How to set a low process priority for everything spawned from a command prompt in XP?

Posted by Binary Worrier on Server Fault See other posts from Server Fault or by Binary Worrier
Published on 2009-05-19T13:43:03Z Indexed on 2010/12/22 17:56 UTC
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windows-xp

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process-priority

As a developer, once or twice a week I run a full build on my XP dev machine.

This will run at 100% cpu for 30 or 40 minutes, making my machine usless for anything other than basic browsing & email.

Is there anyway I can specify that for a given process (i.e. a command prompt) it and any process spawned by it will hae a lower priority, say taking up no more than 60 - 70% of CPU, leaving my machine more usable.

I don't mind the build talking 30 or 40% longer, if I still have use of my machine while it's running.

Thanks

BW

P.S. I'd love to be able to throw more hardware at the problem, but that isn't under my control.

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