Windows 10 furor????
 

Ever seen this before? The green leaf...
Other than increasing the priority how do I tell it to stop suspending it?

During this period the Hard drive was running overtime ; though there were no obvious big processes running.

Based on the Prime95 window it suspended either as soon as it started Stage 2 on a new assignment...or when I moved the mouse to turn on the monitor.

Prime95 resumed about 15 minutes later.

The performance of the system must be preserved at all times.

How else can MS guarantee to keep that spy data flowing freely to their servers?

Oh, you thought it was your system they were talking about, hahaha, no it is their exploitation system that they are maintaining the performance of. :devil:

Do you have anti-virus running?

A green leaf icon will appear next to that process in Task Manager to indicate it's running in Efficiency mode. Note that Efficiency mode isn't available if you select a core Windows process or a process group. And that you can remove Efficiency mode from any process that is currently using it.

There are also efficiency cores on newer CPUs. It might be defaulting to one of those.

[QUOTE=rogue;628555]There are also efficiency cores on newer CPUs. It might be defaulting to one of those.[/QUOTE]

I had a related issue with a new machine and Windows 11. The system kept hibernating after an hour even though in my power plan it was set to sleep "never". I finally stopped this behavior by setting time to sleep "never" in all power plans including the one I was using. I also ran "powercfg.exe /hibernate off" in an elevated cmd window.

To stop the GPU from downclocking, in the NVIDIA control panel I selected "prefer maximum performance" in manage 3D settings. (Don't know if an AMD GPU would be subject to downclocking).

I have had no issues since.

Suspicious Disk activity
 

Happened again today.
First picture is during slowdown.
Second is after reboot when it was running normally again.

Something going crazy with the disk.

How much main memory was occupied when you took that screenshot? It might be thrashing.

[QUOTE=kruoli;629557]How much main memory was occupied when you took that screenshot? It might be thrashing.[/QUOTE]

It was after I stopped/started Prime95 and it was starting stage 2.
It should have taken a couple minutes but this was about 15 minutes later.
I had 13.5/16GB allocated for S2 and I watched it in task manager but instead of climbing quickly to 13.5 it climbed to about 10GB then bounced up and down a little for the whole time between 10 and 11.
Thr whole time CPU usage never got above 6%.

[QUOTE=petrw1;629574]it was starting stage 2.
It should have taken a couple minutes but this was about 15 minutes later.
I had 13.5/16GB allocated for S2 and I watched it in task manager but instead of climbing quickly to 13.5 it climbed to about 10GB then bounced up and down a little for the whole time between 10 and 11.
Thr whole time CPU usage never got above 6%.[/QUOTE]
I have found on a 24GB system that allowing 18GB in s2 is too much; 17 is stable, for ordinary wavefront exponents, but still gets slow/paging with 100Mdigit & above. Allowing all but 2.5GB as you appear to be is I think MUCH too aggressive. Try 10 of 16. Or 9.5. And/or be ruthless about exiting everything else. CPU will necessarily be rather idle while waiting for paging out/in of some of the prime95 stage 2 data that does not all fit in available ram.

Also, check the system event log for any indication of disk read or other disk errors. The disk data rates don't look very high. If there is an issue with reliability causing retry delays and error logging, you'll want to know about that in time to do a full backup before the disk becomes completely unusable.

[QUOTE=kriesel;629575]I have found on a 24GB system that allowing 18GB in s2 is too much; 17 is stable, for ordinary wavefront exponents, but still gets slow/paging with 100Mdigit & above. Allowing all but 2.5GB as you appear to be is I think MUCH too aggressive. Try 10 of 16. Or 9.5. And/or be ruthless about exiting everything else. CPU will necessarily be rather idle while waiting for paging out/in of some of the prime95 stage 2 data that does not all fit in available ram.

Also, check the system event log for any indication of disk read or other disk errors. The disk data rates don't look very high. If there is an issue with reliability causing retry delays and error logging, you'll want to know about that in time to do a full backup before the disk becomes completely unusable.[/QUOTE]

This computer (and a few others) are Prime95 exclusively.
Nothing else runs on them; okay I have AVG for Virus and occasionally open Google Chrome.
I run them all within 2GB-2.5GB of full and have never had issues with any others.
My family workhorse PC allocates only 24/32GB.

Disk errors seems possible; though in 4 months this PC in question has "paused" 4 times.
As noted in an earlier post the first 2 times I was away and it just "continued" on its own a few days later.
The last 2 times I rebooted and it worked fine for another month.
Stopping and starting Prime95 did not help; I had to reboot.

[QUOTE=kriesel;629575]I have found on a 24GB system that allowing 18GB in s2 is too much; 17 is stable, for ordinary wavefront exponents, but still gets slow/paging with 100Mdigit & above. Allowing all but 2.5GB as you appear to be is I think MUCH too aggressive. Try 10 of 16. Or 9.5. And/or be ruthless about exiting everything else. CPU will necessarily be rather idle while waiting for paging out/in of some of the prime95 stage 2 data that does not all fit in available ram.[/QUOTE]

A paging (swap) file can be a real bottleneck, especially with a mechanical drive. I literally roasted a drive a decade ago while doing video processing. I had to use an oven mitt to take it out after it died. It was that hot.

