🚀 go-pugleaf

On Mon, 16 Jun 2003 18:56:55 +0930
David. E. Goble <degoble@gtech.computing> wrote:

> On Mon, 16 Jun 2003 05:26:16 GMT, George Durbridge
> <gdurbrid@bigpond.net.au> wrote:
> >
> >For how long does it pause, and are the pauses associated
> >with any network activity?  If so, what sort of activity
-
> >for instance, could it be blocking on DNS lookups?
> >
> Hi, thanks for replying.
> 
> No more than about 10-20 seconds and it does not seem to
be associated
> with any network activity. That is it happens while I am
downloading
> email, downloading newsgroups (I use free agent), surfing
the web (I
> use netscape 7+), kaza lite, icq. Any combination.
> 
> Sometimes the connection is totally fine...
> 
> The fact that the whole system stops is the concern. How
can the
> connection pause the use of me typing in notepad, while I
download
> email and newsgroups?

If there is lots of disk activity when it pauses, it may be
swapping to virtual memory on disk.  That would interrupt
other activities.  But in your original post, you said you
had 1.1GB of memory, which should be plenty, and which XP
should be able to cope with.  If it is swapping to disk, you
need to reduce the number of applications open at the same
time.

Otherwise, it looks as if a high-priority task is hogging
the CPU.  This is probably kernel or device driver code
(particularly if you mean that the CPU usage during these
pauses is only 10 or 20%).  You can't change the kernel, so
I would be inclined to replace the device driver if you can.
 Look for a newer device driver for your modem.  If you
can't find a new device driver, or if it doesn't fix the
problem, beg, borrow or steal a hardware modem (external
serial or internal ISA, but not PCI or USB) and see if the
problem goes away.  If you can't try a hardware modem, try a
different software modem - i.e. completely different driver.