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[soongsc]

I've been running MC16 for some time on a notebook running Vista.  Operation is VERY sluggish and MC just hangs there often.  I have not had this problem with XP on a notebook with less power.  Is Vista the problem?

[JimH]

Probably not.

Can you describe what the files are and where the files are?  LAN?  Local drive?

A virus checker could account for the problem.

See the "Weird Problems" link in my signature for other ideas.

[Matt]

You might use logging (Help > Logging) to see if you can see what Media Center is working.

A lot of Media Center's development has happened on Vista machines, so I don't think that's the issue.

[Mr ChriZ]

Running MC Vista Combination here no problems

[AndyCircuit]

Not in general but I saw a lot Vista laptops with 1GB RAM only. Vista with less than 2GB is swapping like mad and appears frozen very often.
Mine came with 2GB and ran barely smoothly only after upgrading to 3GB, really smoothly only after upgrading to Win 7.

[glynor]

Not in general but I saw a lot Vista laptops with 1GB RAM only. Vista with less than 2GB is swapping like mad and appears frozen very often.
Mine came with 2GB and ran barely smoothly only after upgrading to 3GB, really smoothly only after upgrading to Win 7.

I don't run anything with less than 4GB, but I have to agree a bit here.  If you're running Vista on underpowered hardware, or especially if you have limited RAM, it will impact all system performance (and certainly will appear in MC).

I have an older machine at work that runs Vista, and MC certainly doesn't perform quite like it did on the same PC when it was on WinXP (though I wouldn't say it doesn't "work" in any way).  But I did notice a drop in performance.  And, that is a fairly powerful PC for its age, as it is a Pentium D (Netburst architecture) 3.2GHz with 4GB of RAM.  On older, or slower, lower-end hardware... You'll probably see lots of general performance problems.

Windows 7 is MUCH better.  Take the plunge if your stuff supports it.  Just make sure to wipe the machine and install from scratch.  Just say no to Windows upgrade installs.

[AndyCircuit]

I don't run anything with less than 4GB, but I have to agree a bit here.

1. His Vista is most likely 32 Bit which supports, bummer, only 3GB
2. Saw a lot older laptops (like 3 years old) that don't support 2GB modules for whatever reason (No, no new Bios updates anymore)
Maybe the OP reveals more details about his hardware before we dig any deeper, which was the intension of my post.

[soongsc]

Probably not.

Can you describe what the files are and where the files are?  LAN?  Local drive?

A virus checker could account for the problem.

See the "Weird Problems" link in my signature for other ideas.

On this particular Vista machine.  I'm using Microsoft "security essentials"  Library and files are all on a network drive.  2GB RAM.

On the XP machine which is a slower single core machine, I think I have 1.5GB RAM, running pc cillin.  Library is on local drive and files on network drive.

[glynor]

Sometimes MSSE can cause sporadic performance problems with MC.  I use MSSE on all of my systems, and for some reason, I have to exclude MC's processes from MSSE on only two machines (both Windows 7).  I don't know why it doesn't impact the other machines, which are configured very similarly.  It might have something to do with drive access times or something... Who knows?

Either way, solution here:
http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=60517.0

2GB of RAM should be enough that you won't see dramatic performance problems with applications like MC, so long as you're not running it on a very low-end CPU.  As I mentioned before, MC on my Vista machine at the office works fine.  A bit worse performance (generally) than I got on WinXP on the same machine, but we're not talking night-and-day, just slightly.

[soongsc]

The problem still persists with vista no matter what I do with MSSE, I'm going to assume Vista has bad wireless network performance since things work fine if I have all files and library on the local computer.

[Frobozz]

There are some network and wireless network drivers that are just pain pigs.  Big enough pigs or resource hogs that they'll affect the playback of audio.

Try running the DPC Latency Checker and see if you get big red bars indicating very high DPC latency.  If you do see DPC latency problems then read up on what's on the DPC Latency Checker web page for background on what's going on and how to hunt around for the cause.  Sometimes disabling the wireless networking driver will fix the problem.  If that's the case then fine an updated version of the wireless driver and cross your fingers in hope that the updated driver behaves better.

You can also try LatencyMon.  It checks for the same DPC latency issues but gives a bit more information about what drivers or processes may be causing the high latency.

[soongsc]

Thanks for the input.  I guess I didn't think of these tools because the playback is fine if library and files are on the local computer.  On another XP computer I was trying out, the library was local but files on the NAS, on this Vista computer, library and files are both on the NAS with a different library where both files and library are local.

On the Vista computer, it seems that MC hangs during buffering and opening.

[Frobozz]

The connection with DPC is out in left field since you aren't experiencing audio glitches.  But DPC does cause blocking and if the network drivers are being pigs the signs may show up in a tool like LatencyMon.

Process Explorer and Process Monitor by Sysinternals may also be able to show if a process is not playing nice and blocking/locking for a long period.

Also check to see if Windows Defender is running.  It has a potential to get enabled even if you have other AV software running.  If it is running while other AV software is running it will bog things down.  Run Windows Defender (from the control panel or start menu).  If it is disabled it will say "Windows Defender is turned off" when it tries to open.

[newsposter]

As a general rule, if you must run an anti-malware/virus on your media machine, you should probably disable on-demand scanning of your media types (mpg, mp4, etc).

And doing on-demand scanning of network drives/shares is always problematic.

[soongsc]

Both the XP and Vista systems have antivirus software.  XP has the PC Cillin, Vista has the MSSE.
Tried the latency monitor, the Vista system NTKRNLPA has the highest DPC which is the windows kernel.

[soongsc]

Stuck in a new hard drive and installed Win7, LatencyMon reports have significantly improved!  Windows experience index increased from 2.0 to 3.7!  Vista was really bad!

[Frobozz]

Vista isn't universally bad for audio or performance.  But there's some configurations that will cause it to do poorly.  Windows 7 did some work to improve performance problems.  Looks like you had a configuration that got quite a good boost from whatever it is that Windows 7 changed.

There was some info in MSDN during the development of Windows 7 that got into some of the performance related improvements.  Here's one article: Improving Audio Glitch Resilience in Windows 7
I had some other articles bookmarked relating to audio changes in Windows 7 and performance improvements.  But I seem to have lost them, and my bing-fu ain't finding them.

[soongsc]

I would be interested in using the tools they use to evaluate audio performance.  Going into audio quality measurements is not easy.  I think that Windows is quite limited in what can be done.

This is the first time I've encountered a Vista based computer, hated it from the start.  You never know what it's doing, and the interface is really not intuitive.  In a single word "terrible".  Upgrading to Win7 was impossible because of how I located the paths to accommodate disk usage the way it was partitioned.  The upgrade simply could not detect the path of the files that were expanded during the upgrade process, which tell me that the programming standards and verification process is not as good and efficient as they could be.