ActiveHm.exe process

[Sonic]

Any particular reason this process has to be "Realtime" instead of the standard "Normal"?

[Dan Lawrence]

Would you care to explain more fully?  Your description is very vague.  ActiveHm.exe is the Active Home Pro program.

[Sonic]

Would you care to explain more fully?  Your description is very vague.  ActiveHm.exe is the Active Home Pro program.

Sorry, open task manager in winders, goto processes tab, right click on the ActiveHm.exe process and look at set priority.  Activehm.exe is the only process I've seen that comes up realtime, (even  taskmanager is "only" high, most others are normal).  Basically it has the highest priority of all the running processes.  This was a big problem back one version of AHP because I had the issue with "find other computers" chewing up most system resources until it was killed. 

[Dan Lawrence]

That's a making mountains out of molehills deaprtment  It only uses that memory portion while running.  Unless your PC  is RAM deficiant, it's a non-problem. In typing this response, my brower was open, Outlook (my e-mail client) and Word (the spell-checker part), plus AHP, all running with no degradement.

SHEESH!!!!! 

[Sonic]

That's a making mountains out of molehills deaprtment  It only uses that memory portion while running.  Unless your PC  is RAM deficiant, it's a non-problem. In typing this response, my brower was open, Outlook (my e-mail client) and Word (the spell-checker part), plus AHP, all running with no degradement.

SHEESH!!!!! 

It is not really a question of memory.  It is a question of cpu timeslice. 
Microsoft says:  http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library(d=robot)/system.diagnostics.processpriorityclass.aspx
  AboveNormal Specifies that the process has priority above Normal but below High. 
  BelowNormal Specifies that the process has priority above Idle but below Normal. 
  High Specifies that the process performs time-critical tasks that must be executed immediately, such as the Task List dialog, which must respond quickly when called by the user, regardless of the load on the operating system. The threads of the process preempt the threads of normal or idle priority class processes.
Caution 
Use extreme care when specifying High for the process's priority class, because a high priority class application can use nearly all available processor time.

  Idle Specifies that the threads of this process run only when the system is idle, such as a screen saver. The threads of the process are preempted by the threads of any process running in a higher priority class.
Note 
The idle priority class is inherited by child processes.

  Normal Specifies that the process has no special scheduling needs. 
  RealTime Specifies that the process has the highest possible priority.
Caution 
The threads of a process with RealTime priority preempt the threads of all other processes, including operating system processes performing important tasks. Thus, a RealTime priority process that executes for more than a very brief interval can cause disk caches not to flush or cause the mouse to be unresponsive.

So no, I don't necessarily think I'm making a mountain of a molehill.   

I really don't know that it matters either way, just seems strange to me is all.  I was maybe hoping for an explanation from x10 (or someone knowledgeable) about why it is this way.   
 

[X10 Pro]

The process shows up as "Normal" for me on Windows XP SP2. What version are you using?

[Sonic]

X10 Pro:  I'm running winders xp pro sp2.  Just got home a did a little test:  ahp latest version window open, very little cpu usage ~1-2%.  I "go live" with video and cpu usage goes to ~60% and this is w/a P4 3.4.

[X10 Pro]

Showing the video on screen is going to take a lot of processor time on just about any system. If you make the video window smaller it will use less CPU, but otherwise that's pretty normal.

[Sonic]

Thanks for the reply, I know video chews up a lot of CPU - I've got other video software running too that uses a good chunk.  If others have the "priority" issue and are running video with a slower machine, might it not cause "hangs"

Might there be a registry key to look@ about the cpu priority, since it seems mine has a higher priority than it should?

[Sonic]

More fuel:  My dad running winders xp pro sp2 and ahp latest show similar results:  ActiveHm.exe set to "realtime" in processes, but with video running in ahp/iwitness cpu is only ~25% ish..............

[mike]

I've been meaning to write and see if anyone has found a way to back off ahp in win7 cpu usage......  The 25-30% it idles at is killing me on this quad cpu machine;  it locks one cpu to 100% and that slows everything down big time....  in the last couple months it has gotten to point where this 100% on 1 cpu or 25% of total cpu time causes everything to come to a halt....  typing an email is 1 character every 30 seconds..  I have resorted to turning it off when I need the computer for stuff....

I have had to reinstall it a couple times this last year (3.310) due to stopping working on reboots....

Sounds like maybe I should kill off all the potential video  camera usage stuff?  I have never bothered to remove the 8 or 10 cameras, snapshot macros, etc......  maybe it is time?


Any ideas?

[Noam]

I have had to reinstall it a couple times this last year (3.310) due to stopping working on reboots....

Version 3.310 is not the latest version.
Have you tried installing 3.318?

[mike]

My bad, sorry.  Yes, I am on 3.318.

IIRC the high cpu usage started quite a while ago, not a recent software version issue I think...  altho the slowing computer to almost stopping IS new.

[pomonabill221]

Running AHP 3.318 on Windows xp sp3 quad core amd.
   My setting for activehome.exe is also realtime, and I didn't set it there.
   According to task manager, activehome.exe has used 5 seconds of cpu time since I started the machine (4.5 hours agao), and I am using a program called blueiris for my security cameras, and virtual weather for my weather station, and haven't noticed any hang problems.
  I don't use active home pro for any video, so cpu usage is very low...
  I was kind of surprised that ahp would be setup for realtime, as this is not really recommended by uSoft, and is kinda strange....

[paulv888]

 

This helped my finding my hanging issue. I am running AHP inside a KVM XP guest. And every time I wanted to drag/drop a module or right-click, the VM grinded to a halt with 100% CPU and I had to force the VM off.

By changing the priority from Realtime to Normal the drag/drop is still slow, but at least the VM recovers.

Really no reason any process should run in realtime.