On Fri, 11 Dec 2009 09:08:39 -0800, "Joe User" <joeu2004 wrote:

I 'spose I could try that. But I would not think it would change anything
because: (a) the long-running macro is not modifying or even accessing the
worksheet; and (b) non-Excel windows are also affected adversely.


You *think* it is "not accessing the worksheet".

I have a 30 MB DVD database that takes a while to do some lookups, and
takes longer on my macro that performs a save/close/re-open, which is
required to convert down to compatibility mode.

The HD indicator appears as if there is not much other than normal
accesses happening, but if there is a macro running, you can bet it is
looking at the spreadsheet data, even if the 'view' of it is within the
cache.

When Excel runs a macro, my CPU utilization always jumps to 100% during
the macro running. It seems to be an error at the base level. The choice
made for how many timeslices to give to a macro or some such. Either
way, it seems to be too much of a system hog.

Maybe MS should not have killed that IBM/OS/2 alliance after all. They
could do multi-thread processes way back when... on a single core.

You should see how poorly an old DOS based app runs when it was
psuedo-ported to windows. I have this major brand, expensive label
software that was based on an old DOS app, and they are so greedy that
they have yet to develop a proper windows port of it. It does NOTHING in
the background, ever.