CVF and MSDEV exeedingly slow under Win XP Pro

[chstoyer]

I am in the process of moving my development from a Win 98 SE machine to a Win XP Pro machine. While compilation and linking are much faster on the XP Pro machine, loading, editing and returning from a debug session to the edit session are excruciatingly slow.

For instance, a project which loads in 15 seconds under Win 98 SE takes 20 minutes and 40 seconds under Win XP Pro. Copying lines from one file to another takes forever compared to the other system. New system has 2 Gb of RAM and a 147 Gb hard disk which has 121 Gb of free space on it.

Win 98 SE machine has 768 Mb RAM anda 10Gb disk with less than 1 Gb free.

I did do a disk defrag and that seemed to help some, but it is still excruciatingly slow.

Win 98 machine does have MS VC++ and Microsoft Studio installed on top of the CVF install. I am running Visual Fortran 6.6c on the XP machine and VC++ enterprise edition on top of V 6.6c on the Win 98 machine.

Is there some setting that I need to make somewhere to take care of this bottleneck? It is driving me nuts.

Current project is ca. 81 files and 170 Mb of source code.

I can provide more info as needed.

Thanks for any help,

Charles.

[Steven_L_Intel1]

There is something very wrong with your new system, but I have no idea what it might be. There is no "setting" I know of that would affect this.

The only thing I can suggest checking is to see if you are using a network share for your files. Also, try temporarily disabling your anti-virus to see if that makes a difference.

[chstoyer]

I figured there was something very wrong. For instance, I have maybe 8 files "open" in MSDEV. If I am editing a file with 729 lines and I am around line 230, I move a line of code 10 lines up and it takes minutes to do that. This sort of thing was even slow on the win 98 SE machine, but it would take seconds, not minutes.

All other apps on the system seem to run fine. I can open a 170 Mb picture with PaintShopPro and it is quick. I can edit it and it is quick. I can view and edit videos and it is quick.

I restarted my computer, cold boot. I pressed ctrl-alt-delete to bring up the task manager. I ran MSDEV (Visual Studio) and watched. System Idle Process was always more than 90 (%, I guess). MSDEV was never more thana few points. incdsrv.exe - SYSTEM was the most active, sporadically. svchost.exe NETWORK SERVICE was a little active here and there. Nothing else seems to be active; they are all 00.

Everything is on a brand new 147 Gb C drive with 121 Gb free. I am on a home network but I am not accessing anything on the network. Besides, the network is fast. We have wireless internet connection. The same connection is on the Win 98 SE and the Win XP Pro machine. My wife and a notebook PC that I use occasionally are the only machines on the network besides the new XP machine and the 98 SE machine. We are on almost 2 acres, surrounded by like properties,so the likelihood of someone else tapping into our wireless network is quite remote.

I did disable Norton Anti Virus auto protect on the task bar (lower right corner of screen) and that did not help.

I defragged the disk again, installed MSDEV C++ Enterprise over the CVF install and reinstalled CVF. I did not register (I am already registered).

As I say, everything on this machine runs like I am on a super computer, except MSDEV which runs like I am on an XT at 4 MHz and a 20 Meg hard disk being rotated by squirrels in a cage. Even the compile time is lickety-split, compared to the Win 98 SE machine.

Coming back from debug takes forever. If I crash (illegal access or something) I can never get back to the code by selecting debug as I can on the Win 98 machine. It always closes the program and returns me to edit mode. If I run in debug mode, I encounter a break point and see a problem, if I press F5 and then close the progam, I am still in debug mode. I have to press the stop debugging button. After pressing stop debugging, it is several minutes before I can do anything again.

If I try toadd a line of code, it locks up for a couple of minutes, like trying to move a line of code. Eventually it gets moved or added. Editing a single line without adding, deleting or moving a line does not cause a problem.

It is very frustrating. Any suggestions appreciated.

Charles.

[Steven_L_Intel1]

Reboot into Safe Mode (press F8 during the initial boot screen) and try using MSDEV. My guess is that it will be fine - if so, that tells us that some background software is interfering.

