TeaTimer CPU load after startup thoughts

caterwaul:

re:

caterwaul said:
I understand that Spybot is "freeware" and totally appreciate the developers extending this excellent Spyware application ... but ...

I really cannot imagine that the developers would not have access to …

Clearly if Spybot would work on that kind of "resource starved platform" …
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What you are saying has some merit to a certain extent. "Team Spybot" has attempted to maintain code compatibility with older versions of Windows. However, if your implication is that "Team Spybot" should stop development of new versions Spybot that do not run on a "resource starved platform", than I totally disagree.

Malware purveyors are developing new threats on a daily bases. Unlike in the past where a majority of malware just presented unsolicited adware when accessing the internet and that malware was easily corrected, today's threats involve a whole new level of sophisticated attacks to acquire information that can lead to identity theft, credit card fraud and even the empting of bank accounts.

If the code in Spybot is not capable of thwarting (preventing) or eliminating those threats because it is limited to the lowest denominator of the most "resource starved platform" it may become useless to a majority of users.

Patrick M. Kolla, the developer of Spybot started this thread to address concerns with the CPU utilization of the latest version of TeaTimer. I believe that he has addressed those concerns for a majority of the users of Spybot.

__________

While I was formulating a response to your original post (above) you posted this:

caterwaul said:
Just in case this might help....

As far as my issue w/ the system crashing at shutdown w/ Teatimer running using either v 1.5 or 1.6 this ONLY happens if I have launched (not even done anything w/ it) the Spybot main application interface sometime prior to shutting down. ...
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Now that post has been followed by:

caterwaul said:
Sorry but the ridiculous 15 minute limit on edits is really a problem. …
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Patrick M. Kolla, the developer of Spybot, started this thread to address concerns with the CPU utilization of the latest version of TeaTimer. He addressed those problems and released a beta version of TeaTimer that I believe may address the concerns of a majority of the users concerning the CPU usage of the latest version of TeaTimer.

Your issue appears to be with the fact that you are running Spybot on a "resource starved platform" and not the TeaTimer CPU utilization issue being addressed in this thread. Rather than hijack this thread and divert it from an issue that may affect a vast majority of users, I respectfully request that you confine your comments to either of these two (2) threads that you started:
Your consideration would be appreciated,
md usa spybot fan
 
As far as I am concerned, the beta version of Teatimer is definite improvement over the Teatimer that was part of the 1.6.0.30 Spybot release, and my question now relates to when and how it will be released.

The current default setting is the "scan mode slow or memory conserve mode" which would perhaps make life easier for those with slower CPU or low memory platforms, but would not offer the improved performance for those of us with modern computers. Whilst I don't think this is an optimum situation, I guess it is the safest one.

Presumably the revised Teatimer could be issued as part of an auto download, running in it's default mode, however users who may not be aware of this beta topic would then not be aware of the other mode or how to patch the registry to change to it.

PepiMK, can you perhaps shed any light on what will occur?
 
I've also experienced a great improvement in the operation of the 1.6.1.21 TeaTimer beta on my old WIndows 2000 Professional based PII 400 w/512MB RAM. It used to spike to 100% utilization for several minutes after Windows logon, but now only does this for a few seconds until TeaTimer starts checking the System process when it drops to about 3% average. I did have to disable the balloons though, since they streched out the startup process for the original several minutes even with the low utilization, though I could speed this manually by clicking them away.

Though Patrick and the Team will make the real decision, there is precedent for delivering an updated TeaTimer via the Integrated updates, including any additional files that might be required. As you mentioned, it's probably best to default to the mode that will work for everyone, leaving it to the more technically literate to modify their system for performance.

It's also common to post the technical reason and pointers to more information on the main web site, as well as include some info in the Help or Tutorials. In this case though, it might make sense to include the initial configuration in either the installer or the Widard that runs at first startup, though many make mistakes here in a rush to install, so stability should come before performance in this decision. This would also, of course, require the creation and digital signing of a new complete installation package as well.

