Setting system priority

[Pace]

I'm going away for a few days and have just done a clean install of Win2k with IE and Seti installed . I was just wondering if I can set the default priority of Seti to be high until I get back. I use Maggi's batches so a command line method is all that's useful.

I'm a little late in posting this as only repsonses in the next 30 mins will help me for this holiday! But I'm sure other replies will help me and others later on!

Thanks,

Paul.

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[Guru]

Press ctrl+alt+del then go to the Task Manager and choose Processes. Now search for seti.exe then rightclick on it and choose Set priority!


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[Pace]

Each and every seti instance though Guru - once 1 WU is finished it reverts back to low!

Paul.

[Guru]

Then I see now other option than settilng it to run as a service! I'm sorry I could not help you this time!
BTW any news abaut your page? And what wersion of the opt guide do you have?

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[Pace]

It's ok Guru - I should've thought of this earlier! It doesn't particularly mattter however, as I'm only away for 4 days and the system will be unused anyway so shouldn't interfere with Seti too much

And I was all excited about getting the Celeron 633 online for a few days until I realised I don't have a spare keyboard or mouse

My site should be ok once I'm back (clean install of Win2k so I can get my trial period of my FTP program again!) and will either be at www.pace.fsnet.co.uk/seti or www.setiatmurc.f2s.com - there is something up on both pages at the moment and the 2nd own is using my alternate look.

I've got all the guides backed up and I think the most recent was v1.5

I got a 30GB 75GXP the other day so I'm using a clean install of Win2k for the moment - I'll get back to sorting out my 20Gb when I'm back!

And, Jeepman, watch out for a large output next week - you too ScooterX!

Paul.

[Guru]

Neither do I have a spare keybord or mouse or monitor but hey you can change them on the "fly"!

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Join the MURC SETI team! | SETI @ MURC

[Pace]

Yea, maybe - but I guess I'll have to lose those extra WUs - it's just after midnight here and I'm leaving a 7 o'clock in the morning. Doesn't sound too bad but I also have to pack some stuff !

Paul.

[agallag]

I know, this is probably too late, but here's your answer anyway (from microsoft support Q191771):

To run a program and specify its base priority at a command prompt, use the following syntax:

start /(priority) (program)

The following sample steps describe how to run Notepad with Realtime priority:

1. At a command prompt, type the following line, and then press ENTER:

start /realtime notepad.exe

2. To verify the priority level, press CTRL+ALT+DELETE to open the Windows NT Security dialog box.

3. Click Task Manager.

4. Click the Processes tab.

5. On the View menu, click Select Columns, click to select the Base Priority check box, and then click OK.

6. In the list of processes, locate Notepad.exe and confirm its base priority level.

The available priority levels are: Low (idle), Normal, High, and Realtime

Edit: I don't know how well this will work in the batch files. It might require some tweaking.

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Andrew

I will not torment the emotionally frail

[This message has been edited by agallag (edited 23 September 2000).]

[agallag]

Ok, you will have to throw in a /B to tell it not to spawn a new window for the new process. That should keep the batch files in line. So the command in the batch file should be:

start /B /normal seti.exe

It's probably not wise to go higher than normal priority, or nothing else will get a chance at processing, like the mouse, keyboard, clock, etc. Type "start /?" in a dos box to get all the possible command line options. There's lots of them.

[agallag]

Another correction, the /B may not be necessary:

When executing an application that is a 32-bit GUI application, CMD.EXE does not wait for the application to terminate before returning to the command prompt. This new behavior does NOT occur if executing within a command script.

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Andrew

I will not torment the emotionally frail

[Rattledagger]

Well, it's too late for now, but a quick test with start shows this doesn't work, since seti@home always changes to low priority on start.
The only opportunity to change priority is to manually change in task manager, but this must be done on every instance of seti@home, and therefore doesn't work then running as batch-file.
The best is running seti@home as service, and use some other form of caching. Setiqueue is my best suggestion.

Andrew, the /b-switch must of course be used, because if you think a moment you see that the cmd-version of seti@home is of course a cmd-version, not a gui-version.

[agallag]

Yeah yeah, but I thought it was possible that the second sentence might not refer to GUI apps only. I didn't have a chance to test anything, so I wasn't sure. So much for that...

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Andrew

I will not torment the emotionally frail

[Pace]

So then - I'm back! Although I don't think the priority would have affected my output much over these last 4 idle days I'm still thinking about how to do it.

How's about a batch similar to this:

cd .\cache_dir##
if blah seti.exe -stop_after_option
set seti.exe /high
cd ..

In other words, a command to set the priority of a process after it has started?

I'm off to have a look around for this myself - just thought I'd open up my idea to everyone

Paul.

[agallag]

I just found on the SetiDriver homepage that the seti.exe itself has the following command line switches:

-runnormal
-runhigh

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Andrew

I will not torment the emotionally frail

[Pace]

Excellent work Andrew ! I'll be encorporating that into my batches for overnight/holiday runs!

Paul.