Windows Slowing Down
 

Hello
I am running Limewire pro 4.6.0 with java 1.5.0_01 on a windows xp home ediotion. Whenever I open up Limewire it always slows down my computer. My computer has around a gig of ram so there is no reason for this. This is the only program that seems to slow down when I open it and then when I minimize it into the tray my computer speeds back up. What do you think the problem is and is there anyway I can fix that.

Thanks
David

PC Slow Down
 

Jarritos/David

The problem could be LW but have you tried a few housekeeping tricks and tips:

a) Run Ad-Aware SE and Spybot, to get rid of any hidden spyware/adware. Windows always slows down when a hard disk is burdened with hidden junk.

b) Run your anti-virus software, to kill off anything nasty running on your machine.

c) defrag your hard disk, this should be done once a month to keep your HD running at peak efficiency. A fragmented hard disk will always slow down access to and from itself as well as requiring more processing power.

Do the above and I am sure that will help your PC.

Meanwhile, others in this forum will give your more LW specific advice.



UK Bob

I have exactly the same complaint. Jarritos. My machine's super fast, with a ton of memory, no viruses, no spyware, regularly defragged, etc. And yet when I run LimeWire, everything on my PC slows down to an irritating level.

There's no way I can leave LimeWire open all the time, or my PC just becomes unusable. Which is sad, since the Gnutella network benefits from people connecting and staying connected. But its gotten so bad I now just connect long enough to get files from others, and then disconnect.

One of the more annoying symptoms I have is if I'm listening to MP3s or any other digital music on my PC, when I bring the LimeWire window to the foreground, the music just stutters and skips non-stop. When I minimize LimeWire, it gets better again.

I'm not sure if things got suddenly slower when I upgraded Java to 5.0, or if it was when I installed the latest LimeWire. I'm 90% sure the problem is one or the other of those, or the interaction between both of them.

A quick look at Windows Task Manager shows the LimeWire.exe process pegged at between 91% and 95% of the CPU. It's also using 104 megs of memory, which seems pretty extreme, given that Firefox "only" uses 76 megs and Outlook "only" uses 54 megs.

ps. My favorite Jarritos flavor is "pina" (sorry, I have no tilde on my keyboard) but I also like "tamarind".

Bring up task manager. Ctrl - Alt - Del
In Task manger ---- Processes ---- limewire. exe --- right mouse click ----- set priority to normal (or whatever priority works best on your machine)

Good suggestion, but it didn't solve the problem. LimeWire was already running at Normal priority. I tried setting it to the two lower settings, and it still caused other applications to slow down and still took greater than 85% of the CPU. The stuttering of music playing from iTunes decreased though. It didn't stop, but it did get less frequent.

Just for grins I tried setting it to priority High. Boy was that a mistake! Took me 5 minutes to kill LimeWire since even the Task Manager wouldn't respond anymore.

Same problem, looked into it a bit, first found it with Azureus (a java bittorrent client). My mates got the same issue, with limewire or azureus on java 1.5, haven't downgraded java yet, cos im a lazy guy, but hey I enjoy life :)
Now what similarities i've noticed with 90%cpu issues are:
*Java based p2p proggie - multiple connections
*Java 1.4+
*Athlon/AMD CPUs [in our cases]
*Windows XP SP1/2 [happens on both]

so the question is, do you have service pack 1 or 2 installed, and also, do you have an AMD processor?

I advise you to check out the azureus forums, I wonder if its just the multiple connections and graphically refresh-intensive gui-s

Infact I got the same high cpu usage issue with eXeem , but all the p2p apps work, they just slow me down like back in the day of my good old k6-2 350, ah what a beauty.... /me remenises back to the day and rolls another fat one

I've messed about with priorities loads, and even found that RemotelyAnywhere [a webbased remote control program] could auto-assign priorities to exe's everytime they load, and with dual processor systems even set a program to run on a specified cpu, therefore providing elementary load balancing :)

anyone with duals fancy giving it a try, bet its nice :D

Oh forgot to add, my problem is slightly worse with a mildly tempramental wireless network, but my connectivity is like 99.9% up 24/7 and i tested with cable aswell so its not that.

I am using XP Home SP 2 on an Athlon 64 cpu, with Java 1.5.0.

Some interesting pointers about Java: post 1 & also post 2 by verdyp which are both very entailed. lol
Java is not very memory efficient unfortunately.

You can reduce drag on your system by using a few small tips: Don't resume all your files. Set your downloads to auto-clear. Close/hide windows you're not using at that time (eg: connections, monitor & library windows.) Reduce the no. of shared folders or files or choose smaller files as alternatives. Reduce the no. of incomplete files by going to to incomplete folder (whilst LW is closed) & deleting those at 0 KB. Then open LW & arrange your downlds by Progress (click on top of progress column bar) & delete all those at 0%. Delete search results that are older than a few hours (they go stale after a while anyway.) Other things you might consider are reduce either or both upload & download bandwidth. Disable ultrapeer capabilities under Speed in options.

Allow LW to settle down before doing anthing with LW. Give it 20 or 30 mins before using it. Just some ideas.

Well if you all are into trying things. I heard through the grapevine that Java is very RAM inefficent, and also uses virtual memory.

I played around a little yesterday with this comp's virtual memory settings in WinXP. Control panel>Systems>advanced. Got it to choke when I went below 500 megs. It was automatically set at 765 megs. I increased to 1 geg, and it has been running a little more efficent. Don't know if you have that much HDD space to use for VM.

BTW- I do have my processor setup to run in HT mode.:D

So it's the java or what? If I need to tweak my system, then the program or java it uses is the problem.

I've been a P2P monster for years and currently use other major progs with no tweaking other than opening ports and configurations inside each program itself and have no problems at all with any of them.

I first tried LW a year or so ago and canned it for spyware. Not finding any now but, not happy with the java thing.

Other than messing with my virtual memory and shifting priority in Task mgr, are there any other solutions at all?