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Microsoft prioritizing processes?
ArcSyn
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
I have no real evidence here, just my own observations, but I was curious if anyone else has noticed something similar?
When I get into work each day, I instinctively load 3 programs:
Firefox
IE
Outlook
(I load both Firefox and IE because I use Firefox for general internet browsing and IE for our helpdesk system and website editing)
If I were to load each program one at a time after a fresh boot, firefox would load the fastest, then IE, then Outlook.
Usually, however, I click all three icons (I use the quicklaunch bar) at the same time in the order: Firefox, IE, Outlook.
When they load, Outlook pops up first on the Start bar (but no window), then IE (finishes fully loading first), then Firefox after both IE and Outlook have fully loaded. Firefox fully loads quite quickly once it actually does pop up on the start bar.
It seems like Windows prioritizes Outlook, then IE, and then once they are done loading, finally loads Firefox which I clicked first. Does Windows give priority to MS programs? Has anyone else noticed this?
When I get into work each day, I instinctively load 3 programs:
Firefox
IE
Outlook
(I load both Firefox and IE because I use Firefox for general internet browsing and IE for our helpdesk system and website editing)
If I were to load each program one at a time after a fresh boot, firefox would load the fastest, then IE, then Outlook.
Usually, however, I click all three icons (I use the quicklaunch bar) at the same time in the order: Firefox, IE, Outlook.
When they load, Outlook pops up first on the Start bar (but no window), then IE (finishes fully loading first), then Firefox after both IE and Outlook have fully loaded. Firefox fully loads quite quickly once it actually does pop up on the start bar.
It seems like Windows prioritizes Outlook, then IE, and then once they are done loading, finally loads Firefox which I clicked first. Does Windows give priority to MS programs? Has anyone else noticed this?
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Did I put enough "I think"s in there?
I would understand it if the MS apps in general loaded faster than other programs, it just doesn't seem like it processes them in the order I click them.
Oh, and I always disable/remove all those "quick load" processes. Ugh.
If nothing else, I could see this as being a case of MS software using different API's than what they give out to thrid party folks. So when windows is prioritizing, it picks the preffered code (using MS API's).
You are just now noticing this? It's been like this for months and months for me. I crash FF on an almost daily basis. I use it because I can't live without the Webdev toolbar, but Mozilla needs to get their shit together and go back to the days of a super fast browser.
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I've been using Opera for years now, never went the way of Firefox. Is either one faster/better/etc?
Firefox never crashes on me...It loads super fast and I have never had a problem with it that I can recall. You might just have some random assortment of extensions/addons that are causing the memory hogging and crashes.
I find that FF on its own (no add-ons), is a relatively fast browser. When I load in my 20 add-ons and have 10 tabs loading up on startup, yeah its a hog.
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(a) Windows will give you as much time on the CPU as you like until you relinquish or until it preemptively removes you. If you write your code politely (like I suspect firefox is) you'll relinquish the processor while you wait for things. But if you keep yielding to a process that isn't polite it'll degrade your performance. So that's one possibility in explaining why Firefox loads faster when you're not loading IE at the same time.
(b) The taskbar doesn't refresh properly because loading IE puts a strain on Explorer, the program that runs most of the Windows UI. They share so many DLLs that they're fairly tightly bound. This is also one of the reasons IE loads quickly ... it shares a lot of DLLs with Explorer that are almost always loaded into memory. Firefox has to load all of its components from the hard drive.
The Windows thread scheduling is very simplistic and fairly well known. It isn't built to favor MS products (however MS products are written with proprietary knowledge of the OS, so they have a leg up on other programmers), but because of its simplicity it's fairly easy to exploit. Hogging the processor in windows is a fairly simple thing to do. Writing programs that relinquish the processor in intelligent ways so that they run well and play well with others is the tricky part.
Firefox is just a thousand times more extensible. It's easy to dick around with. Its interface is written in XML. Its functions are written in Javascript. Its easy to mess with those things since they're not compiled, which is why there are thousands of extensions written for it (and also why its easy to write something shitty which is why you see crashes on some machines).