Bitman
 
thanks......

Greyfox said:
Nagan,

The Teatimer beta release is only a patch, not a full spybot installation. The .zip file contains a replacement Teatimer.exe file and a number of registry patch files to allow changes in configuration.

To install the teatimer beta I would recommend first unticking Teatimer in Spybot Tools/Resident, then renaming the existing Teatimer.exe in C:\Program Files\Spybot - Search & Destroy. I renamed mine OldTeatimer.exe.
After that, just copy the new Teatimer.exe into the folder and then retick it in Spybot and my preference is to then reboot.

Note: to see teatimer.exe you will need to unhide system files - don't forget to rehide them again after.

Finally: Whilst it seems fine at the moment, as with all beta releases, there is no guarantee that it is bug free - that after all is what beta is all about. If you are not comfortable with this stay with the official release versions.
Click to expand...

greyfox, i tried what you suggested and now i will reboot and see if the new teatimer works. :) thanks. I will post back with my results!
 
I am happy to report

everyone, that the new teatimer works great!! Before with the other teatimer, My system when i logged in would not load at first all my icons next to the clock, causing me to have to log out and then re-login back in so that everything loaded correctly. My startup time is 1 minute less then it used to be. Also, teatimer is using very low requirements now on my system, system specs are in my signature. I also noticed that when right clicking the old teatimer, it took a second or two before the menu popped up. I am happy to report that with the new teatimer version i am able to right click and have the menu immediately pop up. This new teatimer works beautifully.Thanks!! :) :bigthumb: :)
 
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aiyup, seems lots more stable :D

After deciding to try TT today after a long hiatus, the beta came just in the nick of time to help me revise my opinion of the extra layer of realtime protection. TT as packaged with v16030 popped up a whitebox with a cancel button a few minutes after a reboot, chilled the inputs, stopped the clock (sound familiar?) and ungracefully died. As did the slow and fast reg options, although they were more or less graceful. The default reg option seems just right for me (P3 @ ~1GHz, 512RAM and of course WinME)

a) TTb-off startup stats - CPU idle 0%, Userfree 99%, pm used 35%

b) 'slow' reg - medium CPU bump, pm 74% `til about 9 minutes in (TTb died)
durations were odd, pm backed down about 2 min. before TTb terminated

c) 'hi' reg - very high CPU plateau, pm 42% `til about 10 minutes in (TTb died gracefully)
the very high 99% plateau lasted about 2-3 minutes, then a 3-5% idle

d) 'default' reg - low-med CPU bump, pm 43% and *stable*
decent and reasonable performance for realtime monitoring

Possible idea for 'nervous Nellies' - blue or other neutral 'blink-light' anim on traycon to show working status of silent mode (reassuring without alarming, it does the job you trust it with).

:bigthumb: Good Deal and hope the new improved TT works for others as well
 
hey PepiMK

I wanted to let you know that the only issues i found, were that when allowing or denying a change, it takes 100% cpu usage, and when i click allow it takes 4 seconds to register the click. Otherwise, it works fine. You can read my above posts that i made as well. What happened to the box that appeared in the lower right hand corner when you allowed or denied a change? Or was that supposed to be shown by notification balloons? Because that option is checked in teatimer, but i have not seen any notification balloons from teatimer yet...
 
129260,

The accept/deny panel (see attached screen shot) comes up roughly in the middle of the display and is not affected by whether the "show info balloons" is ticked or not, that only stops the display of the Teatimer scanning process information.
 
Tea-Timer memory usage?

I'm not sure if this is the right place to post this, but since it seems to be the primary thread to discuss Tea-Timer, so I'm going to go ahead anyway.

I came to the forums looking for a solution to Tea-Timer's increasing memory usage. I found that a new version of Spybot had been released that I was unaware of. After reading this topic (and several others), it appears that my concerns were echoed by others and that the new version would address them.

While reading the various discussions here, it appears that certain trade-offs were being made.

