Newbie: Lowering process priority in registry for ntvdm.exe

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C

Cf

Hello all,

Can somebody show me how to make a registry change to lower the process
priority to "LOW" whenever NTVDM.EXE starts? Somewhere I read that a
registry value could be set to "0" to indicate low priority and allow other
programs to run without being rendered sluggish. I am running an old 16-bit
program and the CPU usage for this process is a killer.

Thanks in advance...Carlos
 
In said:
Hello all,

Can somebody show me how to make a registry change to lower the
process priority to "LOW" whenever NTVDM.EXE starts? Somewhere I
read that a registry value could be set to "0" to indicate low
priority and allow other programs to run without being rendered
sluggish. I am running an old 16-bit program and the CPU usage
for this process is a killer.

Thanks in advance...Carlos
Click to expand...

I cannot as I do not believe any such capability exists. BICBW.
Some vendors have written Services which can read a registry
setting on startup and modify their PP accordingly. Some real-time
A-V engines might offer such perhaps. You might be recalling the
Win32PrioritySeparation value which sets Foreground/Background
priority "boost".

Typically the Process Priority is controlled internal to the
program and is set as the executable is loaded by the system.
Changing a process (or thread) priority is most often accomplished
after the process already exists. Such as via Task Manager or
other utility. Or, is overridden at program load by the launching
process such as when using START with a priority designation.

You can try using START with a Priority argument to start your
program, but frankly I doubt it will be effective in the case of a
process running in the NTVDM.

One *can* alter the NTVDM process priority after it exists with any
of several "external" methods. If I recall correctly XP and W2K3
provide a WMI method. Otherwise a third-party utility may be
employed (possibly in a application startup batch file).

Many such utilities or functions exist. Assuming CLI operations
and to mention just 2 of them,
AutoIt3 offers the ProcessSetPriority() function with the standard
6 "named" levels (priority "class").
Process.exe 2.03 (also the standard 6 "named" levels)
http://beyondlogic.org/solutions/processutil/processutil.htm
Exam.: process -p 652 BelowNormal
where "652" is the PID of an NTVDM instance.

HTH
 
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