winmx CPUsage spikes

[GnarlySnarly]

is it just me?  or does anyone else notice winmx causing cpikes in CPUsage?

[GnarlySnarly]

is it just me?  or does anyone else notice winmx causing spikes in CPUsage?

ooopps.. pre-mature post.

anyway.. as the graphs show, while as noted winmx uses about 3% CPU on average, each 10-12 minutes it causes CPU to jump to 100%
I was used to this on my old 333mhz box, but this started only recently on my 2ghz xp box.

[GnarlySnarly]

my estimated timings were way off.

the winmx power surge occurs approx. each 7 min 15 sec, and lasts about 70 seconds.

[Bearded Blunder]

just a passing thought.. & i could be way off, but you wouldn't happen to have a fake/flooded incomplete.. with AFS running at times that match this?

[GnarlySnarly]

just a passing thought.. & i could be way off, but you wouldn't happen to have a fake/flooded incomplete.. with AFS running at times that match this?

Definitely not that.

I am not downloading anything and don't have any incompletes loaded at all.  Winmx seems to be doing some background/housekeeping process at regular intervals.. what gets me is that I have been using winmx on this box for about a year and this CPU surge has only recently become obvious on this system.  I was used to it on my old slow box but passed it off as it lacking very much cpu power.

[GhostShip]

Whats the system setup there Gnarly ?

A 7 minute cycle is a long one, give xnetstat or tcp viewer a try and see what activity is occuring when the spikes occur.

[GnarlySnarly]

Whats the system setup there Gnarly ?

A 7 minute cycle is a long one, give xnetstat ot tcp viewer a try and see what activity is occuring when the spikes occur.

2ghz celeron w/640mb RAM
xp sp1a
winmx v3.54b4 [as secondary]
mxm
kerio fw v2x
system monitored and functions graphed with taskinfo and abpmon

I run abpmon graphs docked 'always on top', and have it configured to display 8 system functions.  This allows me to compare levels to see which may be related.  I have not noticed any correlation between total packets and CPUsage, except inversely.  This winmx power surge often causes my bw to fall off on my older slower box, as the nic seems starved of time slices.

Taskinfo has a mini-cpu graph for each process.  once i saw the peaks on the global cpu graph, it was simple to check which process was the culprit.

I installed xnetstat, then winPcap, then ethereal.. but am not sure if they are helpful for this.  When they are running, they drive the cpu up themselves :p  and not sure what to look for with it anyways.  no cliff notes :p

if you look at the tcp graph, it has its own saw tooth pattern.  That was most unusual as it is normally flatlined at max.  I was trying to figure that out when i did an IP release and renew.  I was assigned an IP from a different netblock and it was back to normal.  So i suspect that the IP i had was on an overloaded netblock or ?.

I just tested with a fresh restart of winmx, no file transfers. still caused surge.  then I stopped all traffic with the firewall and it still had the cpu spike.

[SamSeeSam]

Could you tell me from where I can download that program? I have the same problem, only, it stays high. I have to confirm this.... Wintasks didn't help.

[GnarlySnarly]

Could you tell me from where I can download that program? I have the same problem, only, it stays high. I have to confirm this.... Wintasks didn't help.

Taskinfo is how i traced the surge to winmx.  I was introduced to it several years ago by the gurus running an anti-virus help desk because it showed trojans and backdoor processes that hid from the wimpy M$ task manager.

"List Most of the Processes that want to be invisible like worms, keyloggers and other spy software"

Abpmon is the graphing function ripped from taskinfo and made to be dockable and always on top, so you can keep an eye on up to a dozen functions in real time.

http://www.iarsn.com/

[GhostShip]

Are you using the host file you normally use or a dll type patch ?

Could you swap over and do the same monitoring, to rule that aspect out.

[GnarlySnarly]

mystery solved.

The CPU surge is caused when winmx scans the share library for changes.  I decided to watch the share lib list, and sure enough when it started 'scanning' the CPU went to 100%.  I closed winmx, renamed my lib dat file and restarted with 0 files shared.. no more CPU spike.

I haven't yet determined whether it is the file count or the total GB shared or both that affect the scan time and CPU load.  I recently added a BT finished file folder but only share a select few files from it since so many BTorrents are sets and not so suitable for direct winmx share unless renamed and zipped. ... I think a purge of unshared BT subfolders will likely reduce the 70 second power surge.

* GnarlySnarly runs away to review his share folders. ..... [5 hours pass]

... back.

I purged a lot of subfolders not suitable for sharing on winmx..  reduced the total file count by about 2000 files and increased the shared files by about 200.. and what do you know.. no more CPU surges from winmx at all.  I can see some small 20% blips, but no more 100% saturation for over a minute.  Looks like some good housekeeping on the listed share folders and files is important for winmx.

for the record, before the purge, i was sharing ~1500 of 4600 files, 28GB of 145GB in the listed folders. This made winMX groan.
after cleanup, I am now sharing 1750 of 2600 total files, 41GB of 98GB total.. and at this level see no ill effects whatsoever.

to GhostShip [got the alert of your new post as i tried to post the above message]:
This was with the hosts file, but after discovering what I did, I have no reason to think the DLL would be different, though I can test that I suppose.  OK tested it. As I guessed,DLL is no different than the hosts for this issue.  Seems the share file count or total GB is what affects winmx. [v3.54b4, with the new library code - results with v3.53 and earlier may be different]

[KM]

if you were sharing incomplete torrent downloads then that would be the cause for it, because every time it scanned it would see the files had changed and have to hash them again - although sharing incomplete torrent files isn't exactly very useful for anyone :-S

[GhostShip]

Cheers Gnarly, after your discovery my question was some what redundant  

[GnarlySnarly]

if you were sharing incomplete torrent downloads then that would be the cause for it, because every time it scanned it would see the files had changed and have to hash them again - although sharing incomplete torrent files isn't exactly very useful for anyone :-S

nope.. i just loaded my finished files folder, and from those selected just a few prime files fit for winmx.