View Full Version : Excessive resource usage in 1.6.2
Hi,
Just started with S&D 1.6.2, and installed recent definition updates (using spybotsd_includes.exe).
Hardware is Pentium II, 450MHz, 192M RAM. O/S is Windows 98SE (with Unofficial Service Pack 3 beta 4). Other software is Avast 4.8, ZoneAlarm 5.5, IE 5,5, Firefox 2.0.0.22pre.
Well, when I tried to start S&D, it seemed non-operational. However, that's because it actually takes about half an hour to start-up. This time is taken up by virtual memory slowly expanding in 4MB increments until about 400MB is consumed by S&D. Only then is it finally ready to do anything. Surely this resource usage is excessive???
BTW, why can't I post (or reply) in the S&D bugs threads?
Regards,
Joe.
drragostea
2010-01-11, 02:07
It could probably be the specs of your machine because at 450Mhz, your processor is not going fast enough to process everything that is running, that including your anti-virus, firewall, whatever other tasks are running and then Spybot. Spybot-Search&Destroy may use up a portion of your resources (RAM and CPU) because it is firing up (booting). That may explain the spike in your resources.
Anti-virus programs (speaking in general) may also use a portion of your resources (preferably memory) when they are idle with the real-time protection. Scanning uses a bit chunk of your already, limited 192MB of RAM.
I am not certain if it is a bug, although it does not sound like it because Spybot-S&D ran fine on other user's Windows 98 machines in the past, but it may be due to the resources that are in your machine.
Support for Windows 98 has been discontinued as of mid-2006. Anti-virus and firewalls cannot substitute for the official Microsoft Windows Update patches.
The post should explain half of what you need... because I am unclear on what is actually the problem. I hope another member can contribute to the thread.
-
I'm assuming the Bug Tracker thread is for admin use purposes, because I have attempted to post a new thread in there (experimenting) and the forum denied access.
patclash
2010-01-11, 09:35
Hi,
I have two old machines running with W98SE :
- Pentium III 450 Mhz 512 Mo RAM : the last version of Spybot S&D work very well and take several seconds to load :)
- and a very old Pentium 133 Mhz with 96 Mo RAM : this take more than an hour to load Spybot S&D :red:
So I think PII 450 Mhz may work if you can add more RAM
:
Hardware is Pentium II, 450MHz, 192M RAM. O/S is Windows 98SE (with Unofficial Service Pack 3 beta 4). Other software is Avast 4.8, ZoneAlarm 5.5, IE 5,5, Firefox 2.0.0.22pre.
:
Well, when I tried to start S&D, it seemed non-operational. However, that's because it actually takes about half an hour to start-up. This time is taken up by virtual memory slowly expanding in 4MB increments until about 400MB is consumed by S&D. Only then is it finally ready to do anything. Surely this resource usage is excessive???
A few suggestions:
First, Spybot is taking up Virtual Memory (swap file) on startup. That's hard drive time. Defrag your hard drive. ESPECIALLY make sure your swap file is defragged and contiguous. Windows 98SE is notorious for slowing to a crawl when the swap file becomes heavily fragmented. It is critical that you defrag your Windows 98SE swap file. You should also set your swap file minium to something stable. For your system, I'd recommend a swap file setting of 600MB/min 1200MB/max.
Second, try disabling your antivirus when starting Spybot. You won't need your antivirus when updating and running Spybot scans anyway.
Just these two tips should give you noticeable improvements in Spybot startup times. But I suspect that your real problem is that your computer has an old and slow hard drive. Because Win98 is so disk intensive, a slow hard drive can make your computer seem as slow as molasses. I'd suggest that you'd be a lot happier if you upgraded to one of the fast hard drives from Hitachi.
Hi all,
Yes, I think we can agree that it's the limited RAM that's causing the very, very slow start-up of Spybot S&D. From patclash's post, it seems that things can be even worse than my situation (about 30min to load vs. 1h to load). People that report Spybot S&D locks-up may actually be experiencing the same problem.
I've tried unloading Avast and ZoneAlarm. Makes virtually no difference. The RAM usage of Spybot S&D seems to make everything else insignificant by comparison. BTW, the hard drive is pretty fast and is freshly formatted, fragmentation is pretty low.
I can't see why Spybot S&D should require so much more resources than Avast, as a comparison. Avast's has to deal with a much larger database, yet loads in about 30 seconds, not 30 minutes, requires about 40M of virtual memory, not 400M. I don't think this is an unfair comparison.
