Win9x and attempting to change client priority

[Halon50]

Thought I'd post a link here to the other thread in case other people come across this:

http://bane.free-dc.org/forum/showthread.php3?s=&threadid=1401

I believe it's just the wonked way Win9x deals with DOS windows and priority settings, so I won't be disappointed to find out there's no client-side fix. Changing client priority while running on an NT kernel OS works just fine.

[Halon50]

Since the original comments are getting buried in the above thread, here are the relevant posts:
Originally posted by tpdooley
It's also been useful to show when a few of the computers need the clients restarted; (Over the past 3 weeks, I've had 2 or 3 of the 6 computers at work start producing 2-4k structures a day, instead of the 22-180k structures/day that they should be doing..)
Originally posted by Halon50
My Win9x (Win98 and WinMe) machines don't respond well to changing the client's priority above its default "Low" setting. When using the "Client Priority" checkbox, these machines crunch far slower than normal - about the 2-4k structures per day you've reported. I believe it's just how Win9x handles thread priorities rather than a bug in the DFGUI app or the DF client.

In fact, if you make the DF client window visible and active in the foreground while in this slow state, it will resume its normal speed.
Originally posted by Halon50
Never mind, I just picked up the following from my P2-300 running DFGUI with Client Priority checked at -5, and Hidden:
------------------------------------------------------------
Distributed Folding Windows dfGUI v1.8 Benchmark

Sample Size : 20 structures over 735 seconds.
Protein Size: 69AA

Structures Per Second: 0.03
Structures Per Minute: 1.9
Structures Per Hour : 114
Structures Per Day : 2743

OS : Windows ME MHz: ???
CPU: GenuineIntel Pentium(r) II Processor
Client Switches: -df -rt -p -5
------------------------------------------------------------
Since I don't feel like trying other priority settings and waiting 12 minutes for every benchmark, and since -5 is pretty high already, I'll assume that it's a bug with Win9x and DOS window priority settings.

Funny thing though, without overriding the default priority the client runs just fine. Normal Structs/day is about 10x the above benchmark.