any other) cpu humming along at 100%...

Most re-encode programs will let you set priority somewhere in the settings, if you set this to low, the encoding will only use spare cpu cycles... This will slow down the burning even more but at least you can keep doing other things...

If you are just burning files without re-encoding I would guess at communication problems between the drives / mainboard!

If you go to your device manager (where you found the "dma if available'' setting), you can see also at what setting the drives are currently communicating (current transfer mode).

If one of them says PIO, you've found the reason.

If your hard drive is in PIO mode, the dataflow would be slow enough to cause the long burn times, and the burning would eat all the transfer speed up, not allowing any reserve to transfer the mp3 files to your cpu...

Can have many reasons, bad ide cable (should be the 80 wire version), or a faulty IDE interface...

I had a mainboard once which refused to use ultra dma on the primary ide, while the same drive connected to the secondary ide would happily hum away at ultra dma 5...

Edited April 28, 2006 by monty

[JSixpack]

Check that you're using high-quality name-brand media (not Princo or similar crap) rated for the fastest speed.

You may want to consider adding a sound card if you don't have one (the specs you listed only show a video card). I have a fast machine, too, but putting in a mere Soundblaster (~B800) really helped with the media player multitasking. I did so reluctantly after rounding up all the usual suspects; I'm glad I did.

[Wallalai]

So, my intention is not to mislead anyone. It's just to point that Windows is a crap, who have a large number of users because a PC is provided with Windows by default.

I run Archlinux just now:

[alain@moobaan ~]$ uname -a

Linux moobaan 2.6.16-ck #1 SMP PREEMPT Thu Apr 27 14:53:05 IST 2006 i686 AMD Sempron Processor 3000+ AuthenticAMD GNU/Linux

on a very common processor.

I have many apps launched: Firefox, Azureus, mrxvt (tabbed console), Gftp (ftp client), read a music CD with Kscd, burn a CD with k3b, have a file browser open: konqueror, a graphical system monitor, Weechat (IRC chat client), and wonder what ?

[alain@moobaan ~]$ free -m

total used free shared buffers cached

Mem: 1011 995 15 0 0 657

-/+ buffers/cache: 336 674

Swap: 972 0 972

My memory usage: 336MB/1011MB, swap untouched. Why isn't it possible with the most used OS in the world ? Just because M$ are liars and incompetents. Or just because they don't want to provide a good OS, just make money.

[Guest endure]

You're perfectly entitled to your views on Windows and Linux. What you're not entitled to do is to make statements that are simply not true. Windows has had pre-emptive multitasking since NT. I've been in this situation before on Usenet. Some Linux guy kept stating for a fact that it's not possible to run a program with admin rights in W2K unless you're logged in as admin (I believe the Linux way is 'su' or 'sudo'). It is perfectly possible to do a 'su' in W2K. You just have to know how to do it. I'm no great advocate of any particular OS (I've used CPM-80, Perkins-Elmer and Acorn Unix, Dos in various flavours, OS/2 v 1.x, 2.x and 3.x, NT, Xenix, a little bit of Linux, NT, W2K, XP, and Netware in my time). I use XP now because it does what I need with no fuss. I do get tired of seeing myths and legends about Windows being repeated again and again though.

Edited April 30, 2006 by endure

[Firefoxx]

There are OS advocates everywhere, just as there are advocates for everything. The truth is bent, twisted, mutilated, and just plain thrown out the window in arguments between advocates.

I usually have around 20 windows open at any given time (I have a double-deckered taskbar), and my memory usage stays below 500MB. It only climbs really high when I get around to playing games like BF2.

[Wallalai]

What makes me tired is the Microsoft's monopoly power and abuse of its own customers, forced sales of Windows OS's, and the poor support of Microsoft.

Now everyone use the OS he want I don't care.

[thailand_property_search]

OK. Ignoring the Linux Purists and the Windows Pragmatists.......

A few points.

1. The write spead also depends on the media you are writing to. If you have picked up cheap DVD's in the market they may be 2x or 4x or even (God Forbid,,,1x) write speed. This will of course slow things down immensly. A 16x DVD Writer will still only write at 1x if the DVD disk is 1x.

2. Read/write disks are slower than write once.

3. IDE is crap for concurrent disk IO. If you want to listen to songs and write DVD's I would suggest SCSI (thats why the big boys use it) . It's nothing to do with CPU, it's IDE bus bandwidth and you may be interseted to know that IDE defaults to the LOWEST ATA rate. i.e if your CD is on the same channel as you ATA 133 HD you won't get ATA133 performance. If you have 1 hard-drive and 1 CD put them on SEPARATE channels.

The above make the largest differences.

My advice though is to start burning your DVD then spend the 90 mins on yer g/f or down the bar...much more rewarding.

Edited April 30, 2006 by thailand_property_search