ME - very slow with large files

[ambercs]

We have an application which accesses large files (200+ MB). Performance is acceptable on Win 95, 98, 98 SE, NT 4 and 2000. On Win ME only, the performance is chronically slow. One test which normally takes 15 seconds runs for ten minutes when first started on Win ME. Watching the System Mintor shows disk thrashing all this time. Reads and writes stay at about 50 per second. The File System Dirty Data sits at 1.8 to 2.5 MB. Running a second test immediatly after the first takes one minute. If the same data files are located on a network server then ME performance is normal. What has changed in ME file caching? We tried experimenting with the Tweak-ME utility - no change.
Several of these tests were run on a multi-boot system. So the same hardware was identical for Win 98 SE, 98 ME and Win NT 4 server.


GH

 

[ambercs]

Found the answer in another forum.
Our files have used .ACS extension for ten years.
Microsoft now uses that for Agent Character files.
System Restore detects any writes to .ACS files and updates the System Restore files.
That makes our application up to 50 times slower.

Quick fix - disable System Restore.
Complex fix - edit filelist.xml and other files.

GH