I have been reading the posted problems on getting AREV to work correctly with Windows ME and XP.

We are running AREV 2.12 on a Novell 5.1 server with the 3.1 client and until now all Windows 98 PC's.

Am I better off putting my effort into ME or should I upgrade to XP?

The New Dell machine with ME so far will not recognize EMS and returns a FS477 when I attempt to load AREV.

Well .. XP doesn't really support MS-DOS programs (in general). There are numerous issues with XP. In fact, I wouldn't even think of upgrading a 98 machine to XP since there are so many driver and incompatibility issues that I get a migrane even thinking about it. The only thing that seems to work in the install side is a fresh install on a virgin disk. I don't think EMS will work at all on XP, and on, and on.

That's my take FWIW

Don Miller

C3 Inc.

Maggie,

I do not know which way for you to go, but I can tell you a few things I've found out so far.

In the cases where you cannot get EMS on your ME machine, you probably never will. I spent a while trying everything MS suggested to no avail. Some machines will have it and some machines won't.

In my testing of Windows XP, I have been able to get EMS (at least on the only WS I've tested it on - FWIW this is the same machine I was not able to get EMS for ME - I wiped ME and moved on) and have it Active in AREV. The only (Arev related) files that were loaded in my config.nt were:

dos=high, umb

device=%SystemRoot%\system32\himem.sys

files=200

buffers=30

In the WHO screen, the available memory is only about 340,000, which is lower than I like, but I have not yet added EMM386 to the workstation to see if it makes a difference.

So far, using an XP workstation, I know Arev on works locally and across a network using the NT Service. I'll be testing it over the next week or so with Novell and will let the community know my findings and benchmarks.

Hope this helps a little,

Kevin

You can expect Windows XP to be way slower than Windows ME on a Novell network.

Microsoft has a tech document on their site that describes how to activate Expanded Memory in Windows ME. These steps have worked on every Windows ME machine we have tried. The name of the article is "Cannot Configure Expanded Memory Support for an MS-DOS-Based Program" and you can find it by searching with the keywords "winmedos" or "pif"

I have heard mixed reviews on Windows ME… Windows XP also seems to be getting trashed in the trade press. An article in this week's InfoWorld recommended that you not buy XP until 2 ghz machines are common place.

Stay with Win98. I get EMS on my HP machine with Win ME. So far, I have been unable to keep ME up for a day. I proactively reboot about 4 times a day - or about every 4 program invocations

Give the choice of using WindowsME or being hit in the back of the head with a shovel - I'd choose the shovel.

I had several PCs in my office pre-loaded with WindowsME - they crashed 10 times a day. All have had Win98 installed, replacing WindowsME.

The other choice - WindowsXP - isn't too bad. I have it on my main PC and it certainly is far more reliable - but running AREV is very slow (in a window) - it seems fine when run full-screen.

The short of the matter is:

ME does NOT support EMS (Microsoft says it caused too many support problems), beware using 3rd party add-ins, therefore don't use ME.

XP is basically NT and runs AREV with EMS, you don't have to do anything more than use the commands in CONFIG.NT referred to by Kevin.

Regarding XP being slow: I'm running it on a (nowadays) slow 600Mhz and find the speed quite acceptable in a normal window, not full screen. Beware though that the NTVDM cpu usage shoots up to 50% with AREV Runtime, up to 98% with Arev Dev - lessen this with a TCL "PC etc." whenever you're idle!

Performance on a stand-alone machine is one thing. As soon as you put it on a network, though, everything changes.

Our benchmarks on Windows 2000 (which is a faster version of NT than XP) show performance drops off 90% or more when comparing stand-alone workstations with networked workstations using the NT/2000 Service.

This performance decline appears to be more related to how the AREV/NPP/NTService products interact with Microsoft networking, so it is quite possible that you would see this same decline in performance using Windows ME on a Microsoft network.

Windows ME on a Novell network, however, is a different matter. It will be much faster than anything you could currently do on any Microsoft network with the NT/2000 Service. With that said, however, Windows ME does not have the best reputation. Many companies are staying with Windows 98 for this reason. Unfortunately, AREV on Windows 2000/XP workstation on a Novell network is not usable at this time.

Therefore, if you have no network, it probably does not matter. If you have a Microsoft network, it probably does not matter much. If you have a Novell network, expect Windows ME to blow away anything you could do with Windows 2000/XP, but you would probably be better of with Windows 98. If you are considering changing from a Novell network to a Microsoft network, be prepared for a big performance hit with Revelation products, no matter what you do.

Some typical AREV/NT Service/NLM benchmark figures (transactions per second):

W2K workstation, local files… 2600 to 3600 tps

W2K workstation on W2K Server with W2K Service… 230 to 280 tps

Win 95/98/ME on W2K Server with W2K Service… 300 to 350 tps

Win 95/98/ME on Novell with NLM… 500 to 1300 tps

W2K workstation on Novell with NLM… 39 to 41 tps

W95/98/ME on Novell takes advantage of increased clock speeds, which explains the range of 500 to 1300 tps. Expect newer/faster equipment to be toward the upper end of the performance range. Microsoft performance figures do not seem to be greatly impacted by clock speed, so do not expect to overcome the Microsoft performance issue with faster hardware. (I believe indicates that there is a bottleneck somewhere else in the system.)