Incidentally, the Spybot S&D progress bar reaches about 95+% completion (just a visual estimate) fairly quickly, before it gets bogged down.
Also, I have since tried the Teatimer component. This is supposed to use about 5M of RAM according to the help. In fact, it seems to take about 150M (judging from the virtual memory). So even Safer Networking don't expect anything like the sort of resource usage that's evident. Something's gone wrong somewhere.
Joe.
patclash
2010-01-14, 09:37
I do some test on my very old pc :
(Spybot use the swap file to load and less then 200 Mo)
I find a tip with fixing manually the W98 swap file to 256 Mo (with same mini and maxi)
So then Spybot take several minutes to load (instead of an hour) :bigthumb:
If this can help :)
BTW, the hard drive is pretty fast and is freshly formatted, fragmentation is pretty low.
What do you mean by "pretty fast"? 90% of all laptop hard drives are terribly slow. You need something like a Hitachi Travelstar 7K100 to get a decently fast hard drive.
Defragging the swap file is not the same as defragging the hard drive. The Windows 98SE defragger doesn't defrag the swap file. If I remember correctly, the Windows 98SE swap file can only be defragged during a boot into DOS - the Win98 swap file can't be defragged from Windows.
patclash,
Hey, that's a radical idea!!! Restrict swap file size to force S&D to start up faster. I'll give that a try, but surely there must be side-effects? If S&D is prevented from doing its normal initialization (maybe a Bubble Sort on its database?;-), surely that must break something? Fail to detect some nasties or such? I'll try this anyway, out of curiosity.
BillGio,
My swap file expands and contracts as required. If free space is reasonably clean (not fragmented), then the swap file will be likewise when it expands and takes up some of that free space. At least that's what makes sense to me, if not, then there's nothing that will keep the swap file de-fragmented. No point defragging the lot in DOS when it's all going to change once Windows starts and S&D in particular.
Bottom line,
S&D is using way too much memory during initialization and whatever it's doing with that memory is incredibly slow if it needs to be virtualized. The S&D database is about 6M compressed. The Avast database is about 30M compressed. One would expect the S&D database to be smaller than the Avast database, perhaps by this 5:1 margin. Yet S&D resource usage during start-up is way, way higher than Avast. I don't believe that's how it should be.
Joe.
My swap file expands and contracts as required.
Win98 does this by default, and it is a Very Very bad Thing because allowing the swap file to behave like this will seriously slow Windows 98.
You need to set your swap file to a fixed size.
BillGio,
Very, very bad thing? Well, that depends ... if speed is the only consideration, sure. OTOH, it's safer to allow variable size, so as to accommodate whatever virtual memory is required at any particular time (and waste less disk space).
Anyway, I tried a fixed swap file size of 800M, S&D load time reduced to about 20 minutes. Fair enough, no surprises here. But read on ...
patclash,
What the ... ?! You're right!!!
I wasn't brave enough to limit the swap file size to 256M, but chose 300M instead, just to be sure there was enough for S&D's run-time requirements (which are large, yet significantly smaller than during its start-up).
Guess what? Start-up time was 2 minutes - a very dramatic reduction!
Not a practical solution, since virtual memory requirements will depend on what other app's may be running, but it may give a clue about what S&D is doing at start-up.
Also, need some way to test S&D is working properly, in a similar manner to the "eicar.com" test for virus scanners.
Joe.
With Win98, when you allow the default swap file behavior of letting Windows choose how to expand and contract, Windows will allocate about 50% of CPU resources when managing the size. Plus, you've got the hard drive time, PLUS if your swap file isn't contiguous, Windows will have to manage WHERE the free space is to put the swap file. (this was fixed starting with Win2000.)
Your speed improvement by setting the swap file size from 800M to 300M is very interesting to me! Wish I'd known this when I was still using that OS.
You might want to set your Win98 swap file to 300M min / 500M max and retest. This is the same settings as 300M as you already have, except it will expand to a max of 500M *only* if needed!
patclash
2010-01-26, 13:54
You might want to set your Win98 swap file to 300M min / 500M max and retest. This is the same settings as 300M as you already have, except it will expand to a max of 500M *only* if needed!
Hi,
I think you might set the mini and the maxi with the same value.
But before you must défrag your hard drive with the setting "let Windows choose..."
After reboot set the swap file size (300 or 500, that your choice)
;)