why windows sucks, reason #82781
We have some automated test systems whose job it is to run a build followed by test apps for every checked in change. The Linux systems hum along without a single problem. The Mac system is mostly ok too. The Windows systems (XP32 & XP64) have been abysmally slow since day one. The Linux systems finish a test run in about 20 minutes. The Windows systems take upwards of 4 hours to build & run the same exact thing. About 2 weeks ago, I had configured all of the Windows systems (not just those mentioned above) to reboot once/day in attempt to eliminate some instabilities. Most days I would VNC back in after the reboot to ensure that all was well. Last Friday I was stuck in a meeting, and didn't get to VNC in until after the automated nightly tests for the day had started. What I noticed was that the builds were glacially slow. Immediately, I became suspicious that perhaps that was the missing piece of the puzzle. If the user running the test wasn't logged in when it began, Windows gave it some horribly low priority. So today, I reconfigured the systems to auto login at bootup, and only to start the test runs upon login. Amazingly, that seems to have fixed the entire problem. It utterly boggles my mind that an OS can be this ridiculously crappy.