Dell Notification Queue Manager

[virkelie]

I have an Axim X51v, which over the last weeks has slowed to a crawl.

The X51v would take forever to turn on; forever for the START button to respond to a click, and for programs to open.

I deleted the Odyssey client from my startup folder, and this appeared to speed up my Axim.

In other forums, I was also advised to delete duplicate entries in the Dell Notification Queue Manager - a new utility released in february 2007:

http://support.us.dell.com/support/d...&fileid=197126

So I did delete duplicate entries indicated in the "Dell Notification Queue Manager" - these entries were in RED type - as opposed to the other entries.
I assumed ( incorrrectly??) these entries were in RED type because Dell was signaling that these entries needed to be removed.

But after having removed these RED entries, my Axim X51v is slower again

Did I mess thing up by removing the RED entries from the Dell Notification Queue ?

Were these entries in RED because they were meant never to be removed?

Thanks.



NB
-Sorry I do not remember what the red entries were.
-I re-checked my startup folder, and the Odyssey client did not reinsert itself.
-I also installed MemMaid - it did point out more duplicate entries to remove - but no change in unbearable slowness of my X51v.

[Konrad Pierce]

You might want to also take a look at ScaryBear's free CheckNotifications and Notification Clear Fix utilities. I don't know if they'd help you much, but the price is right so you can't go wrong. I've used both utilities before without harm, but in the end I find them largely useless (see below).

As far as the notification queue itself is concerned: yes, deleting key items from the list can adversely affect performance and stability of all kinds of software, including the WinCE system itself. If you've removed a critical item, it sometimes fixes itself. A soft-reset usually corrects it. A hard-reset will certainly fully restore the unit to working status, at the cost of erasing any data currently being stored on it.

I find that cleaning the notifications list isn't worth the effort. Sure, you free up some wasted memory (like, maybe 500-1000 bytes, at most), but after a little while they tend to just automatically reappear and multiply anyways. The OS actually tends to trim away "useless" entries after a while as well, so the list never actually gets insanely out of control. And you always run the risk of actually removing something important when you edit things manually.

Playing around with the notifications will rarely have any impact on overall performance (unless, of course, something critical was already erased from the list). Since you describe your unit as experiencing slowdown before you ran the utility, I think it's a fair guess that some other software problem is the cause. Again, try a soft-reset. Consider a hard-reset (after backing up your data) if necessary.

I've never used the Dell Notification Queue myself, but I would be inclined to think that RED items are important and should therefore not be tampered with. You can examine the associated documentation or Readme files to find out what the colour codes indicate.

[Ashton]

If all else fails bakcup and perform a hard-reset. Then in it fails you go and restore your backup, and it it succeeds, jsut launch AS, sync, and reinstall all your programs.

[virkelie]

Thanks guys for the suggestions.

I looked at the ScaryBear software site; for "CheckNotifications", it says:
"CheckNotifications also displays duplicate events on the main screen in a red color. You can remove these duplicate events by activating this feature in the "Settings" screen for the program, and then by tapping the "Clear" button. "

So maybe the Dell utility does the same thing, ie displaying duplicate events that can be removed in a red color??

The Dell utility has no Readme or other documentation.

I am going to google each of the 17 running processes on my X51v (running processes shown by MemMaid) - to try to see if any of these could be the culprit.

[virkelie]

Well I checked my running processes with google.

All the processes are related to Windows Mobile - so they all seem important.

Anyways - my X51v appears to have fixed itself - without me doing anything...

It is fast again - hopefully this will last.

[Ashton]

I wonder if the compation thread went crazy like ti does on the X50v. IDK if it's possible ont he X51v for this to happen...?

[Konrad Pierce]

Just because the running processes are all WM components doesn't mean they all should be running. Third-party (non-Microsoft) apps will often launch themselves or parts of themselves through WinCE services, which will all report module names consistent within WinCE.

17 processes running simultaneously seems excessive. Try manually shutting them down; maybe you just have too many things running so there's insufficient memory available and everything's slowing down.

What program did you use to examine the running tasks?

[Konrad Pierce]

@ Ash,

I've found that certain apps (clumsy junkware) are notorious for creating and not cleaning up notification events. If you do any driver-level programming (like I do, sometimes) you'll likely find yourself doing a soft-reset every few minutes, and each one will cause some more notification litter.

But, as I said above, the system will eventually automatically truncate the list. I've never seen it exceed about 100 entries or so; the "old" items just tend to drop off the bottom when new ones appear. The memory overhead is insignificant, and the less I play with it the longer the OS stays happy.

[virkelie]

What program did you use to examine the running tasks?

I installed MemMaid 2.0.

If I manually shut down a WM process - could that be risky?

[AKAJohnDoe]

Doesn't MemMaid have a function to remove duplicates from the notification queue?

Update: Yes, it does. I just looked at mine and it is there under V1.72.