KezNews.com
DownloadsOther NewsForumBlogsWallpapersJokewareSearch

News letter:


Enter Your E-mail:

Microsoft Responds To Vista's Network and Audio Problems


section: windows, for your questions: KezNews forum, 27.8.2007

With the discovery last week of the connection between Vista's poor networking performance and audio activities, word quickly spread around the Net. No doubt this got Microsoft's attention, and they have responded to the issue. Thanks to pacpis for this news.




Microsoft states that 'some of what we are seeing is expected behavior, and some of it is not'; and that they are working on technical documentation, as well as applying a slight sugar coating to the symptoms.

Apparently they believe an almost 90% drop in networking performance is 'slight,' only affects reception of data, and that this performance trade-off is necessary to simply play an MP3.

Adrian Kingsley-Hughes: I have received a response to the Vista network performance issue from Microsoft. Here are some points of interest:

* “We have been looking into this problem and are working on a doc that will go into the technical details of what we have found.”
* “Please note that some of what we are seeing is expected behavior, and some of it is not. In certain circumstances Windows Vista will trade off network performance in order to improve multimedia playback. This is by design.”
* “The connection between media playback and networking is not immediately obvious. But as you know, the drivers involved in both activities run at extremely high priority. As a result, the network driver can cause media playback to degrade. This shows up to the user as things like popping and crackling during audio playback. Users generally hate this, hence the trade off.”
* “In most cases the user does not notice the impact of this as the decrease in network performance is slight. Of course some users, especially ones on Gigabit based networks, are seeing a much greater decrease than is expected and that is clearly a problem that we need to address.”
* “Two other things to note. First, we have not seen any cases where a users internet performance would be degraded, in our tests this issue only shows up with local network operations.”
* “Second, this trade-off scheme only kicks in on the receive side. Transmit is not affected.”

I’ve been doing some more research into this and I’m coming to the conclusion that the issue is related somehow to Multimedia Class Scheduler service (MMCSS). This is a service that makes sure that multimedia applications have prioritized access to CPU resources. I can’t prove my theory because killing MMCSS also disables Windows audio.

View: KezNews Discussion - Microsoft Responds To Vista's Network and Audio Problems


send email Send link 2 friend  |  Permalink
<< previouse article
Windows Vista SP1 6.0.6001.16633
next article >>
Microsoft Sets Fall Launch for Configuration Manager

MORE RELATED ARTICLES:
Gates responds to questions about his stock sales || Microsoft execs saw problems with early Vista || What do Xbox Live problems say about Microsoft’s back-end infrastructure? || Has Windows Vista's UAC feature failed Microsoft? || Windows Vista Activation Problems

Comments(17)

Its DRM

By nick on 27.08.2007 - 22:08
it's drm related. all the audio atuttering is a drm issue as cpu usage goes up hugely. the amount of horsepower they use for this drm stuff is rediculous. use resources for drm, other things suffer.

Bad network + NO audio

By Minotaur on 28.08.2007 - 01:08
hmm so what explains the slow network transfer speeds (compared to xp) when there's no audio playing?

Audio & Vista

By PackedFunk on 28.08.2007 - 01:08
i threw my expensive creative sound card away because creative told me it was my fault i upgraded to vista, not theirs! creative be damn!

creative be damn!

By blame MS on 28.08.2007 - 02:08
it is not creative's fault - it is ms for selling windows me2 on us and forcing it on us when it was not ready and did not have driver support - that is does not still have for all you silly little vista lovers - bet you types voted for bush 2 times as well!

lamerz

By lamerh8er on 28.08.2007 - 12:08
blamems..how the hell did ms force vista on you? they didnt..you forced it apon yourself..you didnt have to agree to their eula when you activated your vista, you could have said no and asked for your money back..just coz its the latest os doesnt mean you are forced to use it
you still have a choice of which os to use..i will stick with xp till vista is sorted

you didnt have to agree to their eula

By wrong on 28.08.2007 - 13:08
read the eula rules on vista. you agree when you buy the pc. before you ever activate. you can not get xp or you money back from dell or other mfg. i can not make this up. go to ms and see!

Don´t use VISTA...why can´t people understand that!?

By Haushoffer on 28.08.2007 - 15:08
so basically they are saying there is no solution in sight, and that these problems are to be expected...problems that where not seen on xp....they really listen to customers don´t they?...m$ says, this is what we have for you, we don´t care if you don´t like it.you have no choice...but we do!! don´t use vista! simple

Vista Woes

By MicroWho on 28.08.2007 - 16:08
"please note that some of what we are seeing is expected behavior."
yep, we all expect ms products not to work correctly.

hey "blameMS",....

By Cypher101 on 28.08.2007 - 18:08
hey "blame ms", i'm so sure ms held you down with a vibrator to your ass and forced you to change to vista. you can complain all you want, but in the end if you didn't buy vista, you can't say sh*t. you didn't lose money, and you surely can't complain about a lack of support if you haven't coughed up a dime. don't expect something for nothing, tool.

wrong?

By cypher101 on 28.08.2007 - 19:08
you agree to the eula when you buy the pc? can't get xp? no, i think you are the one who is wrong. dell specifically still provides the option of xp. they were the first pc manufacturer to do so. and who the hell here buys a pc from dell anyways.

MacroCrap

By Moses1910 on 28.08.2007 - 22:08
hey "blamems",....bullshit you are still screwed even if you paid for it, i was a fool and bought ultimate, and now the dvd went soaring out the window two months or so later

Hmm....

By No one on 28.08.2007 - 22:08
odd, i never have any problems with vista.

I think

By ididhergoodNhard on 28.08.2007 - 23:08
i think that it mostly effects people with draft n wireless or comparable wireless cards as my shity dell e1505 which by the way i would not recomend to my worst enemy has a draft n dell wireless card which i had to pull out because it was a piece of sh#t efeted audio playback so bad that i couldnt even listen to music. so i installed a intel pro and the problem was fixed...

cypher101

By wrong on 29.08.2007 - 03:08
http://download.microsoft.com/documents/useterms/windows vista_ultimate_english_36d0fe99-75e4-4875-8153-889cf5105718.pdf

here it is. just read it. just by getting the pc with vista you are agreeing. right from ms. dell, acer you name it will not give you any money back if you do not want vista but want xp. ms will say go to your oem, don't talk to them. and btw, dell only sells xp on a few units and that must end per ms law in jan 2008. again fact! google it and see. they will force all of us no matter what you or i or anyone says or does!

I LOVE VISTA

By BUSH4PREZ2008 on 29.08.2007 - 04:08
i love bush ! mostly becasue he pisses off asholes who cant speak in a forum about microsoft without brining up his name. bush 08 !

wrong

By BUYSOMETHINGELSE on 29.08.2007 - 04:08
hey wrong. build your own pc if you have a problem...put any os you want on it...if your unable to build your own, have someone else do it for you. dell will sell what dell wants to. if you don't like it t.s. go someplace else.

Value for the money

By Rezen on 03.09.2007 - 06:09
so long as microsoft focuses their windows business on user lock-in models instead of shipping reliable, mature, user-centric software, i will continue to not pay for it.


No new comments are allowed for this article.

For your questions use our KezNews Discussion - Microsoft Responds To Vista's Network and Audio Problems