If I understand what has been said here, then this is the way Tea-Timer behaves. At initial startup of TT, it scans all active processes to look for problems. This scan takes much CPU and/or memory to accomplish this task. TT then goes into a quiescent state where it waits patiently for something to happen (like a new process starting, registry change, etc.) and then activates again performaing a new scan, trap, whatever, of the specific item then returning to its quiescent state again.

What I don't see explained is why TT needs so much memory when it is just waiting for something to happen. It is not the virtual memory that bothers me but the size of the memory that seems to need to remain resident. Is this something that can be improved or is it just the nature of the beast that a large physical memory footprint is required.

Thank you for a wonderful product.

Win2K, K2-450, 192mb SSD 1.5.2, TT (for now)
 
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snrcfan:

This thread is about problems encountered with the Spybot 1.6 version of TeaTimer (TeaTimer 1.6.0.20) and the measures taken to correct those problems including the development of a beta addition of TeaTimer (TeaTimer 1.6.0.21):
I suggest that you upgrade to Spybot 1.6, download and install the beta version of TeaTimer and see if that has alleviated your concerns.
 
md usa spybot fan said:
snrcfan:

This thread is about problems encountered with the Spybot 1.6 version of TeaTimer (TeaTimer 1.6.0.20) and the measures taken to correct those problems including the development of a beta addition of TeaTimer (TeaTimer 1.6.0.21):
I suggest that you upgrade to Spybot 1.6, download and install the beta version of TeaTimer and see if that has alleviated your concerns.
Click to expand...

I'm sorry if I didn't make myself clear, but I have downloaded and tried the new version(and patch). I uninstalled it after some preliminary testing due to my need to validate and test before permanent use. That was why I put "(for now)" at the end of my post. My concern was with the continued memory demand I noticed during my briief experiment. I was trying to ascertain whether or not there would be any future possibilty of reduced resident memory usage. As it is now, whenever I need to free up memory, I unload TT until the next reboot and I was hoping that the new version would not require this. The new version is a definite improvement over the old, but not enough to warrent an immediate upgrade.

As an example, could TT be split into a startup process that does the initial work and a permant/resident process that only looks for changes?
 
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md usa spybot fan said:
snrcfan:

This thread is about problems encountered with the Spybot 1.6 version of TeaTimer (TeaTimer 1.6.0.20) and the measures taken to correct those problems including the development of a beta addition of TeaTimer (TeaTimer 1.6.0.21):
I suggest that you upgrade to Spybot 1.6, download and install the beta version of TeaTimer and see if that has alleviated your concerns.
Click to expand...

I'm sorry if I didn't make myself clear, but I have downloaded and tried the new version(and patch). I uninstalled it after some preliminary testing due to my need to validate and test before permanent use. That was why I put "(for now)" at the end of my post. My concern was with the continued memory demand I noticed during my briief experiment. I was trying to ascertain whether or not there would be any future possibilty of reduced resident memory usage. As it is now, whenever I need to free up memory, I unload TT until the next reboot and I was hoping that the new version would not require this. The new version is a definite improvement over the old, but not enough to warrent an immediate upgrade.
 
snrcfan:

Since memory usage of TeaTimer seems to be your concern even with TeaTimer 1.6.0.20, have you attempted to experiment with the registry tweaks included with the beta download (TeaTimer-beta-1.6.1.21.zip) to see if they alleviate your concern?

When you download TeaTimer-beta-1.6.1.21.zip and extract the files, there are three (3) .reg files that can be used to alter the memory usage of TeaTimer:
  • TeaTimer-scanmode_default.reg
  • TeaTimer-scanmode_fast_but_more_memory_req
  • TeaTimer-scanmode_slow.reg
Have you attempted to experiment with those registry tweaks and what were the results?

There are posts in this thread concerning those registry tweaks. Among them are:
 
Tried all three

Yes I tried all three. Fast is unusable for me (too much thrashing). I'm not saying that I can't use TT, just that it seems to need more resident memory than I would expect. I accept that the biggest limitation here is the amount of memory on my system and not TT itself, its just that as an old programmer I know that today few programs consider memory to be anything but abundant.