[chstoyer]

I tried restarting under safe mode. I logged on as administrator, other choice was as myself.

Loading the project took 40 seconds, not fast (win 98 took 15 to start MSDEV and load project) but much better than 20 minutes.

Moving a line of code 10 lines up from line 236 of 730 took 20 seconds, again not fast but better than before.

Suggestions to finding out what is interfering are welcome. It does seem that safe mode helped a lot although I don't think I can work there.

I have a long list of what is running, attached as running.jpg. I just realized I could attach it.

Charles.

[sabalan]

Charles, the problem is caused, most probably, by ctfmon.exe. Read this thread.

Sabalan.

Message Edited by intel.software.network.support on 12-09-2005 09:58 AM

[chstoyer]

Sabalan,

I did a clean boot. If I disable everything, and I do mean everything except what is impossible to disable, the project loads in 40 seconds. Remember it took 15 seconds on a 5-year old Win 98 SE machine. Moving a line of code near line 236 in a file with about 730 lines takes 20 seconds. Undoing the move takes the same.

I removed ctfmon.exe. It seems successful as it never shows up in the task manager. Now the project loads in 10 minutes (40 times slower than on my Win 98 SE machine).

When I start MSDEV (Visual Studio), it loads all the file names and shows them in the tree. Then it starts loading the files themselves. It starts with 3 blue boxes in the progress bar (it used to start with two). After about 40 seconds, another 2 blue boxes appear. I have not made a statistical study of loading times, but 10 minutes is way too long.

If I do a safe boot, it still loads more quickly (40 sec), so it seems something which is being loaded is conflicting with MSDEV file loading and editing, question is to find out what.

If I use msconfig and do not load startup items, this does not help. If I do not process system.ini, this does not help. I am not sure how to proceed to find out what is causing the problem and I am becoming more frustrated with it by the hour.

Any constructive help would be appreciated. Going back to Win 98 SE is tempting, but some of the errors my clients are getting under win XP do not show up when running in Win 98 SE, whether I am in the debugger or not.

Thanks for help,

Charles.

[chstoyer]

Just to make sure I supply all info:

I am running Compaq Visual Fortran 6.6c and Visual Studio 6 installed on top of that, with Fortran installed again on top of that.

I started with just the Fortran install and installing anything else did not change anything.

Is there a newer version of this? Why is no one else having similar problems?

Charles.

[chstoyer]

I removed MS Office 2003 from my computer completely and it did not help. I removed some video editing software (Pinnacle Studio 9) and that did not help. I had previously used SpyBot and AdAware to remove spyware and such (did not find much) and that did not help.

I am not sure where to turn now.

The issue is really not with Fortran it is with the MSDEV Microsoft Studio.

Charles.

[Steven_L_Intel1]

The "newer version" is Intel Visual Fortran 8.1 running on top of Microsoft Visual Studio.NET. There won't be any newer versions of CVF.

Since booting into Safe Mode made a big difference, you can create a list of processes present in normal boot that are absent in Safe Mode. Using msconfig, disable as many startup processes as you can in a normal boot to see if you can restore performance. Start adding them back in to see which one is the culprit.

I will say that the performance you are seeing even in Safe Mode is not typical.

[chstoyer]

Is Intel 8.1 an upgrade to CVF 6.6c? What is the cost?

Next, I am using Winteracter. I think my Winteracter for CVF will not work with Intel 8.1. Maybe you don't know the answer to this.

My wife's XP Home SP2 machine is even slower than mine. I tried it there to see if something was particular to mine. Hers is a DELL.

So I am beginning to believe there is a devinite incompatibility between XP and MSDEV. Am I the only one with this problem?

Disabling startup processes one by one does not seem cost effective, as there are so many. So far, it seems I must disable them all (except the 2 or 3 that are absolutely necessary).

I agree that even the performance in clean boot mode (forget safe mode - graphics are too crappy) is extremely poor by comparison to Win 98 SE. It is only good in comparison to normal boot mode.