The only time I'm ever suspect of MS's practices is with the Start Menu. Internet Explorer and Office products always manage to work their way up to the top even if I haven't launched them in weeks.
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I'll give IETab a shot. Sounds interesting.
Yes, it's an IE only support Helpdesk system.
It's Outlook 2007 through an Exchange server, so unfortunately I cannot go with something else.
As far as the web development, it's Interwoven using TeamSite so I'll have to test it (and the "netlet" it runs) with IETab and see if it's works. But Interwoven is already compatible with most recent versions of IE (Who in their right mind is still running 3.0?) so I don't really have to worry about that.
Oh, and I just restarted my computer and clicked Outlook -> IE -> Firefox and it loaded IE, Outlook, Firefox. Meh, whatever. I just thought it was interesting that they didn't load in the order they are clicked/started.
I would buy that explanation if I had not already gone to bare bones and still seen it. Try leaving firefox open with 3-5 tabs overnight and check that mem usage in the morning. I'm running at 300MB after staying open for just a few hours this morning.
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You see the Outlook taskbar option first because outlook has a splash window that appears before the main program and this window shows up on the Taskbar. This is the screen that just says Outlook 2007 or whatever and has no options or anything and later disappears and the main program window appears.
You then see IE load because, as was said before, most of IE's processes are already loaded into memory and thus has fewer things to load into memory than Outlook or Firefox.
Outlook loads up second because it also shares processes that have already been loaded into memory for windows basic operation. Microsoft capitalizes heavily on their existing DLLs and so on.
firefox takes the longest because they have an entirely seperate program that is not at all partially resident in memory when you click the icon because windows does not use any portion of firefox for it's normal, basic operation.
Windows isn't prioritizing anything, it's simply the way windows are shown and what is already loaded into memory.
Yeah, well, thats caching for you. Its handy to be able to instantly open a tab you just closed and have it be just as you left it. I don't normally have problems with FF crashing on me except for the occasional pdf that doesn't want to play nice. I'm sitting at about 100MB real and 100MB virtual memory usage for FF right now, and I've been using it heavily for about 6 hours straight with as many as 15 tabs open. Sure its a good chunk of memory, but less than you're getting with no activity. Don't know why thats happening for you. Oh, on my home machine I pretty much never get over 60MB.
It sounds like those sites you leave open use flash ads. I leave Firefox open for days (sometimes weeks) at a time and never see that kind of memory usage. The only time I ever close it is when its cache starts getting corrupted so sites like PA don't refresh properly. I haven't seen that happen for a few builds now.
IE loads faster in xp because a good chunk of it is memory resident as it is tied to explorer. One of my favorite features of Vista is superfetch. Firefox loads instantaneously for me now, faster than even IE ever did on xp.
It's possible. Ive gotten FF up to 900MB before. That was with a single tab open.
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That's just Firefox reserving memory, though, because it figures that the amount of required memory to keep the browser speedy is proportional to the amount of time you're spending using it. I mean, you've got a gig of memory, why have it just sit there? It should, theoretically, relinquish memory when you start up something else intensive but I reflexively close all my FF windows before gaming just in case.
Anyway its just a silly little Windows bug (at least, I consider it a bug), and apparently I don't use the Start Menu enough that it should even really matter to me.
That Firefox thing is weird though. If the application isn't doing anything, its memory usage shouldn't go up. Some versions of Flash are known to leak, so I'd guess the problem is there somewhere too, but its hard to make any call without knowing exactly what you're doing. If you can find exact circumstances which cause it to consume huge amounts of memory, you should dig around, see if they're known, and if they're not you should file 'em. That's kinda the joy of OpenSource. You can be part of the solution if it really bothers you that much. Or you can just switch to something else. I don't think any Mozilla devs are going to cry because you switched to Opera. They'll just keep working to make things better. Same as everyone else.
Then why is Opera faster, when it doesn't "reserve" any memory? Face it, FF is a sloppy memory hog. I still love it, though.