NTVDM eating CPU time

Whenever I start my NT box, (reboot, etc), it boots back up OK, but it's incredibly slow. If I bring up Task Manager and look at the processes, theres an instance of NTVDM running at 99% cpu usage. If I kill the process, the system returns to normal. However, it comes back if I reboot. Anyone know why this is happening? I recently had a message about running out of virtual memory, and then this started happening. Also, the replicator service is not being able to replicate all files all the time due to them being in use... I don't know if either of those relates to the NTVDM problem or not. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

NTVDM is the environment used for running 16 bit apps in. It's likely that you've so a nasty app your startup. I've seen Remedy ARS do this. Basically, crap 16bit app = mad NTVDM.

Some DOS boxes do the same thing. I have found that I can set the priority to LOW on the NTVDM in the Task Manager and this helps but does not solve the problem. You can also enter the following in the command line of your Shortcut, "start /low [application]".

I keep waitng for a service pack to fix it but I have not seen one yet. Does anybody else have a fix for those of use who are stuck with their 16-bit and DOS apps?

I want to thank you all for having this topic listed. We have a DOS application that ate 99 percent of the CPU and by setting the priority to low, I was able to reduce this to 40 - 50 percent. It is unfortunate that NT has little to no control over CPU throttling to take care of this issue, and on the flip side, I can see why the app ran away with the system resources, since the NTVDM emulates a 486 in DOS mode, memory model and all. The app performed the same way on windows 2000, so I don't see a fix coming at all, I see the extinction of 16 bit apps overall, and the push to a 32 bit platform, without the support of our older applications. I knew that a couple years ago, it was just a matter of when. Thanks again for confirming my findings.

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Jason Knight
Systems Admin
[email protected]