Why does inserting a CD/DVD into drive still slow down Windows

Hi!
Can someone explain me, that in Windows (XP, Vista) when I insert a CD/DVD, the Explorer freezes for a couple of seconds and sometimes my mouse too? Maybe someone from the kernel or device driver guys knows the reason?

karnokd wrote:

Hi!
Can someone explain me, that in Windows (XP, Vista) when I insert a CD/DVD, the Explorer freezes for a couple of seconds and sometimes my mouse too? Maybe someone from the kernel or device driver guys knows the reason?

If your mouse freezes, it sounds more like a hardware issue.  Your mouse should never freeze (in XP).

CannotResolveSymbol wrote:



karnokd wrote:Hi! Can someone explain me, that in Windows (XP, Vista) when I insert a CD/DVD, the Explorer freezes for a couple of seconds and sometimes my mouse too? Maybe someone from the kernel or device driver guys knows the reason?

If your mouse freezes, it sounds more like a hardware issue.  Your mouse should never freeze (in XP).

It happens to me too, but only on my laptop when I'm using a USB mouse.

Does Windows still treat PS/2 mice as "native" compared to USB mice?

This mouse (temporal) freeze occurs with PS/2 and USB mouse too. Maybe the IRQL for these devices are lower, than the IDE devices.
I think the IDE CD/DVD driver has a very long DPC at the end of the "disk inserted" notification from the hardware. (What I know, that using Linux or BSD on the same hardware, this hung never occurs). I can't see it, because the ProcessExplorer's UI hungs too during these times.

Maybe a driver achitect person can explain this in detail. Any low level explanation is welcomed.

CannotResolveSymbol wrote:


If your mouse freezes, it sounds more like a hardware issue.  Your mouse should never freeze (in XP).

Ha! I get mouse freezes all the time... in XP Pro... I also have to wait for 15 seconds when I right click on a file and hover over 'Send To' while it re-reads the CD that's been in the drive all day. On a 3GHz box no less.

(Yes, I'm sure I've got issues... that's probably why this happens. Why do I have to have issues though!?!? So I'll want the next, newer, version of Windows of course.)

It's happened on all the Windows XP machines I've used so I'm guessing it's a Windows issue, not an individual issue. I'm also curious why this happens.

Because the shell is broken...

I don't actually know the reason, though I have my suspicions.

I also find this amusing, considering that one of the Vista kernel enhancements (as I understand it) includes the ability to cancel I/O, though this is probably not the reason for the CD problem - the network stack benefits from this, though.

My suspicion ?  Dumb-arse contension problem between shell worker/callback and UI threads. This may also be a fundamental design issue, with Explorer being used as the shell, and as a file browser.

As for the context menu. Yeah, well, that's actually an issue mostly related to third-party shell extensions. But you could argue that if shell extensions were not supported, it wouldn't become an issue...


Hmm. Maybe I should search the Shell blogs... nah, I might actually learn something... [A]

TimP wrote:



It's happened on all the Windows XP machines I've used so I'm guessing it's a Windows issue, not an individual issue. I'm also curious why this happens.

*grabs random cd off desk, sticks in cd drive*

*moves usb mouse around in circles*

Hmm...  nothing here.  Explorer may slow down or deadlock, but the mouse cursor should never freeze.  It's completely independent from the shell.

I tried it with two mice:  one on a lower IRQ (PS2 mouse) and one on a higher IRQ (USB mouse) than my secondary IDE channel (where the CD drive is connected).  I can't make the mouse freeze, so it's not the IRQ that is causing the issue (unless your IDE drive and mouse are on the same IRQ).

I've also never seen the mouse freeze issue.

There could also be a third-party extension to [Autoplay] causing this.

There's an [Autoplay repair tool for 2003 and XP].

Sorry, I was referring to the slow down, not the mouse freezing. I'm guessing it has something to do with the CD spinning up to proper speed. One specific case:

1. After burning a CD with Nero, the CD is ejected
2. Stick the CD back in
3. As soon as the door closes, press Exit on the Nero interface
4. The UI will freeze with the "Exit" button pressed in for a second or two before Windows usually pops up the "This CD contains blah blah files, what do you want to do?" dialog.

Yes, you can have any IRQL for mouse, but when the cd driver issues a CLI instruction, no IRQ will reach anybody else.
The slowdown happens when the autoplay is disabled too. It seems that windows might want to look at the contents of the inserted disk, without interruption. There might be some UI issues not using the asynchronous I/O, and doing the I/O outside of the GUI redraw thread...

karnokd wrote:

Hi!
Can someone explain me, that in Windows (XP, Vista) when I insert a CD/DVD, the Explorer freezes for a couple of seconds and sometimes my mouse too? Maybe someone from the kernel or device driver guys knows the reason?

This has nothing to do with the kernel or drivers.
Windows Applications (this likely has nothing to do with Windows itself) have always been VERY WEAK in terms of asynchronious IO usage.
Just open a lage File in Notepad and it will hang until the file is opened. Or try some network access from explorer while the network is not yet available (e.g. pre DHCP) and it will hang until timeout and so on and so forth...