I have had [I]Prime95[/I], latest version, behave strangely with a fractional about of RAM allocated, such as 7.5GB. It would run really slow in Stage 2 of a P-1. 8GB was fine. I tried 9 and 10. This didn't leave W10 much wiggling room, but it ran alright. I plan on upgrading the RAM in this system soon. I will end up with either 32GB, or 40GB if I can leave two of the 4GB sticks in.

Perhaps a good rule-of-thumb would be to never try to use more than two-thirds of what is free, not what is installed. Windows 10 overhead uses about 3GB. This drops me from 16GB to 13GB available. Using 8GB for [I]Prime95[/I] is right around 60% of the available.

All of my Windows systems are used to the maximum RAM without an problem. Usually not more than 0.5GB free. Works fine.

I don't have a swap file. Swap files are dumb, IMO. Maybe Windows has some weird logic and likes to populate the swap file too aggressively? IDK. I suggest to disable and delete the swap file. It is only harming you and not helping. If you run out of RAM then buy more RAM.

I don't like them either, on modern PCs they're quite pointless. But unfortunately, some versions of Windows (and of Un*x) may or do take the existence of a swap file for granted and fail to behave properly without one. XP is absolutely fine without one, but newer versions may become unstable if you come anywhere close to depleting RAM, so I'd be reluctant even if there's a slight performance improvement, as losing data is so much worse.

I can't understand how every educated Windows user can not see that _everything_ has gone downhill since XP - usability, reliability, general sanity.

[QUOTE=Andrew Usher;629653]... [b]some[/b] versions of Windows (and of Un*x) may or do take the existence of a swap file for granted and fail to behave properly without one.[/QUOTE]Vague. Which versions? Which "Un*x"? I've never seen any OS "take the existence of a swap file for granted".

[size=1]What is "Un*x" anyway? Unax, Unex, Unix, Unox, Unux?[/size]

[QUOTE=Andrew Usher;629653]...But unfortunately, some versions of Windows (and of Un*x) may or do take the existence of a swap file for granted and fail to behave properly without one...[/QUOTE]

As an experiment, yesterday evening I changed my W10 setup to not have a swap file. It restarted fine, but it had 2GB less free RAM space after it all loaded. So, I put it back in the general vicinity of what size it appeared to be. In my case, W10 appears to store trivial things in it, whatever they may be. It is hard to tell if an SSD drive is thrashing as they read/write so rapidly, which is what mine is.

The only thing I run that might use it would be [I]Prime95[/I] running P-1's.

I am fairly certain that [I]Ubuntu[/I] created a swap area when I installed it on my Xeon system. How large, I have no idea.

[QUOTE=retina;629665][size=1]What is "Un*x" anyway? Unax, Unex, Unix, Unox, Unux?[/size][/QUOTE]
[SIZE="1"]That definitely must be a Regex: Ux, Unx, Unnx, Unnnx, ...

Edit: Unox is a manufacturer of concetrated soups in Germany. We love their Ochsenschwanzsuppe.[/SIZE]

Linux is fine without a swap file, until you fill RAM and hell may or may not break loose. Performing better under memory pressure is being patched in over time.

[url]https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-Does-Bad-Low-RAM[/url]

[url]https://www.phoronix.com/news/Meta-Transparent-TMO[/url]

[url]https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-6.1-PSI[/url]

[QUOTE=M344587487;629782]Linux is fine without a swap file, until you fill RAM and hell may or may not break loose.[/QUOTE]It is the same behaviour with a swap, it is maybe delayed for a few minutes instead.

Linux handles memory allocations badly. The [i]correct[/i] method for handling low memory is to simply deny excess allocations, and let the application figure it out when it doesn't get what is asks for. But sadly, Linux will gladly [url=https://mersenneforum.org/showthread.php?p=588922#post588922]greatly over-subscribe[/url] RAM, and then panic when an app actually tries to use it. :sad: I wish it was better.

[QUOTE=retina;629785]Linux will gladly [url=https://mersenneforum.org/showthread.php?p=588922#post588922]greatly over-subscribe[/url] RAM[/QUOTE]

You can [url=https://sysctl-explorer.net/vm/overcommit_memory/]tune that behaviour[/url]. It's enabled by default because some programs allocate way more memory than they actually use.

[QUOTE=Mark Rose;629854]You can [url=https://sysctl-explorer.net/vm/overcommit_memory/]tune that behaviour[/url]. It's enabled by default because some programs allocate way more memory than they actually use.[/QUOTE]I never knew that existed. :tu:

How can changes be made persistent? Isn't the /proc stuff volatile?

[QUOTE=retina;629857]I never knew that existed. :tu:

How can changes be made persistent? Isn't the /proc stuff volatile?[/QUOTE]

You could always set it in your .bashrc

[QUOTE=retina;629857]I never knew that existed. :tu:

How can changes be made persistent? Isn't the /proc stuff volatile?[/QUOTE]

Well it's controllable with [URL="https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/sysctl.d.html"]sysctl[/URL], so you can put vm.overcommit_memory=2 in /etc/systctl.d/somefile.conf

Since I was updated to v22H2, I have been seeing popup boxes appear on my screens on two systems. The are like a flash only lasting long enough to noticed. Perhaps just a few 100th's of a second. Sometimes they are white and other times, black. They don't cover the entire screen. Just the upper-left part. This happens multiple times a day during my waking hours. They don't seem to affect anything running.

As for v22H2, I didn't want it, but it was slipped in as part of an automatic update. :ermm: