Usenet Explorer

Hi.

I've been a long time user of both newspro and UE.

However it seem now that UE is using quite a lot of CPU whilst downloading bodies.

Its averaging 45% of the CPU when downloading anything (using 10 threads). Lowering the threads doesnt seem to help.

I think this may be related to my recent broadband upgrade to 20MB as I now download at 2.3MB/s..

I've disabled anti-virus and set it to exclude the UE database anyway, and that has made no difference.

System:
Intel P4 2.8 (running at 3.2)
2gig memory
UE database on a Raid 0 setup.

did you try to uninstall antivirus temporarily?

cpu usage should be low, something is messing in the way.

i have here a slow connection to verify, but i have an idea, let us check...

i've just run it on the server computer headers download speed 1.75MB/sec it is about 15mbps processor usage on average maybe 12%, usually at 6-7% peaks at 28% at moments when it processes header batches.

when i download bodies i see processor usage about 4-5% on average 7% at momentous peaks, i'm getting envious i cannot download so fast here, files just pop up one after another

you should see similar processor usage with 20mbps.

article downloads are inherently simple so it is easy to implement it fast, with header download CPU consumption it is very unlikely you'll be able to find a match to UE, since the database is very heavily optimized for the task.

in short it is your antivirus, also check task manager which process takes CPU, if UE it is the antivirus driver.

third party firewalls antiviruses create many problems with their drivers, maybe microsoft didn't document things well.

here i also made screenshot of CPU usage chart:



the same computer is running the server, so idle means CPU usage of the indexing server itself (i didn't stop it ). the processor is old 2.4Ghz Athlon 3700, with Intel 2.8 at 3.2GHz it is maybe about the same as your processor speed.

if the newsgroup view is closed, the header download CPU consumption will be less (much less), most CPU goes to updating newsgroups views (sorting headers, arranging them into collections etc).

with downloading bodies you can see it is almost not different from the idle background level.

Hi Alex.

Heres my CPU useage whilst downloading bodies with UE.



and here it is with Zonealarm disabled:



Seems to be very little difference between the two.

It is UE.exe that is using the CPU according to Task Manager.

probably it is your antivirus analyzing packets in the incoming traffic.

i saw something like that with norton and browser, opening some web pages brought internet explorer to 100% processor usage for considerable time.

try to uninstall your firewall/antivirus temporarily and let me know what is the picture then.

then - when you know the cause you can reinstall it and try to play with its settings to make it work right and not to interfere.

ok, so i fully uninstalled Zone Alarm.

CPU useage is now around 10%

So i guess thats what it was. Why doesnt it affect other apps though when I'm downloading?

if you reinstall it and if the problem doesn't develop right away but after some time - try to uncheck properties->general->keep alive, maybe also some driver bug with keeping connections along threads.

what i think again microsoft didn't make good documentation and doesn't reveal enough details so it is not possible to create well functioning firewall, maybe they are making it on puprose since it is their sphere of interest (ISA server etc.).

zonealarm it seems was bought by checkpoint.

i saw driver issues with NOD32 and zonealarm, as to symantec i don't remember their driver crashes and there was reported some problem with kaspersky lately. if those are crashes the problem is frequently bypassed by unchecking keep alive. kaspersky crashed the system, NOD32 may give crashes in imon32.dll or ntdll.dll and zonealarm ntdll.dll (ntdll.dll is windows driver responsible for memory heap allocations i saw it hit by malfunctioning drivers, if drivers improperly frees memory the heap gets corrupted).

but in your case most likely you need to find some ZoneAlarm option to disable analyzing incoming UE trafic, since processor usage means the driver just sits there and eats processor time trying to match virus signatures.

strange how you manage to run Intel 2.8Ghz with overclocking if it is pentium IV with hyperthreading, i had such processor it is getting very hot, on 3.2Ghz you probably need to put the computer in the ice box

Hi Alex.. thanks for the replies.

Well I decided to try installing Norton Internet Security.. and guess what I get high processor useage with that too!

If it was the firewall surely it would be the firewall process using all the CPU rather than UE.exe?

Try to manage firewall settings, probably you can do it in both programs.

If firewall driver analyzes traffic because of large volume of data it consumes CPU time, it works like UE issues read on socket, but before data is returned to UE the driver scans, it has nothing to do with the application itself.

So what you need to do is to exclude UE from antovirus scanning its network data and since it is not UE code which does it (firewall is not visible to UE it deals only with windows sockets and connections, firwall drivers sit lower under the user function layer which is the one visible to applications).

Try to check on the internet how to prevent high processor usage through changing firewall settings, you should find some solution.

At least it is not UE so you can figure something out, with newspro for example download bodies speed would be the same as UE but for headers with 20mbps probably CPU usage would be high.

Zone Alarm has had a bad rep in that area for years. It is good protection
but bad for operations

Maybe something like NOD32 (ESET) or the free version of AVG/Kaspersky.

Hal