Hello dkrawczynski,

Our Windows Agent is supposed to run only one instance. If a second instance starts running, then UD.exe shuts down one process. How are you monitoring your system? Task Monitor should show one thread running (of a possible 4, hence 25% utilization reported).

When you say things start slowing down, what do you mean? Have you tried running Throttle Watch (listed in the Useful Utilities thread at http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/forums/wcg/viewthread?thread=2490 )? Perhaps your server is dust-filled and starts to overheat when running intensively?

mycrofth

I cannot imagine what is causing your system to slow down. The system you are running is not that uncommon so I suspect we have several if not many like it working. I wonder if the heat is an issue (where the P4s self protection mechanism kicks in and slows down the processor to keep the heat in check). I would suggest that you take that machine apart and blow the dust out and see if that makes any difference.

I have almost exactly the same issue here.

Dual 2.8GHz Xeon system with HyperThreading enabled (I know it slows things down overall, I just haven't been bothered turning it off yet), running Windows XP Professional.

Utilisation sits on 25% permanently even though it should be able to use 50% without even context switching.

No actual system slowdown here, though. Just inexplicably low CPU utilisation.

Thanks for the many sugestions. I am actually running Small Business Server 2003 and I noticed it doesn't have Server 2003 SP1 which means it doesn't have DEP either. I'll download and install SP1 and make sure the BIOS is up-to-date for the machine (DELL PowerEdge 1800) and give the Agent another chance. I'll post a new message to let everyone know the results.

BTW. The machine is new and ran cool with the agent running (I used the Dell server monitor tool to check the component temps).

By running slow, I mean the SQL Server database basically stopped responding to clients and even working directly on the console to do things was slow until I stopped the agent and then the problem went away immediately.

Hello
When Windows task manager is displaying a Dual CPU with Hyper Threading 25% is shown for each Thread that is being used 100% So by seeing 25% you have one CPU fully utilized. If you had two CPU's max out the Task manager would show 50%. Over 50% would mean that you are actually utilizing Hyper Threading.
From the standpoint of the Grid for per process you will only ever see WCGrid use 25%. When I get my machine really busy with other processes the full machine will get to the 50% mark. When running something that actually can use Hyper Threading then you will see it go over the 50% mark which is roughly equal to 2 CPUs max out with Hyper Threading.
This does not mean that Hyper Threading is not used at the lower % it is just that you can only tell for sure when you go over the 50% mark. Not sure that I really trust the Windows task manager to truely show the thread usage in each window.
Also a lot of programs just really don't have the threading usage built into them. Unless you are running something that can use more than one thread at the same time Hyper Threading can't be utilized.
I saw a comment here about Hyper Threading slowing things down. You really just can't say that across the board. If when a program is running multiable threads it concentrates on a data set, it certainly does go faster. You only get into trouble with Hyper Threading when the program is doing many different things and starts to effectively split the cache with data and each thread then has what amounts to a half the cache size. That is on a per CPU basis. If the program starts other threads to get completely different tasks done, The chances of cache thrashing goes up.
Wayne