More fuel for the fire!
New configuration:
Got tired of trying to determine if it was a win7 issue so put a different HD in the laptop and installed:
openSUSE 11.2 (x86_64)
VirtualBox 3.1.8 r61349
Installed windows XP Pro SP2 in a virtual machine
Installed SP3
Installed all current XP updates
Upgraded IE to:
Version: 8.0.6001.18702
Cipher Strength: 256-bit
Product ID: 01398-640-2947616-234921
Update Versions: 0
(Interesting that the version seems to be older than I posted below but that was under Windows 7 Pro)
I have set IE options as follows:
- Disable script debugging (Internet Explorer)
- Disable script debugging (Other)
Uncheck "Enable third-party browser extensions"
Ran a mock tournament and it seemed to be okay.
Ran 3 tournaments last night and the first went great. Did not see any noticeable slowdowns; Auto-save was enabled.
Shortly after starting the second tournament (within 1-2 min) I again began to notice the clock halting.
The halts initially were 1-2, 3-4 seconds but at times much longer. Gradually the pauses were as long as 3-4 minutes.
The clock would catch up eventually so that the overall time seemed to be correct.
It got so bad toward the end of round 1 that I received several error dialogs (attached the 2 I saved)
I even rebooted the virtual XP machine to see if that would help but when I started the tournament back up it was no better.
I eventually just let it go because as I said the overall round times were basically correct but any knockout was dreaded because it would take forever to display the screen to do the knockout.
The 3rd tournament was basically the same as the 2nd.
This morning I'm re-running a copy of the 2nd tournament and here are some notes on it as I'm observing:
Round 1 - (auto-save not enabled) immediately shows the pauses (4-8 seconds)
Task manager shows mshta.exe at 90+% CPU, over all CPU at 100%
Round 2 - mshta at 80-90%, over all at 100%, clock pauses 2-3 seconds
I modified the run priority of mshta to BelowNormal about 5 min into the round.
This changed the mshta CPU usage to 40-70% with spikes to 90+%
Round 3 - mshta at a steady 40% with occasional spikes to 80%, over all 55-60%. Clock pauses were minimal
Round 4 - mshta at 70-90% with spikes to 100%, clock pauses consistent 3-4 seconds
I enabled auto-save about 5 min into the round
Break 1 - mshta at 45-55% with spikes to 90%, over all about 75-80%
Basically it seems to be running fairly well. No major changes from last nights environment other than lowering the priority for mshta.
I realize the above probably does not help a whole lot but I'm just trying to document in detail so that anyone else may get some ideas as to what to try.
I have also occasionally seen the script debugging error while running tournaments but I just always answer "no" and go on.
I'm open to suggestions if anyone has them. I just wanna play!!!