I know you are trying to help me, but we seem to be getting off into a diagnostic discussion. All I really need right now is to know when the new TT is intergrated into the V1.6 download so I can begin testing and validating SS&D V1.6. (No beta allowed!). The memory issue is really for the developers to consider for possible future improvements.

I thank you for your kind try at assistance but I think at this time I will end this and wait for TT to come out of beta.
 
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thanks

Greyfox said:
129260,

The accept/deny panel (see attached screen shot) comes up roughly in the middle of the display and is not affected by whether the "show info balloons" is ticked or not, that only stops the display of the Teatimer scanning process information.
Click to expand...

You misunderstood, :)

What i am saying is, when i allow or deny a change, the box that used to appear in the bottom right hand corner stating what action was taken on the change is now gone. Not the allow/deny change box, The box that said user decision or whitelist AFTER you had allowed/denied a change. It appeared above the clock. And i had thought that the notification balloon was to replace the small box. Hopefully everyone can understand that....Also i hope pepimk sees my other posts...and doesn't miss them.....anyway's, i didn't try the registry tweaks yet, just the debug log one, so that the log can show where any problems might lye, i just copied the new teatimer over and replaced the old one. :)
 
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129260 said:
You misunderstood, :)

What i am saying is, when i allow or deny a change, the box that used to appear in the bottom right hand corner stating what action was taken on the change is now gone. Not the allow/deny change box, The box that said user decision or whitelist AFTER you had allowed/denied a change. It appeared above the clock. And i had thought that the notification balloon was to replace the small box
Click to expand...

129260,
That is indeed what happens - after one allows or denies the change the details appear in a balloon, and this will occur even if the show info balloon is not ticked - ie that setting only applies to the scanning info balloons. Unfortunately I haven't been able to get the balloon to appear in a screen shot as yet - My old faithful screen shot utility is letting me down.
 
ah ok :)

Greyfox said:
129260,
That is indeed what happens - after one allows or denies the change the details appear in a balloon, and this will occur even if the show info balloon is not ticked - ie that setting only applies to the scanning info balloons. Unfortunately I haven't been able to get the balloon to appear in a screen shot as yet - My old faithful screen shot utility is letting me down.
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Glad were on the same page now haha. :) I just find it odd because i have not seen any notification or anything after i allow/deny a change....

And also: I wanted to let you know that the only issues i found, were that when allowing or denying a change, it still takes 100% cpu usage, and when i click allow it takes about 2 seconds to register the click. Otherwise, it works great! :bigthumb:
 
Greyfox,

ac'tivaid is quite useful for making screenshots (and other stuff).






And also: I wanted to let you know that the only issues i found, were that when allowing or denying a change, it still takes 100% cpu usage, and when i click allow it takes about 2 seconds to register the click.
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129260,
2 seconds after allowing appears to be a bit too long. I have rechecked this with the System Startup and I don't get any noteable lag from Teatimer after allowing/denying. But before Teatimer shows its allow/deny dialog a little time is required for checking the file added to the System Startup (thus the CPU load). Where exactly do your observation occur?
 
Yodama,

Thank you for the link - I have opted to go for the moment with the portable version of Activaid (En) which I have installed on a USB flashdrive I keep handy utilities on. At this stage I have only setup the screen shot option, and it works very nicely - I can even capture the bubbles now!

Edit: On my PC, the close of the allow/deny dialogue on clicking on allow is virtually instantaneous and the bubble come up almost immediately as well - the delay would be small parts of a second.
 
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thanks for the reply yodama

i was just about to post today, when i noticed that now it does not do it anymore........very weird. The allow/deny box was about a registry change i allowed to delete java from my startup.....in any case, now when i get the allow/deny box it does not take 2 seconds anymore. So i guess its fixed....weird but oh well....hasn't done it again yet.....

I still do not see any notification balloon or anything suggesting my change was accepted..... :scratch:
even though i know it was...
 
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