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What is up with this NTVDM that causes my computer to run slowly when a DOS window is open?
Ok, here is what happens. I just got a wonderful new Dell system. It has Windows XP and runs great. The problem occurs when I run a dos program within Windows. After opening only the dos program, I select Ctrl-Alt-Delete and see that the item NTVDM.exe has about 97% to 100% of the CPU's attention. This causes any other tasks to run extremely slow while this dos window is open. After closing this dos window, everything runs great and responds instantly. I need to use the dos program while I am multitasking with other programs on my PC. What is this NTVDM.exe file and how can I get this to either go away or have it lose the CPU's attention once opened? Any input that can be provided would be tremendously appreciated! Thanks.
NT Virtual Dos Machine (NTVDM). A necessary evil in order to run a pure DOS program, you can't get rid of it.
Not sure if compatibility mode would work for your DOS program, or make any difference to the CPU usage. Can you start the DOS program from a cmd window, if so, does it make any difference in the CPU utilization?
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Thanks for the advice Michael. Unfortunately, Compatibility Mode is grayed out (unavailable) and running the program directly from a command prompt produces the same response. Do you have any further ideas? Thanks.
Anthony
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Not without knowing a lot more about the program and your setup.
Face it, XP is not meant to run DOS apps. DOS support is one of the reasons to multi boot a Win9x and NT OS.
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Thanks for the help. I actually just figured it out. In the properties of the bat file, I found an idle sensitivity setting. I set it to high and the CPU was sensitive to other apps running on the operating system. That was it, the dos program opened and everything else responded appropriately. I just wanted to thank you and let you know incase you come upon this in the future. Take care and once again thank you for all the advice.
Best regards,
Anthony
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You're most welcome, glad to help.
Where exactly was that "idle sensitivity setting"? I've checked the properties of a few of my bat files and didn't see that option. Maybe its because you use the "start /priorityclass" command in the bat file to run the exe?
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I have a dos accounting software that need to use Files=100 at my dos base program. How do I at this line in Win XP??
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Say Hey, All:
I'm assuming that XP, like Win2000, is really just WinNT (5.0?) with slight changes geared toward a future NT universe. For Dennis, I too use a beautiful DOS program; to increase your file handles, open c:\WinNT\system32\config.nt, the Files= line is probably at the very bottom, preset with a paltry 30 or 40; I changed mine to 150. For Anthony, increasing idle sensitivity just defeats multitasking abilities (the reason for Windows in the first place, right?). What you need is a good memory manager like MemoKit.exe (29 bucks on the net) to be able to release the firm grip Microsoft still allows on your RAM. Some DOS programs grab all RAM available to initially build their environment space, but should release most back to your use right away; some of them need a bit of urging, and often, so does ntvdm.exe, at least, according to what I see on my MemoKit monitoring.
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the idle sensitivity setting: right click the bat file, left click properties, and click on the misc tab...the idle sensitivity scroll-bar is right above the windows shortcut keys, and on the left. ;)
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I'm trying to run a dos application in Win2K. The problem I have is that the program would run taking all the CPU. However, I can't move the cursor in the running program. The computer has P3 450MHz with 128MB memory. It works fine using a computer with the same resources but using Win98. It also works fine using a 1GHz computer. Is this the problem? Is there anyway around it?
Thanks in advance.
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Hi I’m running a dos app on win2k machine has a cpu pIII (800)Mz 256 ram memory and after few minutes working on the DOS app the windows crashes.
please help
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How to overcome the DOS program problem in WinXP which displays " Insufficient files supplied by DOS"
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You might like to look at the microsoft knowledge base if this happens on a machine with a 2GHZ of higher with 16 bit dos apps a patch is avalible.
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Where is this patch? I searched Microsoft's site and couldn't find anything about it. Could you possibly e-mail the link to me?
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