Lockout Poster Impacting FireFox and FreeCommander

[OldGuyWalking]

When selecting Lockout Poster both FireFox and FreeCommander (a freeware File/Folder explorer application) can't be accessed, even when they are running, until Newsbin completes its process.

In an informal test (using Ctrl+P)
Locking out 1 poster took about 30 seconds.
Locking out 5 posters took about 1 minute 40 seconds.

Also, Newsbin CPU utilization jumps to about 25% until it finishes. I noticed this happening during the last beta although the lag time has dropped significantly in this release version.

While Newsbin is processing, neither Freecommander or FireFox will respond. Newsbin shows as busy (or "not responding" in Task Manager). Once Newsbin completes its task then everything returns to normal.

I have other applications I use (MS Word, Excel, ClipMate (clipboard manager), etc.) that are not impacted at all.

5,400 records in the PosterLockout.txt file.
FireFox version = 28.0 (this has occurred through all versions of FireFox I've used over the past several months).
Newsbin Version = 6.51

System
Intel Core i5 Quad 3.40GHz
Windows 7 x64 Professional
16 GB Memory
1 TB Hard Drive WITH 851MB free

Thanks,
Bill

[Quade]

How many posters do you have locked out? The more posters you have locked and the more posts you have loaded into memory, the more CPU and time it'll take to filter.

I have no idea why locking poster would affect firefox. It doesn't do anything to disk IO. It would make more sense if you were deleting posters because that bangs on the disk but, locking them out just consumes CPU to filter.

What's your display age set to? You can reduce CPU load by reducing how many posts you have in memory. I'm wondering if you're loading up so many posts that there's no RAM left for FFox to work with?

[OldGuyWalking]

How many posters do you have locked out? The more posters you have locked and the more posts you have loaded into memory, the more CPU and time it'll take to filter.

At the moment there are 5464 records in the PosterLockout.txt file. There are a number of them (say 40%) that I've included regular expressions with. (there really are alot of idiots posting garbage on usenet these days). It comes out to a bit under 200K. I have 16GB RAM which normally does not get past 30% utilization even when I'm running multiple applications.


I have no idea why locking poster would affect firefox. It doesn't do anything to disk IO. It would make more sense if you were deleting posters because that bangs on the disk but, locking them out just consumes CPU to filter.

I agree which is why I though it was odd. I tend to liberally use regular expressions if I think I can shorten lists which has an impact on CPU time. When I'm locking out posters the CPU goes to 25% and remains there until it's complete. I don't have the fastest kit on the block but it rarely breaks a sweat on anything that I run except for video conversions. I have no idea why these two apps are impacted but if you're not seeing it elsewhere then I'll assume it's something peculiar to my system and will poke at it some more.

What's your display age set to? You can reduce CPU load by reducing how many posts you have in memory. I'm wondering if you're loading up so many posts that there's no RAM left for FFox to work with?

I live inside the Search tab so I am not loading up on posts. This behavior happens when I lockout posters while doing searches only. I have not tested this in Groups.

Thanks,
Bill

[DThor]

If you're searching locally, you're hammering your disks. Your computer seems quite reasonable in terms of power, but that suggests internal bandwidth issues. If you're using a USB disk, for example, this wouldn't shock.

DT

[OldGuyWalking]

DThor -

Based on what I understand the LockoutPoster text file is loaded into memory so when I hit Ctrl+P Newbin is doing everything in memory. At some point I expect Newsbin saves the file but writing a 5K file to local disk would be near instantaneous

The tests I've run were measured only when there was no other activity going on within Newsbin (i.e. CPU usage showed 0) and there was no significant amount of drive activity above what I'd see without Newsbin running. When I hit Ctrl+P CPU usage jumps to 25 and stays there until the task is completed.

What I suspect but haven't had time to check is that it has something to do with Avast but it would be odd that it would only impact that one operation.

Thanks

[Quade]

What you're describing shouldn't be possible on a normally operational PC. Unless you're just about out of memory and everything is paged out. You have 16 gigs and are 64 bits so, that's unlikely. Something like you virus scanner is more likely though I can't explain why. Normally I suggest people remove the V scanner, then reboot. If the problem goes away. Re-install the V scanner and hopefully it stays gone or use a different one.

Avast has been problematic for years so, I wouldn't doubt for a second that it's causing problems.