NTVDM Causes Full CPU Utilization

One of my clients is running Windows Server 2003. We have
it setup as a Application type Terminal Services server.
The main program we need to run on the Terminal Services
clients is a DOS accounting package called Real World
Accounting. The client was complaining of extremely slow
performance when remote clients were connected to server.
Upon examination, determined that the reason for such
slowness was that NTVDM.exe was causing CPU utilization of
about 97-99%. I read that running the app in full screen
mode may help the issue but when trying to switch to full
screen mode we get the following message "the video device
failed to initialize for fullscreen mode" I specified in
the shortcut to run in full screen mode but this made no
difference.

I used both the Terminal Service client connection manager
v5.00 and the new Remote Desktop Connection client which
comes with XP and had the same results.

This hit in performance is making it so they cannot
utilize
the remote connections during business hours when it is
most important.

Does anyone have suggestions/solutions to this issue.
Please reply here or email me at (E-Mail Removed)
..

(E-Mail Removed) wrote:
> One of my clients is running Windows Server 2003. We have
> it setup as a Application type Terminal Services server.
> The main program we need to run on the Terminal Services
> clients is a DOS accounting package called Real World
> Accounting. The client was complaining of extremely slow
> performance when remote clients were connected to server.
> Upon examination, determined that the reason for such
> slowness was that NTVDM.exe was causing CPU utilization of
> about 97-99%. I read that running the app in full screen
> mode may help the issue but when trying to switch to full
> screen mode we get the following message "the video device
> failed to initialize for fullscreen mode" I specified in
> the shortcut to run in full screen mode but this made no
> difference.
>
> I used both the Terminal Service client connection manager
> v5.00 and the new Remote Desktop Connection client which
> comes with XP and had the same results.
>
> This hit in performance is making it so they cannot
> utilize
> the remote connections during business hours when it is
> most important.

NTVDM is related to your DOS program. I hate to say it but some DOS apps
just don't run very well on the NT family of software and there sometimes
isn't much that can be done about it.

Having said all that, have you looked at tips # 1227 and 0151 at
www.jsiinc.com? Good troubleshooting steps there for things like this which
might help. If working through these doesn't help then I think you've just
got one of those badly behaved apps I was talking about.


--
--
Rob Moir
Microsoft MVP for servers & security
http://www.robertmoir.co.uk
"802.11bofh - the *other* power over ethernet standard"