PRIORITY CHANGE?

Is there a way under Vista so I can give a DOS window a very high
priority so it gets most of the machine cycles?

"RetroMIDI" <> wrote ...
> Is there a way under Vista so I can give a DOS window a very high
> priority so it gets most of the machine cycles?

Yes and No.

The "DOS window" is displayed by an instance of CMD.EXE. It is quite
straightforward to go into Task Manager, find CMD.EXE in the list of running
processes, and increase its priority. You can also star a new instance of
CMD.EXE (or any other program) by using the START command:

C:\>start /HIGH cmd

But! I'm pretty sure that this is not actually what you want to achieve. If
you set CMD.EXE to run at a high priority, so what? CMD itself is not a
CPU-intensive activity; quite the opposite. Mostly you open a Command Prompt
window because you want to run other programs from it. Maybe you want to
start other programs with a high priority?

If you start an app from a high priority CMD window, the spawned app does
not automatically inherit the high priority. So if you start Notepad (for
example) from a a high priority CMD window, that instance of Notepad will
run with Normal priority.

It's very likely that you want to give priority to some application, not to
the Command Prompt window itself. As above, you can do this is the usual
manner: just use Task Manager, or start the target application with a "start
/HIGH" command.

Note also that giving a process a High priority does *not* mean the process
will get most of the machine cycles. There is no guarantee that this will
happen. The priority means that the Windows Dispatcher will tend to schedule
threads for that process, in preference to threads for other processes at
lower priorities. If two processes have similar workload characteristics,
then the one running at a higher priority will probably tend to get more CPU
time, over a period. But priority does not directly allocate CPU time to a
process.

Finally (and just to be pedantic), it isn't a "DOS" window. DOS is an
obsolete, single tasking, 16-bit operating system. When you open a Command
Prompt window on Windows NT (including 2000, XP and Vista) you are running a
native, 32-bit process which calls does into the NT kernel; there's no DOS
involved. The Command Prompt does bear a superficial resemblance to the
command.com of old (and in fairness, even some Microsoft docs occasionally
refer to it erroneously as a "DOS window" ... sloppy tech writers).

Hope it helps,

--
Andrew McLaren
amclar (at) optusnet dot com dot au

Thank you Andrew

This is very helpful but I am not there yet. I am wanting to get old
Borland Pascal running faster and also .exe apps created with BP.

I do not see them in Task Manager.

Is there a way to do it?



Andrew McLaren wrote:
> "RetroMIDI" <> wrote ...
> > Is there a way under Vista so I can give a DOS window a very high
> > priority so it gets most of the machine cycles?
>
> Yes and No.
>
> The "DOS window" is displayed by an instance of CMD.EXE. It is quite
> straightforward to go into Task Manager, find CMD.EXE in the list of running
> processes, and increase its priority. You can also star a new instance of
> CMD.EXE (or any other program) by using the START command:
>
> C:\>start /HIGH cmd
>
> But! I'm pretty sure that this is not actually what you want to achieve. If
> you set CMD.EXE to run at a high priority, so what? CMD itself is not a
> CPU-intensive activity; quite the opposite. Mostly you open a Command Prompt
> window because you want to run other programs from it. Maybe you want to
> start other programs with a high priority?
>
> If you start an app from a high priority CMD window, the spawned app does
> not automatically inherit the high priority. So if you start Notepad (for
> example) from a a high priority CMD window, that instance of Notepad will
> run with Normal priority.
>
> It's very likely that you want to give priority to some application, not to
> the Command Prompt window itself. As above, you can do this is the usual
> manner: just use Task Manager, or start the target application with a "start
> /HIGH" command.
>
> Note also that giving a process a High priority does *not* mean the process
> will get most of the machine cycles. There is no guarantee that this will
> happen. The priority means that the Windows Dispatcher will tend to schedule
> threads for that process, in preference to threads for other processes at
> lower priorities. If two processes have similar workload characteristics,
> then the one running at a higher priority will probably tend to get more CPU
> time, over a period. But priority does not directly allocate CPU time to a
> process.
>
> Finally (and just to be pedantic), it isn't a "DOS" window. DOS is an
> obsolete, single tasking, 16-bit operating system. When you open a Command
> Prompt window on Windows NT (including 2000, XP and Vista) you are running a
> native, 32-bit process which calls does into the NT kernel; there's no DOS
> involved. The Command Prompt does bear a superficial resemblance to the
> command.com of old (and in fairness, even some Microsoft docs occasionally
> refer to it erroneously as a "DOS window" ... sloppy tech writers).
>
> Hope it helps,
>
> --
> Andrew McLaren
> amclar (at) optusnet dot com dot au