Vista "long goodbye" 2.0

[Dr Mordrid]

Link....

Vista's Long Goodbye strikes again

OS networking buckles under single media file

By Dan Goodin
Published Wednesday 29th August 2007 19:55 GMT

New data documenting quirky networking characteristics in Vista have surfaced courtesy of Windows architecture guru Mark Russinovich, who confirms that simply by playing media files, users can bring throughput in Microsoft's new and improved operating system to a screeching halt.

The degradation is caused by a new feature known as Multimedia Class Scheduler Service (MMCSS), which has been baked in to the Vista kernel. Its mission is to automatically prioritize the playback of audio and video to prevent skipping, sputtering and other unseemly glitches. Unfortunately, it ends up fixing a problem that was largely non-existent and leaving in its place a major headache for many sysadmins.

According to various bloggers, including ZDNet's Adrian Kingsley-Hughes, the playing of seemingly insignificant media files - say the many beeps accompanied by Windows error messages - cut throughput on his local area network in half. The playing of games and files in iTunes or Real Player caused the same slow down.
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[Kooldino]

Wow, that sucks.

[ZokesPro]

Agreed, it sucks, but canit be disabled like any other service? And what does it mean by "baked in the kernel"?

[Dr Mordrid]

I means it's hard-coded in the OS's core.

Might be temp hope though;

In the meantime, a Russinovich reader who goes by the user name Courtney has provided a simple workaround that's likely to work as well as anything. It involves modifying the key "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Servi ces\Audiosrv\Dep" to remove MMCS and set MMCS to disabled in services. Reboot, and presto.

"As soon as I rebooted," Courtney reports, "I was able to copy files at 40mb/s+ while listening to audio."

I'd back up the registry at least, maybe the whole C: drive, before trying it though.

[ZokesPro]

Good old registry to the rescue. Makes you wonder if they actually do testing on some of these features they implement or maybe it's there for the older systems Vista could run on.

Come to think about it, with NIC'S and dual core cpu's these days, is that feature even needed??

[Dr Mordrid]

I don't know if I'd call it a "feature" for 99% of users

[lowlifecat]

it's always been a thin subjective line between 'feature' and 'bug' with MS products.

[Chucky Cheese]

..i am experiencing this very problem with the network slowdown while playing mp3s from my NAS and syncronizing folders across my network while in vista, and this service is my prime suspect in the case of the

"what is bringing my computer out of sleep cycles"

and i can attest to the networking problems(..i have vista ultimate), i had to change a security policy key in order to see my...i guess, legacy network(..other devices)...it was dealing with the lan manager(LM) reponce level.

all my devices are gigabit and i had "structured wiring " put in this house while it was being built(..cat 6,cat 5 for phones and rg6 quad shield)...i also have the low voltage wiring cabinet and a 16 port video distribution bus. i could just kick myself in the ass for not doing any audio wiring...and it was offered...WTH was i thinking?

anyways i don't think there is any problems with my stuff. when i put my xp disk in and boot the system, it is very fast, i can't believe how much faster xp is on this hardware configuration than vista is...to be fair though...i am running aero glass in vista.

cc