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

In the meantime

[worst_name_ever]

...In the meantime, Microsoft suggests you refrain from running programs which use memory. Thank you for your patience.

HAHA

[teamhasnoi]

It looks like the pirates who weren't allowed to upgrade to SP1 have gotten the last laugh. Piracy does pay! Thanks MS, for pointing this out.

Re:HAHA

[bonch]

Pirates everywhere are outraged that the hard work they put into downloading, spreading, and cracking Windows XP in order to install SP1 has resulted in another bizarre Microsoft bug.

"I sat and ran my key generator for up to 20 minutes before I was able to get a valid key! Then I had to reactive Windows and change the key to install SP1," said one anonymous source. "But if errors like this are the results of all the effort I put into providing slipstreamed SP1 installs on eMule and USENET, Microsoft has definitely lost another customer."

Efforts are underway to convert pirated Windows installations to free alternatives in order to reduce costs and save time. "I don't have to download BlueKey to upgrade a few RPMS. Once XP's SP2 beta leaks onto the net, you can bet I won't be so forgiving next time when I crack it."

Typical Slashdot FUD

[MillionthMonkey]

This is really just more anti-Microsoft Slashdot FUD. After all, this only affects programs that allocate memory.

Programmers can easily work around this bug by returning right after printf("Hello World") finishes.

Re:Typical Slashdot FUD

[addaon]

printf allocates money. Use fprintf directed to stderr, which doesn't buffer output. :-)

Re:Typical Slashdot FUD

[cscx]

On Windows I think stderr and stdout are one and the same.

Re:Typical Slashdot FUD

[MillionthMonkey]

printf allocates money. Use fprintf directed to stderr, which doesn't buffer output. :-)

That's interesting. Who gets the money?

Of course fprintf() will be illegal soon since nobody can make any money off of it.

"Service" Pack

[TheBigOh(n)]

Now I know why they call them service packs rather than upgrades. Apparently Microsoft doesn't even trust themselves.

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.

Re:The fix will cost you

[Guppy06]

"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."

Welcome to Microsoft's new "Captive Audience" pricing plan.

Remember kids, this is why monopolies that abuse their powers are bad.

w2k is effected as well

[Billly Gates]

Both Openoffice and Mozilla have slowed down quite alot with the latest security updates from Microsoft.

When I open openoffice is just sits there doing nothing for like 20 seconds and then launched. No excess cpu overhead or anything. It just stalls and then runs. Its just annoying and I wonder if its a conspiracy theory.

Has anyone else noticed this?

Re:w2k is effected as well

[archen]

Is it possible to tell if Mozilla runs slower? That's like determining the exact second the paint started to peel ;)

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.

quality

[tabby]

More good work from MS's 'does it compile?' quality assurance program

Re:quality

[miratrix]

I genuinely am surprised that something like this could've slipped through the cracks.

Service Packs are suppose to be stable, extensively tested set of updates unlike hotfixes, and the bug description makes it sound like it could be a programming logic error, not a programming bug. I mean, they must've noticed *something* if certain programs take up to 10 times as long...

"a" flaw?

[RawDigits]

Windows XP's Service Pack 1 has introduced a flaw into the operating system.

Drat, just when we all thought windows had achieved perfection. Back to the Visio board...

Bloated

[DJ Rubbie]

Each component in Windows is so intertwined together that when one thing needs to be fixed, the a few other pieces breaks, which must be fixed, therefore more pieces break and it will get to a point when all pieces break and it is better off to run NT4, as Microsoft stopped breaking it.

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.

Reminds Me of Python-Esque Humor

[mistermund]

This patch, along with the fact that MS won't be releasing a patch for that recent gaping hole in NT4, reminds me of a scene...

