LAN caching difference between Win98 and XP Home???

Sorry for the long post but I feel it is important to be as clear as possible.

I had expected my new 3 GHz P4 Win XP (home edition) machine to outperform my old Win98 machine but in this particular area, it doesn't. Here's the poop.

Three computers on a home LAN (Netgear RT314, router):

Computer 1: Win 98, 600 MHz P3, 256 MB RAM
Computer 2: Win XP, 3 GHz P4, 800 FSB, 1 GB RAM
Computer 3: Win Me, 600 MHz P3, 256 MB RAM

Task: Use ACDsee32 (a picture browser) on computer 1 and 2 to browse large Photoshop picture files residing in a directory on Computer 3.

Browse method: Double click the first the picture in the remote dir (thereby starting the ACDsee browser) and then use the mouse wheel to browse successively through all the pictures in the remote directory, full screen.

Results: Computer 1 (my old Win98 machine) caches all the remote picture files to RAM so that after I browse them the first time I can browse them again with minimal delay and minimal LAN traffic (a few hundred KB for 100+ MB of pictures). My new 3 GHz XP machine, however, insists on re-downloading each picture file from the remote directory every time I browse the remote directory. I verified this behavior by using DUmeter to measure the LAN traffic while browsing with ACDsee. Computer 1 (Win98 machine) clearly caches the files and Computer 2
(XP) clearly doesn't. What's going on here? Will XP Pro do any better? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

For those who may suspect a caching difference within ACDsee, there isn't. ACDsee will preload the next picture and that is all. As verified with DUmeter, my Win98 machine is caching all the pictures (over 200 MB worth) and XP is caching none.

BTW, this forum edit window is very narrow. This is my first post in this forum. Surely there is a way to increase the width of this edit window. :)

David

On a totally unrelated note :p ....

I notice your using 98 and Xp on the same network. I also have this setup at home and was wondering if you encounter problems between the Xp and 98 computers, internet wise. It seems that the 98 (host) always has internet dropouts for my Xp (client).

Have you ever experienced these issues?


Thanks,
Walugi

Hi and welcome to Virtualdr :)

I've been thinking about this one for a few hours and although I understand the problem I can't think of a way to force ACDsee to cache the images from the 98 machine onto the xp machine (xp pro would not make a difference). I use ACDsee as well ( an older version than you probably- 2.41) but I see no provision to make it do anything but prefetch one pic at a time and nothing at all to do with designating a caching directory.

Since your LAN seems to be fine I think that this question may actually benefit from being moved to the general software forum instead... maybe that will get it some more views from those that are familiar with ACDsee.


The edit window is usually about half the width of the screen. I don't think that can be changed.

Thanks for the welcome, fink. You should not have moved my message from the Networking section. This is NOT an ACDsee software issue. It is Win 98 networking vs. a Win XP networking issue. Clearly you did not understand the problem. The Win 98 operating system, NOT ACDsee, is caching the remote files to RAM. The question remains, why doesn't Win XP Home do similar caching? I want to hear from networking experts on this subject.

Regards

My Win XP, Win 98, and Win Me computes connect through a router to a cable modem. I've experienced no noticeable differences among the three with regards to the internet connection. If you are using "Internet Connetion Sharing" instead of a router then it's a whole other ball of wax.

Quote:

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Originally posted by David O
My Win XP, Win 98, and Win Me computes connect through a router to a cable modem. I've experienced no noticeable differences among the three with regards to the internet connection. If you are using "Internet Connetion Sharing" instead of a router then it's a whole other ball of wax.

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Ahh i see, thanks anyways.

Have you tried increasing XP's cache size?

Quote:

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Originally posted by David O
BTW, this forum edit window is very narrow. This is my first post in this forum. Surely there is a way to increase the width of this edit window. :)

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As far as I know this is standard width among most forum software as well as many other things - webmail, for example.

When it comes to Windows XP tweaks and tricks I like the following site.

Many solid tweaks and practices.

www.blackviper.com

good luck

nodular