Some questions...

[Danny]

The System Idle Process is the place-holder that shows the percentage of
time
*not* spent using the CPU.

Jesus, you're dead right. It used to be at the bottom in XP's task manager;
that totally threw me. I was thinking in reverse. It was always at 99 unless
I was doing something.

It's not really a process. However, you're
obviously experiencing some activity, which points to the fact that Task
Manager is not as useful as it could be to see what's happening on your
system. There's a new tool in Vista that addresses these shortcomings,
allowing you to get a better idea of what's consuming resources (and how
much): the Reliability and Performance Monitor.

The shortcut to this tool:
Start->p-e-r-f (typed in the search blank).
Select "Reliability and Performance Monitor" from the search results.

It requires elevation.

The CPU usage is a moving window average, so you can see what has been
taking the most CPU over the past 60 seconds.

Ok, nice tool - good idea that. It seems to suggest it could be the mmc. But
that's an educated guess - I've not had any erroneous activity on this boot
for some reason.

 

[Beck]

Yeah, I do follow it now, I just think the up arrow was more effective
because it was a set button you hit to specifically go up one level no
matter where you were. Now you have to look at the path and choose the
location to the left of the one you're on. Just seems a little bit less
intuitive to me, although I'm sure I'll get used to it.

Look at it another way round, you use less clicks to get where you want to.
With the arrow you would have click twice to go up two folders, with the
crumb you just go second left
You will get used to it. I am already getting used to the interface and find
going back to the old way is a tad confusing.

 

[Beck]

Jesus, you're dead right. It used to be at the bottom in XP's task
manager; that totally threw me. I was thinking in reverse. It was always
at 99 unless I was doing something.

Wrong messiah, his name is David

 

[Guest]

In this particular case, mmc is what's hosting the perf monitor. In the
interest of honest reporting, it does not edit itself out of the list. If it
is at the top of the list (and stays there), then there's not much else going
on CPU-wise.

--
David Goll
Windows Portable Devices Team

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

 

[mikeyhsd]

look at the bottom of the left pane of Explorer, for the word FOLDERS.
click on the >> by it to get the folder display.
you can drag it from the top up to the top of the left pane.

under Folder Options, there is the option to ALWAYS display file menu.



(e-mail address removed)



Ok, I have a few posers and comments about RC1 if you'll indulge me...

1: What is with MS' obsession of moving away from the file menu? Trying to
do anything is really tricky now as either the file menu is hidden by
default or isn't there in the first place. Internet Explorer is now *really*
hard to use - the layout's dramatically changed and there aren't any obvious
configuration options such as afforementioned file menu.

2: Would I be correct in assuming there is no firewall currently available
which is entirely compatible with Vista? I have tried ZA which managed to
get about half way through the install before simply giving up the ghost.
Then there's Kerio/Subelt which doesn't even *pretend* that it's going to
try to install.

3: Why is there no 'up' button in Windows Explorer? By this I mean when you
click on 'Computer' and end up with the dialogue box with all your drives
and devices etc and start exploring through them - unlike with XP if you
wish to go up a tree rather than simply retracing your steps, you apparently
can't.

4: The 3d flipper seems to be a bit of a gimmick, but perhaps its true
functionality will shine through in time.

5: It is a very nice looking OS and it's extremely quick - definitely
progress being made on those 2 fronts.

6: Not sure what I make of the new style programs menu/system from the start
menu.

7: I've had one crash so far, kind of. I installed the Nvidia drivers and
the screen went black although I could hit ctrl/alt/del to bring up the
menu - unfortunately none of the choices worked. Was forced into a hard
reset.

8: Why, when you finally successfully installed said drivers, are there no
advanced options in display properties? I was expecting to see the usual
Nvidia control panel.

Thanks for any responses.

 

[Guest]

The System Idle Process is the place-holder that shows the percentage of time
*not* spent using the CPU. It's not really a process. However, you're
obviously experiencing some activity, which points to the fact that Task
Manager is not as useful as it could be to see what's happening on your
system. There's a new tool in Vista that addresses these shortcomings,
allowing you to get a better idea of what's consuming resources (and how
much): the Reliability and Performance Monitor.

Don't know about Windows but under Linux/BSD the idle-process actually
does stuff like low lever maintenance. It would involve among other
things cleaning up unused pages and perhaps also writing out dirty pages
from cache. I would suspect Windows works the same.

However that would probably not explain the high disk-access, however
some app that is mostly idle and sometimes reads or writes data in
bursts would. Notice also that the app could easily be done writing all
it's data before Windows actually writes it to disk if it's not using
synchronous IO.