-
Recent Posts
Categories
- AltDevBlogADay
- Bugs
- Chromium
- Code analysis
- Code Reliability
- Commuting
- Computers and Internet
- Debugging
- Documentation
- Drinks
- Environment
- Floating Point
- Fractals
- Fun
- Gaming
- Investigative Reporting
- Linux
- Math
- memory
- Performance
- Programming
- Quadratic
- Rants
- Security
- Symbols
- Travel
- uiforetw
- Uncategorized
- Unicycling
- Visual Studio
- WLPG
- Xbox 360
- xperf
Follow me on Twitter
My TweetsMeta
Category Archives: Investigative Reporting
O(n^2), again, now in WMI
I recently hit some multi-minute delays on my workstation. After investigating I found that the problem was due to a lock being held for five minutes, and during that time the lock-holder was mostly just spinning in a nine-instruction loop. … Continue reading
Posted in Investigative Reporting, Programming, Quadratic, Rants, uiforetw, xperf
Tagged complexity, ETW, O(n^2), performance, WMI
23 Comments
63 Cores Blocked by Seven Instructions
I seem to have a habit of writing about super powerful machines whose many cores are laid low by misuse of locks. So. Yeah. It’s that again. But this one seems particularly impressive. I mean, how often do you have … Continue reading
Posted in Investigative Reporting, Performance, Programming, Quadratic, uiforetw, xperf
Tagged ETW, ntfs, wpa
12 Comments
O(n^2) in CreateProcess
So many possible introductions to this one: Windows 7: Sheesh, I sure am slow at creating processes Windows 10: Hold my beer… Or how about: A) How long does CreateProcess take on Windows? B) How long would you like it … Continue reading
When Your Profiler Lies
Last week I wrote about the performance consequences of inadvertently loading gdi32.dll into processes that are created and destroyed at very high rates. This week I want to share some techniques for digging deeper into this behavior, and the odd … Continue reading
Posted in Investigative Reporting, Performance, Programming, uiforetw, xperf
Tagged GDI, process shutdown, UserCrit
12 Comments
A Not-Called Function Can Cause a 5X Slowdown
Subtitle: Making Windows Slower Part 3: Process Destruction In the summer of 2017 I wrestled with a Windows performance problem. Process destruction was slow, serialized, and was blocking the system input queue, leading to repeated short mouse-movement hangs when building … Continue reading
Posted in Investigative Reporting, Performance, Programming
Tagged GDI, process shutdown, UserCrit
Leave a comment
Making Windows Slower Part 2: Process Creation
Windows has long had a reputation for slow file operations and slow process creation. Have you ever wanted to make these operations even slower? This weeks’ blog post covers a technique you can use to make process creation on Windows … Continue reading
Posted in Code Reliability, Investigative Reporting, Performance, Programming, Quadratic
Tagged Application Verifier, crashing, pageheap
7 Comments
24-core CPU and I can’t type an email (part two)
In my last post I promised to give more details about some rabbit holes that I went down during the investigation, including page tables, locks, WMI, and a vmmap bug. Those details are here, along with updated code samples. But … Continue reading
Posted in Investigative Reporting, memory, Performance
Tagged cfg, chrome, control flow guard, vmmap
16 Comments
24-core CPU and I can’t type an email (part one)
I wasn’t looking for trouble. I wasn’t trying to compile a huge project in the background (24-core CPU and I can’t move my mouse), I was just engaging in that most mundane of 21st century tasks, writing an email at … Continue reading
Posted in Investigative Reporting, memory, Performance
Tagged cfg, chrome, control flow guard, vmmap
28 Comments
Making Windows Slower Part 1: File Access
Windows has long had a reputation for slow file operations and slow process creation. Have you ever wanted to make these operations even slower? This weeks’ blog post covers a technique you can use to make all file operations on … Continue reading
Posted in Investigative Reporting, Performance, Programming, xperf
Tagged FileSystemWatcher, notifications, Windows
18 Comments