ObjectDock generates a lot of Page faults

Sunday, June 4, 2006 by NK3 | Discussion: ObjectDock

My ObjectDock generates a lot of Page faults.
Any idea what this could be?
Any check I should be doing?
18 Reply 3 Referrals
Dr W - Fences Support
Reply #1 Sunday, June 4, 2006 9:18 PM
NK3: ObjectDock does a lot of paging of unused memory to the disk when inactive. The reason it does this is for memory savings, since managing all those 256x256/128x128 4-channel icons and bitmaps can get memory intensive. There is a setting for this in the most recent version that should help with this, check the Advanced settings in v1.3 for the ability to have ObjectDock be "optimized for speed" instead of "optimized for memory".

-Jeff
ObjectDock Developer

NK3
Reply #2 Wednesday, June 14, 2006 1:37 AM
I did as you mentioned but still have a lot of page faults

Is there a way to optimize the location of all the icons?

Dr W - Fences Support
Reply #3 Wednesday, June 14, 2006 4:49 AM
Hi NK3,

Hrm. Currently I can't think of anything that would be more effetive than the mentioned recommendation. I'll have to look a little more into if there's anything else that can be done to avoid these page faults. Thank you for bringing it up

Best Regards,
-Jeff Bargmann
ObjectDock Developer

thomassen
Reply #4 Wednesday, June 14, 2006 5:14 AM
How do you know if there's page faults?

Chris TH
Reply #5 Wednesday, June 14, 2006 8:05 AM
Open Task Manager, select the 'Processes' tab.

open menu: 'View->Select Columns...", tick the 'Page Faults' box.

And Bob's your uncle...

Posted via WinCustomize Browser/Stardock Central

thomassen
Reply #6 Wednesday, June 14, 2006 8:31 AM
hmm..
It displays 88,500 for OD here. But 5,700,000 for Rainmeter and 3,000,000 for Explorer. Is this somethign I should be worried about? What is a page fault anyway?

Corky_O
Reply #7 Wednesday, June 14, 2006 9:11 AM

Here is one definition from a Win 2000 paper:

"Memory: Page faults/sec—Page faults happen when a program tries to use memory that's part of its working set and can't find it. Page faults come in two varieties: hard and soft. Hard page faults occur when the needed page must be loaded from the hard disk. Soft page faults happen when a program is found somewhere else in memory other than where the program expected to find it."

I believe the XP Kernel was written to use the page faults in the "Prefetch" process during boot up and application start, so at least some benefits can be gained from page faults and using the prefetch mechanism to decrease process slow downs due to hard drive head movements.

Not a coder, so that is about all I can list with anything resembling "intelligence".


ZubaZ
Reply #8 Wednesday, June 14, 2006 9:43 AM
Wow. I turned on the PF delta and if I move my mouse over a tabbed dock quickly I can generate 1k+ of delta constantly. Cool!

Posted via WinCustomize Browser/Stardock Central

thomassen
Reply #9 Wednesday, June 14, 2006 3:01 PM
hmm... What's the difference between Pagefaults and Pagefaults Delta?

ZubaZ
Reply #10 Wednesday, June 14, 2006 3:05 PM
Delta is the change +/- of whatever.

I can make the pagefaults skyrocket if I want. Doesn't seem to matter much in regards to performance. Just an observation.

Posted via WinCustomize Browser/Stardock Central

Bichur
Reply #11 Wednesday, June 14, 2006 7:58 PM
hmm... I thought this was gonna be another article about some congressman shifting blame.

werewolf
Reply #12 Saturday, June 17, 2006 3:36 PM
good grief!!!! I added that column and there are hundreds of thousands of page faults.

Firefox - 276,744
NaturalDesktop - 163,402
Explorer - 80,767 and climbing constantly
Nextart - 89,726 and climbing constantly
Yahoo widget engine - 758,771

Is there something wrong with my machine?? This all looks really wrong.

Corky_O
Reply #13 Saturday, June 17, 2006 8:29 PM

This may help (or confuse) depending on your point of view http://www.osronline.com/article.cfm?article=222

It would seem that Windows is doing a lot of work "behind the scenes" to keep everything as smooth as possible for the complete operation of the machines.


werewolf
Reply #14 Sunday, June 18, 2006 11:53 AM
Thanks Corky_0...At least I understood what it said. I think I'm just going to delete that column and pretend I never saw it. It's just giving me the heebie jeebies

Corky_O
Reply #15 Sunday, June 18, 2006 12:46 PM

I think I'm just going to delete that column and pretend I never saw it.

I agree.

There is nothing to be done for it. Programs that need to access information (pages) to work are bound to find that the processor (and prefetch) mechanism can't forsee all that the program may need. Not to mention that the startup of most processes are bound to need some paging to the hard drive.

In another article on servers, one technician pointed out that the longer you leave a machine running (and by extension the loaded processes), the more page faults will be seen.


werewolf
Reply #16 Sunday, June 18, 2006 1:21 PM
yeah....it's just that hundreds of thousands of page faults on one application were giving me the creeps

Chris TH
Reply #17 Sunday, June 18, 2006 11:17 PM
hundreds of thousands of page faults on one application


OD+ has 32 million on my PC (after running for 1/2 a day) and I don't notice any drop in performance...

Posted via WinCustomize Browser/Stardock Central

GreenReaper
Reply #18 Monday, June 19, 2006 11:28 AM
Despite the name, a page fault ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Page%20fault ) is not a big thing. It just means "I couldn't find this information immediately to hand, so I had to go elsewhere to get it". It is part of how Windows memory management works (and indeed how most moden operating systems work). The only time it breaks something is when the application didn't actually have access to that memory to start with, which usually indicates a bug in the app.

Obviously if an application is causing excessive page faults then that may indicate that performance is being lowered, but you have to measure to tell whether or not it's actually affecting things. If it is a "soft" page fault that can be satisfied by the disk cache then it will take very little time, even in computer terms.

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