Fw: application slowing down

[Rich Mooney]

I mailed this from the wrong e-mail address initially so I'm trying it
again.

I'm desperate and throwing myself on the mercy of this mail list.  I have an
> irate customer who wants this problem solved quickly.  I have used
MetaCard
> to create software which we use to monitor and control our distributed
> lighting control systems.  It does these things very well.  I currently
have
> a job which requires that I poll the status of all my controls every 30
> seconds.  I do this so I can catch any changes of state and a close
> approximation of the time at which that change occurred.  I also use this
> function to catch any errors in operation.  The problem is that the time
it
> takes to poll all the controls becomes increasingly longer the longer I
run
> the software.  Initially it will take 33 seconds to poll all of my
controls
> if the polling interval is set to 30 seconds.  After three hours it will
> take 43 seconds.  By the next day it will take 2 minutes.  If I poll at a
> faster rate, the application will become slower at a faster rate.  I'm
using
> it on Win2k SP3 but the problem also occurs on Win98.  This problem occurs
> even when I turn off all other functionality so that the only thing it
does
> is get the status of all the controls at each interval (no logging of
> changes or errors, no triggering of timed events).  The problem does not
> occur if I run the software without being connected to a system.  The
> problem does not occur if I'm just connected to one of my controls which
is
> not changing state.  It appears that the retrieved information needs to be
> changing at least occasionally.  I'll see some increase in memory usage as
> this problem worsens but I'll still have a huge amount of free memory.
The
> processor usage goes up significantly as the problem worsens.  It will
start
> at just a few percent (I'm monitoring this with the Performance tab of the
> windows tack manager) Then continually increase as the problem worsens.
The
> only way I've found to clear the problem is to shut the software down then
> restart it.  I do not have to restart the computer.  I tried using
Memturbo
> to recover memory while my application was running but, no luck.  Is there
> any way to get MetaCard to dump all the resources its using without
shutting
> down?  Does anyone have any other ideas?  I spent all last week on the
> jobsite getting nowhere and could really use some suggestions.  Thanks.
>
> Rich Mooney
> Payne Sparkman Mfg.
> shop at paynesparkman.com