Weather Software > VP Tools (Virtual VP, VP Live, and VP Tools)

StartWatch 0.5.0 Release Candidate 1

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tinplate:
http://www.softwx.com/windows/startwatch.html

Read release notes for all the changes.
Highlights:

Can use (and monitor) an already running instance of a program rather than start a new one.
Leak protection - can close and restart a program if its memory usage exceeds a user set threshold.
Alerts and logging plugged in.

Enjoy.

Steve
SoftWx

FishDude:
Loaded it up this morning, installed and started everything up as expected! Like the new memory monitor!

W7DRM (old call was W3DRM):
Thanks Steve!

Have installed 0.5.0.8 RC1.

First observations:

1- Log shows a VWS failure on every startup. This is probably because VWS seems to pause for several seconds while it is in the startup mode. Once started, though, it seems to run fine.2- No way to get to the "alerts.txt" and "log.txt" files except by using Windows Explorer. Would be nice to have a link to them directly from the StartWatch Menu.3- Question: How often does the VM Size (Mem) column update? I can see the Task Mgr VM Usage column changing but not a corresponding change of Mem in StartWatch.4- The values in the Mem column do not match what I see in the Task Manager VM Usage column (after conversion from KB to MB). Shouldn't they be the same? The are off by several MB's for all programs being monitored.5- Now able to get to the User Manual and ReleaseNotes files.

tinplate:
Thanks for the comments.

1. I'll have to try and duplicate this  There are two phases in hang detection. The first is the "Confirming" phase, and after a period of time (seconds) it goes to "Hung". I could bump that time, plus check that I don't use a shorter confirm time during startup.

2. Alerts can be viewed by clicking on the tab at the bottom of the window (there's a status tab - the default, and an alerts tab). Alerts are ordered with the most recent at the top. I'll add a view option for the log in the future (like VirtualVP and VPLive have now).

3. The VM Usage is checked internally at the frequency set in the Check frequency set per program. However, the display is updated every 5 seconds. This is to avoid excessive screen updating (relatively expensive in terms of CPU usage). since the memory values can change frequently.

4. As you probably know, you'd divide the TaskManager KB value by 1024 to get the MB displayed in StartWatch. For most programs, these values should match, but not always. Memory is a complicated topic in windows, and there is no definitive value for a program's memory usage. Although the counter StartWatch uses is not the exact same counter TaskManager uses to display VM Size, the two values should be close. What values are you seeing that don't match?

Steve

W7DRM (old call was W3DRM):

--- Quote from: "tinplate" ---Thanks for the comments.

1. I'll have to try and duplicate this  There are two phases in hang detection. The first is the "Confirming" phase, and after a period of time (seconds) it goes to "Hung". I could bump that time, plus check that I don't use a shorter confirm time during startup.
--- End quote ---

I restarted several times today and each time it took at least two or three attempts to get VWS started. It would time-out each time while VWS was initializing.

--- Quote ---2. Alerts can be viewed by clicking on the tab at the bottom of the window (there's a status tab - the default, and an alerts tab). Alerts are ordered with the most recent at the top. I'll add a view option for the log in the future (like VirtualVP and VPLive have now).
--- End quote ---

DUH - I didn't think about looking in the Alerts tab...  :oops:

--- Quote ---3. The VM Usage is checked internally at the frequency set in the Check frequency set per program. However, the display is updated every 5 seconds. This is to avoid excessive screen updating (relatively expensive in terms of CPU usage). since the memory values can change frequently.
--- End quote ---

Makes sense. Thanks for the clarification!

--- Quote ---4. As you probably know, you'd divide the TaskManager KB value by 1024 to get the MB displayed in StartWatch. For most programs, these values should match, but not always. Memory is a complicated topic in windows, and there is no definitive value for a program's memory usage. Although the counter StartWatch uses is not the exact same counter TaskManager uses to display VM Size, the two values should be close. What values are you seeing that don't match?
--- End quote ---

Your explanation tells me why I wasn't seeing similar values in Task Manager. I was just moving the decimal point over so the value in Task Mgr was in MB rather than KB. (i.e., TM shows 66,544K and SW shows 64.98MB which is 66,544,000/1024). Amazing, the numbers match exactly when you do the math! I was not dividing the number by 1024. Thus, the differences I was seeing...

Thanks again for such a gREAT package! It is making my life much more enjoyable as I now don't have to constantly watch VWS to make sure it is still running. StartWatch does that for me tirelesessly, day and night - I can get some sleep now!! :lol:

As a suggestion, it would be nice to have an optional audible alert tone to let us know if one of the monitored processes is having problems...

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