(Read along in a mock British-imitating-French accent, ala the castle scene in Monty Python's Holy Grail)

Microsoft Engineer: We've got a problem here, chaps!
MS Users (All, Amongst Selves): Well, how about a patch then?
Microsoft Engineer: Uh, we've already got one, you see.
MS User 1: Are you sure he's got one?
MS User 2: He says they've already got one!
Microsoft Engineer: Oh, yes. It's very nice-a.
MS Engineers: [chuckling]
MS Users: Well, u-- um, can we come up and have a look?
MS Engineer: Of course not! You are clueless types-a!
MS Users: If you will not show us the patch, we shall switch all our systems to Linux!
MS Engineer: You don't frighten us, clueless pig-dogs! Go and boil your bottom, sons of a silly person. I blow my nose at you, so-called Linux King, you and all your silly open source k-nnnnniggets. Thpppppt! Thppt! Thppt!
MS User 1: What a strange person.
MS User 2: Now look here, my good man--
MS Engineer: I don't wanna talk to you no more, you empty headed animal food trough wiper! I fart in your general direction! Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries!
MS Users: Is there someone else up there we could talk to?
MS Engineer: No. Now, go away, or I shall taunt you a second time-a! [sniff]

(With aplogies to Monty Python)
Script here.

Memory Management???

[wideBlueSkies]

What the hell did they have to go and touch that for? Was is broken?

Yeah, so the new Microsoft standard malloc() and takes 10 times as long to load as the old version. But with this increase in time, the customer can be sure that the memory allocations are being done more securly, and in a way that's good for them.

Also as a bonus, no more pesky free()'s. When that memory gets allocated, it STAYS allocated untill you (have to) reboot your system.

I knew it.

[Hershmire]

SecureCRT takes forever to start up.

So I suppose SP1 is to XP as beer is to me: a tool to slow your reaction time. Too bad it doesn't make XP more attractive...

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/

Ah, Finally!!!

[jlrowe]

Finally Microsoft has a fix to slow down the spread of Code Red and other MS related worms and virii.

Sure, it has some side effects, but don't all fixes?

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.

This would have been the first post ...

[Mikey-San]

But due to the Service Pack update, IE took ten times longer to launch! ;-D

-/-
Mikey-San

Release candidates

[Tomster]

It is plain that Microsoft's internal testing is insufficient. I don't really fault them for this -- it's simply impossible to have enough configurations, testcases, and procedures to cover more than a small percentage of the actual ways the product is used.

IMO, Microsoft would benefit by issuing public release candidates for new OS versions and patches. It would greatly reduce the impact of problems with patches and new releases.

-Thomas

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.

So - Using printf() supports terrorism

[SuperKendall]

I knew it!! Where else is that money going? I never see any...

I never did quite trust printf(), a little on the seedy side it always seemed to me. How can it just keep taking arguments? That's just not natural.

At last! The re-birth of tail-recursion!!

[SuperKendall]

For too long have tail-recursive supporters been laughed at and ignored while people used fancy stacks that grew without bounds!

No longer! Now, arise my tail-recursive brethren and let a new day of shallow-stack programming commence!!

Wait - stack growth is not the same as memory allocation? My bad. Back, I say, supporters of the One Recursion! The time is not yet right.

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. =)

640K is enough

[RalphBNumbers]

Well, Bill said 640K of memory is enough for most people, so I guess M$ it taking that as a design goal and ooptimizing their OS for things that don't need more RAM than that

Jeez, learn to read

[fm6]

It's a cute joke, but...

This problem may occur if the programs you run frequently allocate and deallocate large blocks of memory. Changes in Windows XP SP1 in the memory management system have caused this operation to take significantly longer than with pre-SP1 Windows XP.

It's "frequently allocate and deallocate large blocks of" not just "allocate". This is not a small nit to pick, especially for Linux people. For years, GNU libc had a memory leak bug that was triggered by frequent allococation and deallocation of small blocks of memory. It only became an issue back in 2000, when Borland ported their component libraries to Linux.

Re:Jeez, learn to read

[jhylkema]

(This is rhetorical and not meant as a troll.)

Mein Gott!

The poster criticized a Microsoft competitor and didn't get modded into oblivion? The poster deigned to utter a discouraging word on /. about an open-source product and got away with it? What is this world COMING TO?!? C'mon, libc is perfect in every way and when a fully-functioning HURD kernel is released in 2060 or so, it's gunna be awesome!

Re:never installed sp1!

[hdparm]

Not gonna work either. Try

IN5T4-LLM3T-0CR4P-UPURW-1ND0Z

Works as per SP1 specifications.