If your multiuser system is running slowly, the cause must be isolated and eliminated to restore the normal high performance of the system.   The following checklist covers possible reasons for system performance to be noticeably degraded.

  • Check your hard disk for fragmentation. A fragmented hard disk can cause significant slowdown in operation, particularly in disk intensive programs.

  • Check the system for modems NOT using DCD protocol. DCD gives the operating system an additional line for controlling the modem. Without it, "noise" from the modem will be interpreted by the operating sytem as data and we will spend time handling it. Telltale clues of this problem are the existence of small files (21-38 bytes in size) in your root directories. Those files may appear in your directory as graphics characters.

  • Check to see if you have any terminals turned off yet data is still streaming from that terminal. Use the PORTS diagnostic to detect this.This unsolicited data would cause the operating system to spend time interpreting it, slowing the entire system down. Enough unsolicited data can cause a system to fail to boot.

  • Check for applications not being caught by idle detection. Usually a tell-tale sign is when slowness is proportional to the number of programs run concurrently, i.e. each program slow the system down a bit more.CCI Concurrent's idle detection is set to catch a process that polls the keyboard 10 times in a row. With some DOS programs you may need to reduce this number so that the process polling the keyboard is caught more quickly. Do this with IDLE ON,X, where X is 1-9.

  • Check the speed of your computer to be sure that it hasn't accidentally been reset to a slower CPU speed.

  • Check your BIOS setup for SHADOW BIOS being turned on; and after you turn it off, be sure to do a LOADSYS INSTALL. Not doing one may result in very slow performance.

  • Check to be sure that the CCI disk caching is turned on. Unless you are using a hardware caching controller, lack of caching on a system will cause slow performance, with slowness being accentuated by disk intensive programs and an increased number of users on the system.

  • If the slowness seems to "come and go", turn the stations on your system on one by one to see if a particular station's being on causes the system to slow down. If so, check the station itself and the cabling. Bad cabling can cause speed degradaton.

  • Check to see if you have a printer box (i.e., a serial to parallel converter) that is streaming data.