Windowsblinds performance hit causing WinAmp to skip?
Sunday, April 18, 2004 by smbunn | Discussion: WinCustomize Talk
My AMD 3200+ has 1 GB RAM and a NVIDIA 5200 graphics card. When running Windowblinds and windowsfx and then running task manager..processess... I see that system idle is about 98% but every couple of seconds "system" jumps from 0 to 8 or 9%. I shut down every application and almost every process then ran winamp. Every song I play hiccups every few seconds, at the same time I see "system" jump to 10%. I tried iTunes. and Musicmatch player as well as windows media player 9, all exhibit the same skipping.
None of this happened before I installed windowblinds and windowsfx, is this performance hit normal?
I would have thought my computer had enough grunt to run winamp without skipping!
None of this happened before I installed windowblinds and windowsfx, is this performance hit normal?
I would have thought my computer had enough grunt to run winamp without skipping!
smbunn
Reply #2 Tuesday, April 20, 2004 3:12 AM
Reply #2 Tuesday, April 20, 2004 3:12 AM
Windows XP Professional, SP2
Window Blinds 4.20.019
Windows fx 2.12.006
WinAmp v5.02 (x86) Feb 4 2004
Does this help?
Window Blinds 4.20.019
Windows fx 2.12.006
WinAmp v5.02 (x86) Feb 4 2004
Does this help?
Jafo
Reply #3 Tuesday, April 20, 2004 3:27 AM
Reply #3 Tuesday, April 20, 2004 3:27 AM
I bet it's a fault with WA5......3 was a dud...and I've no confidence in anything after 2.9x....
DesignCaddy
Reply #4 Tuesday, April 20, 2004 5:02 AM
Reply #4 Tuesday, April 20, 2004 5:02 AM
see the thread by frogboy titled 'myths & facts about windowblinds'.. it really doesn't make a footprint like that at all.. 2 megs i think? windowsfx however uses about 10 megs (with my settings, which arn't too many) and i'm not a stardock expert but i can imagine a transparency or animation being applied to winamp accounting for skippage.
however, i am on an athlon 1800 with a gig of ram, and i run itunes.. as unstable as itunes is on a pc, i've never had an interruption in audio like you're describing.. some of my windowsfx features slowed down the movement of items on my desktop, but even then the audio is un-affected. my video card is a radeon 8500, 128 meg.. what is your audio card?
i don't believe this is a problem of resources being robbed as much as it might be your hardware not performing correctly. the timing does suggest a program conflict, but are you certain your computer was not optimizing in the background, or doing some other maintenance? normall if your idle process is in full swing, windows is taking care of some buisness.. and if your harddrive is moving, you WILL get skipping in music.. music stream on top of accessing harddrive will interrupt the stream.
however, i am on an athlon 1800 with a gig of ram, and i run itunes.. as unstable as itunes is on a pc, i've never had an interruption in audio like you're describing.. some of my windowsfx features slowed down the movement of items on my desktop, but even then the audio is un-affected. my video card is a radeon 8500, 128 meg.. what is your audio card?
i don't believe this is a problem of resources being robbed as much as it might be your hardware not performing correctly. the timing does suggest a program conflict, but are you certain your computer was not optimizing in the background, or doing some other maintenance? normall if your idle process is in full swing, windows is taking care of some buisness.. and if your harddrive is moving, you WILL get skipping in music.. music stream on top of accessing harddrive will interrupt the stream.
Frogboy
Reply #6 Tuesday, April 20, 2004 9:04 AM
Reply #6 Tuesday, April 20, 2004 9:04 AM
I doubt either program is affecting it. The CPU use by either is pretty minimal. You could try disabling WindowFX and seeing if that helps.
lalfonsob
Reply #7 Tuesday, April 20, 2004 4:30 PM
Reply #7 Tuesday, April 20, 2004 4:30 PM
Yesterday, I updated WindowBlinds to the latest version (g) When I was checking the task manager, I couldn't believe it:
760kb.
760kb.
Rocky Nimda
Reply #8 Tuesday, April 20, 2004 5:15 PM
Reply #8 Tuesday, April 20, 2004 5:15 PM
Are you running any docklets in ObjectDock? There have been some of them that have caused me some problems. When I removed the docklets from ObjectDock, the problem went away. Just a thought...
PurrBall
Reply #9 Wednesday, April 21, 2004 11:21 AM
Reply #9 Wednesday, April 21, 2004 11:21 AM
No prob here... Even when using the radio. I usually have GIMP, SKS, WB, and DX open, and Winamp plays with no hic, hic, hiccups! And I only have a P3 500, 384 MB ram and GF FX 5200 and Win 98se! I have the old WB 4.2, though because the betas don't work on 98. I wonder how you got the prob?
smbunn
Reply #10 Tuesday, May 4, 2004 10:15 PM
Reply #10 Tuesday, May 4, 2004 10:15 PM
Rocky had the answer. I had some sysstats docklets talking to motherboard monitor. Removing them fixed the problem.
Rocky Nimda
Reply #11 Wednesday, May 5, 2004 11:37 PM
Reply #11 Wednesday, May 5, 2004 11:37 PM
Good to see that you got it fixed. Once I stopped using Docklets, I haven't had any performace issues.
One thing I try to do, is to only make a few changes at a time. That way, if something goes wrong, it's a simple thing to undo the few changes I have made, in order to see which change caused the problem.
If you make lots of changes, it's a real pain to figure out which one needs to be undone.
One thing I try to do, is to only make a few changes at a time. That way, if something goes wrong, it's a simple thing to undo the few changes I have made, in order to see which change caused the problem.
If you make lots of changes, it's a real pain to figure out which one needs to be undone.
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Reply #1 Sunday, April 18, 2004 6:58 PM
What version of Winamp do you have.