Periodic max CPU usage by nRecord on Win7 Clean install

[Stuart_P]

I upgraded to win 7 from XP a while back, but couldn't get everything to perform as well as on XP so I reverted back to XP until this weekend when I thought I'd give 7 and NPVR 2.2.6 another go.

I decided to use 'Tiny7' instead of my regular Windows 7 installation since it is so much smaller and hence loads faster etc.

Anyway, after checking and installing all the prerequisites and NPVR + the latest updates I was up and running, but a problem I'd not been able to solve last time I used win7 has appeared again.

nRecord.exe idles at 0%-1% CPU usage, but every 3-5 seconds it blips up to 50% (I've got a dual core CPU, so assume max on one core), then it falls back down to 1%. Task manager shows the memory allocated to nrecord changes as the CPU usage changes, but what is it doing, and why? It always idles at close to 0% on XP (same hardware). I've left it for several hours and the periodic CPU usage seems endless. I've tried stopping and restarting the service, stopping the tray icon, and running/not running NPVR. all result in the same periodic CPU spikes.

Logs can be uploaded later (at work now, logs are at home!), but looking at them last night shows nothing out of the ordinary.

I'd appreciate any help, advice, comments anyone can offer.

Stuart.

System:
OS : Windows Tiny7 (cut down version of Win7)
CPU : Dual Core Atom330 1.6 GHz
GFX : NVidia ION (285.58 WHQL)
MOBO : Asus AT3N7A-I
RAM : 2GB DDR2
HDD1 : 4GB CF card on CF to SATA adapter
HDD2 : 2TB WD Caviar Green
TUNER : MobiDtv Pro Dual USB AF9035/9015
REMOTE : Cyberlink PowerDVD (with AutoHotKey Script for button allocation)

[imilne]

Have you tried it with a normal Windows 7 install? As far as I can tell from reading around, Tiny7 is not a legal copy of Windows 7 and has so much stuff stripped out of it that you can pretty much expect lots of things to not work.

Iain

[Stuart_P]

Have you tried it with a normal Windows 7 install? As far as I can tell from reading around, Tiny7 is not a legal copy of Windows 7 and has so much stuff stripped out of it that you can pretty much expect lots of things to not work.

Iain

I think I will have to try that, but the full Win7 simply wont fit on my CF card so i'll have to get a new HDD/SSD as a CF will crawl with the full OS installed.

For the record, my XP NPVR install was using TinyXP and that was flawless except for no support for DXVA2 and the VMR7/9 FSE issues.

You are right, a lot is stripped out, but 99% of it is bulk and not needed. I've been using TinyXP for several years (laptop and HTPC) and never found a single program that wouldn't run on it, but maybe there is something from 7 that is needed by NPVR and has been stripped out of Tiny7.

A note on legality, I'm no expert, but the way I see it is that these releases are nothing more than cut down versions of the full OS (something you can do yourself if you have the tools, time and skill) Using such a release with your own product key should be legal since you buy a licence to use the OS from MS, not the actual OS. Using them without a valid licence is obviously illegal.

[mvallevand]

Does stopping NTRay.exe, NEWA or the SideBar Gadget (if installed) help? These make periodic and relatively frequent calls to NRecord. I think some setting in NEWA even make regular WMI calls.

Martin

[Stuart_P]

Does stopping NTRay.exe, NEWA or the SideBar Gadget (if installed) help? These make periodic and relatively frequent calls to NRecord. I think some setting in NEWA even make regular WMI calls.

Martin

Stopping nTray doesn't have any effect. Not got any sidebar Gadgets installed, so that can't be it, but i will have a look at disabling NEWA, although that isn't an ideal solution as I want to use the nDroid app and i think that uses NEWA, but i could be wrong.

[ShiningDragon]

You can download processexplorer from the microsoft sysinternals suite. With this handy dandy tool you can take a much deeper look on what's going on.

[martint123]

Have you tried it with a normal drive as the system drive?. ISTR having problems with a SATA<>SD adapter and slow writes causing problems.
(ended up with a vertex 60gb).

[Reddwarf]

Stopping nTray doesn't have any effect. Not got any sidebar Gadgets installed, so that can't be it, but i will have a look at disabling NEWA, although that isn't an ideal solution as I want to use the nDroid app and i think that uses NEWA, but i could be wrong.

Due to a bug/typoo in the current version it is not possible to stop NEWA, but you can update to the latest version (see add-ons forum)

[Stuart_P]

You can download processexplorer from the microsoft sysinternals suite. With this handy dandy tool you can take a much deeper look on what's going on.

Thanks, I'll give that a try before I start messing about with disks and OS re-installs!

Have you tried it with a normal drive as the system drive?. ISTR having problems with a SATA<>SD adapter and slow writes causing problems.
(ended up with a vertex 60gb).

I have got a driver installed that is supposed to buffer all disk writes to ram and also cache disk reads to ram too, but it still feels sluggish so you could have a point. I've got an old 80GB drive that I'll try if I can't fix the problem, I was hoping for a low power system hence the CF, and with the current price of HDD's It will have to be a semi-low power system for a while

Stuart

[martint123]

I was hoping for a low power system hence the CF, and with the current price of HDD's It will have to be a semi-low power system for a while

Not suggested as a solution, just a diagnostic.