BTW, I did search and destroy spy and ad ware, get rid of ctfmon.exe, remove office 2003 completely, removed pinnacle studio 9 - nothing made much if any difference.

Charles.

[chstoyer]

Looking at the Intel web pages, it does not appear that there is an upgrade from CVF 6.6 to Intel 8.1.

Also, it appears that I must purchase Visual Studio.NET separately.

Since my issue is not with the Fortran but with the VS IDE, it would seem that purchasing the VS upgrade would be the first step, then upgrade compiler and Winteracter library if there was a reason to do so?

Does that sound correct?

Charles.

[anthonyrichards]

I have 6.6c installed on 2 machines running XP Pro (+SP2) and observe nothing like your problems. It cannot be an CVF/XP pro incompatability, IMHO.

How much memory do you have on your machines?

[chstoyer]

Thanks for your reply.

XP Pro has 2 Gb memory, 147 Gb hard disk w/ 125 Gb or so free. 3.2 MHz Intel P4.

XP Home is a Dell machine and has 640 Mb of RAM, 38 Gb disk, 27 Gb free. 2.4 MHz.

This is not a memory/disk space issue, there is plenty of both.

Interesting that you have no problems. This implies that it can maybe be fixed. I have two quite different machines, one from Dell and one from our old standby supplier and both have this really wierd problem, which makes it really impossible to get any development done.

I have always noticed the editors were a bit slow when lines were moved or inserted, even under Win 98 SE. It seemed worse the more files you had open and the bigger they were and the closer to the top you were editing.

Nothing else I run on these machines seems slow.

Charles.

[chstoyer]

I did disable my anti-virus (same one on the Win 98 machine) with no difference. I tried it again and still no joy.

I downloaded the Process Explorer from www.sysinternals.com and used that. It gives a bit more info than the task manager (ctrl-alt-del) and I then became suspicious of InCD by Ahead Software AG (now Nero) which is part of the DVD R/RW drivers and allows your programs to write to the DVD.

After uninstalling that, I am now down to a 40 sec load time (still slow by the Win 98 SE standards, but much better than 20 minutes). No other software seems to be interfering now.

Still a 40 sec load and 20 sec edit (I am back to about the same as the clean boot or safe boot) is not really satisfactory, it is workable for a while.

Now it is time to check out hardware.

Charles.

[Steven_L_Intel1]

Intel Visual Fortran is the "successor product" to Compaq Visual Fortran. The CVF team was hired by Intel in 2001. There was a "migration discount" for a while, but it is not in effect now. There has been no development of CVF since September 2001, and no bug fixes since about a year ago.

The minimal MS purchase is Visual C++.NET 2003 Standard Edition, with a street price of around $80. You don't need all of VS.NET.

[sabalan]

Charles, in my company we havethe same combination as yours on 3 computers both with W2K and XP, and never had such problem as yours, except for with ctfmon.exe.

Sabalan.

[lionardo]

I have the same problem Charles has but on Win2000 Pro. Loading files in Msdev VC6.0 takes long time. Editing files like paste insert of a new line takes over 15 seconds. It is unbearable. Intel Pentium 4/1.8GHz machine with 1GB RAM and 40GB disk. I have following applications installed - McAffee VirusScan Enterprise 7.1.0 (running) - MS VC .NET - CTFMON.EXE (running) - VMWARE.EXE (running) ... Lionardo

[chstoyer]

lionardo,

Delete your NCB and OPT files so they can be rebuilt. This is what solved my problem in the end.

Now it is like lightning!

Charles.

[lionardo]

Thanks, I delete these files from time to time, but the problems returns back very quickly. Lionardo

[chstoyer]

You might try upgrading to XP Pro. I have had no problems since deleting my OPT and NCB files and that was several weeks ago.

Even if I have to delete them once every month or so, no big deal.

Also, maybe free disk space and RAM might be an issue. I have more than 100 Gb free disk and 2 Mb of RAM.

Charles.