XP Service Pack Slows Programs

AEton writes "Vnunet and others are reporting that Windows XP's Service Pack 1 has introduced a flaw into the operating system. Changes to memory handling code result in programs which often allocate memory (which is many of them) can take up to ten times longer than normal to start. Microsoft has acknowledged the problem in Q815411, and while a patch is available by request from Microsoft Product Services, it will not be widely released until Service Pack 2."

Comments

The fix will cost you

[Rick the Red]

You have to pay for Microsoft Product Support Services. From Knowledge Base Article 815411: "In special cases, charges that are ordinarily incurred for support calls may be canceled if a Microsoft Support Professional determines that a specific update will resolve your problem." May be canceled. Or maybe not. So it's entirely up to Microsoft whether or not to charge you for the fix to a problem they admit having! Of all the nerve.

Avoid Service Pack 1, or better yet, avoid Windows.

Where you can find this patch...

[phreak404]

Here: http://www.neowin.net/comments.php?id=9815&categor y=main

I'm sure no one is interested but...

[JSmooth]

Here's a link to the file:

http://home.t-online.de/home/520092137223-0001/x p/ Q815411_WXP_SP2_x86_ENU.exe

Have seen this

[IanBevan]

We have seen this exact behaviour when benchmarking our heap management product. Although our software is targetted at multithreaded software and multiprocessor machines, we've been surprised to see it improve performance of non-multithreaded programs by so much on XP. We've seen it speed up single threaded applications on Windows 2000 too, but not by so much.

And please, before somebody gets started with a flame war, WinHeap is not open source (although there is a source code license available), but it is free for non-profit use.

More mirrors for Patch

[N8F8]

Q815411_WXP_SP2_x86_ENU.exe

Q815411_WXP_SP2_x86_ENU.exe

Q815411_WXP_SP2_x86_ENU.exe

Downloads/Patches Right Here -- i386/Alpha

[mattyohe]

Just because im a nice guy...

http://www.paricom.com/matt/xphotfix/

Re:w2k is effected as well

[randyest]

Yes, I have, a lot! I even have some very informal and unscientific benchmark results (counting 1-mississippi, 2-mississippi, . . after the double click until load) because not long before SP1 came along I was testing my system to see if changing my BIOS RAM timing made any diff on prg load times. It didn't, but I scratched the MS times (that's the state abbrev for mississippi, BTW, which I am quite tired of typing already) on some paper that, as they so often do, stayed on my desk past it's useful life.

After installing SP1 I immediately noticed longer load times. The load times are all, consistently, still the same, and noticeably longer than XP (pro, BTW) before SP1, which I used for almost a year (more?). I really started to take for granted sub-1s ie load times. Sigh. Anyway, here are the data:

ie: 1 MS max, every time. with SP1: 3-4 MS, depending on what else is up

adobe premiere 6.5: 7-9 MS, with SP1: 18-25 MS

excel xp with a 16MB spreadsheet (loaded from a shortcut to the sheet file): 20-25 MS. with SP1: 60-90 MS.

DVArchive (replay tv simulator, all in JAVA 1.4.1, a very slow-loading monkey): 30-35 MS. with SP1: 90-100 or tired of counting MS.

This sucks. Especially now that I know why, for the following reason. Before, I simply attributed the slow down to the mysterious hardware and software gremlins (and I'm an ASIC designer -- we know better than most just how real these critters really are -- ask me about typical chip testing coverage (90-98%), or to compare the MS bugs we cry about to the insane, random bugs in million-dollar EDA software from Cadence and Synopsys), but now I know that an upgrade that ostensibly should have improved system performance has instead worsened it, I'm bummed. Worse, there were some hassles with my (legit) corp key for XP with SP1, causing me quite a bit of hassle getting the thing installed to begin with.

OK, maybe SP1 made it more secure, or less crash-prone (wasn't bad before though, and doesn't seem better now), or something. Yes, I'll tell myself that -- something improved. I'm just not sure exactly what it is.

THE FIX DOES NOT COST ANYTHING -- DOWNLOAD LINKS

[mattyohe]

What you can do is call 1-800-936-4900 which is Microsoft's Hotfix Line.. Tell them the Q article and they will pull it up and send a link in your email.

But I have already done this for you.. And I didn't forget you alpha users!

http://www.paricom.com/matt/xphotfix

One other major problem

[AsnFkr]

I work in a local computer repair shop, and 30% or so of the computers we load SP1 on stop booting properly. No safe mode, no VGA mode, just a wipe and reload. They boot then restart as soon as they should be getting to the desktop, caught in a eternal loop. Unless it is specifically requested by the user, I definatly don't load it. Thats just the major of many other problems we have come across with SP1.

Re:THE FIX DOES NOT COST ANYTHING -- DOWNLOAD LINK

[SonicBurst]

Not to be an ass or anything, but XP doesn't run on alphas. If you take a careful look at the patch file, you'll see ia64 in the file name. 2 completely different architectures.

Re:More /. FUD.

[Mattsson]

Well... Actually, it's not /. FUD.

1.
It's being reported in other places than /.
I first read about it in the newspaper...

2.
It's being reported on Microsofts own website.
So maybe it's microsoft FUD? =)

3.
The problem actually exists. (Thus is not FUD)
It doesn't appear on *every* XP computer with SP1, but some actually load programs at 1/10 the speed that they did without SP1.

Even on /. some bad news about Microsoft turns out to be true. =)