So, the answer to the "Window ME or XP question" has a lot to do with the type of AREV application you are running (does it do a lot of file i/o?), the number of users that need concurrent access (Novell supports more), and the type of network you are using (W2K/XP workstations are not usable on Novell for any serious database work). If you already have a Novell network, DO NOT BUY Windows 2000/XP workstations unless you are prepared to swith to a Microsoft server. Do not switch to a Microsoft server if you want maximum performance from AREV.

Clear as mud, huh?

If you all don't mind a little seat of the pants feedback. I have just installed XP-home in a dual boot mode on my 1200MHz AMD K-7 system. XP is giving me all kinds of annoying problems (like long boot up times, my sound card, portrait mode, and paperport scanner don't work, etc.), but a couple of ARev observations (all stand alone):

First of all, no problem getting EMS in XP, at least on this computer.

ARev 3.12 seems to run great, and subjectively quicker than on Win98. ARev 1.16 is almost impossibly slow in a window, but fine full screen (not that I would want to use it that way). TAME improves 1.16 windowed performance marginally, which I find interesting.

I am trying to figure out what it is about XP that would cause 1.16 to be slow sluggish in a window, but not 3.12, and not when it runs just fine under Win98 on the same computer.

After all, the sluggishness really shouldn't result from the fact that ARev 1.16 is doing all that keyboard polling, since the sluggishness occurs while ARev is running, not while it is sitting waiting for keyboard input. The fact that Tame improves the situation, but doesn't fix it, is weird too. Unless….

I am wondering if XP (and, I assume, 2000) is actually trying to do some multithreading in the windowed dos mode? In other words, is the screen display a separate process, which thus gets slowed down because of the processor resources demanded by ARev? If so, is there some configuration solution to this problem?

David

We have a customer with a NetWare 4.11 server. They have 39 users on an AREV 3.12 application. They use Windows 98, Windows 2000 and Windows XP machines on the same network.

We ran our standard AREV 3.12 benchmark program on each of the three types of machines. Windows 98 (Novell client) completed almost 1300 transactions per second; Windows 2000 (Novell client) completed 39 transactions per second and Windows XP (Microsoft client for NetWare) completed 14 transactions per second.

This is not a typo. Windows 98 performs nearly 100 times faster on our benchmark than Windows XP on a Novell network with the Revelation NLM.

Our benchmark does a simple read/write operation to an empty, not presized, linear hash file.

Dan,

Don't you think this is mostly related to Novell compatability rather than the inherent processing ability of those OSs?

[email protected]

SRP Computer Solutions, Inc.

To answer that question, try the same test on a local file.

Yes. In fact, I think it is Microsoft's implementation of ipx (vwipxspx) that is the culprit.

RTI appears to be focusing on the Novell Client as the cause of the problem; however, this does not make sense to me (although I don't have access to the same source code as they do). The reason that it does not make sense to me is that the Novell 4.8 client works fine on Windows NT (over 500 transactions per second on our network) but it dies on Windows 2000 (41 transaction per second). This would seem to indicate that the problem is not the client.

If you look closer, when you install the 4.8 Novell client on NT the installation process adds Novell files (vipx and vlmsup) to autoexec.nt. When you install the same client on Windows 2000 it adds those files to the autoexec.nt file, but it adds two others, nw16 and vwipxspx.

I have done some research on these files. They are Microsoft files that contain Microsoft's implementation of 16 bit ipx/spx. Hmmmm. I find it curious that Windows NT does not need these files to communicate with Novell, but Windows 2000 does.

Previously we were unable to run our benchmark on Windows 2000 using the Microsoft client because we could not get the NLM to work with this configuration, but we had a customer who was able to get the Microsoft client for Novell working with XP. As you can see in my previous note, they got 14 transactions per second. This would seem to indicate that poor performance can be achieved without the Novell client.

So, I really think that this is a rather blatant move on the part of Microsoft to make it difficult for those people who choose to use Novell as their network operating system.

Regardless of the battle between Microsoft and Novell, I suspect most people who participate in this discussion are just trying to get their AREV/OI application to work as well as possible.

Therefore, if you are trying to decide whether to buy a Windows ME machine or a Windows XP machine and you currently use a Novell network, this battle between Microsoft and Novell is extremely relevant. So you cannot answer the question "WINDOWS ME OR XP?" without taking into account the network you are using. If you are using Novell and want the best performance possible, you currently need to use Windows 95/98/ME. If you feel compelled to move to Windows 2000/XP, and you use Novell, you need to consider switching to a Microsoft network. If you have a Microsoft network and you want more performance, switch to Windows 95/98/ME and a Novell network. This combination will out-perform any Microsoft network you can assemble by about 250% (although we have seen as much as 600%).

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