Efficiency cores issues and TFS errors after upgrading to windows 11
Hi
We have a small on premise teamcity install which have one agent on the same machine. (there is another agent on different machine)
Everything run just fine for few years.
We initiated a step by step upgrade.
The machine ran windows 10 on i7 10700 computer.
First we migrated the disk to a new desktop machine with i7 14700 CPU.
The migration went just fine , teamcity worked fine and faster (agent builds finish about 20-25% faster).
After 2 weeks , we upgraded the OS to windows 11.
Immediately we noticed performance degradation , and builds started to finish much slower (even slower before the hardware upgrade)
We also had another issue with TFS source updates from time to time (with error “Failed to build patch in repository TfsRoot between version null and 31130” , the number changed from time to time)
No errors were introduced on the remote agent , same build speed and no TFS issues.
For the TFS errors , we found a workaround to create a new TFS user (although same user worked fine on other agent) , but we are not sure it is fully fixed.
For build speed degradation , we disabled the Efficiency cores of the CPU trough bios settings and speeds seems to be as fast as they were before upgrading to windows 11.
While we are fine with leaving the Efficiency cores off on the CPU , we wonder if it is a known issue ?
why on windows 10 there was'nt an issue ? (We are aware that the CPU is desktop CPU and the OS is desktop OS but we did'nt encounter problems with other software on the machine)
Thanks in advance for any help.
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Could you share the build logs for the build before the upgrade to Windows 11 and for the one after the upgrade? I will check what actions and build steps were affected.
Please also share teamcity-server.log.
You can upload the files using https://uploads.jetbrains.com/ and share the upload ID.
Thanks,
Anton
Hi
The problems with TFS checkout escalated in the last 2 days and is more pressing since a lot of builds usually “failed to start build” so we'll leave the e-cores issue for now (as it kind of resolved and more of curiosity issue than real field issue).
I have uploaded the logs to Upload id: 2025_01_28_3yoZH3SayMYazRZYRWmrNx (files: agent_checkout.txt, server_checkout.txt)
After the errors started , changing to server checkout helped a bit , i guess mainly because of retrying.
On agent checkout (which is the only setting we had prior to this issue) and source update “always” passes fine but there are sporadic missing files on checkout so build/compile fails.
Other clients (visual studio 2022 works just fine with the same TFS server , we also tried new TFS username for teamcity agents)
Please let us know how we can resolve this issue.
Please share the checkout rules for all the VCS roots mentioned in the build logs, as you have them set up in the VCS root's settings.
Best regards,
Anton
Not sure what you mean by check out rules
There are 9 VCS roots for this log.
for “generic” the checkout rules is “+:=> generic”
All the other are kinda the same.
I am attaching a successful log with the same setings (just after some re-run) so i doubt the VCS root is the problem (otherwise it would never work)
Upload id: 2025_01_28_9Ws2m6NQdyFukkihG9xJ4i (file: server_checkout.txt)
Uploaded wrong file on last comment , the correct file is on
Upload id: 2025_01_28_fCDtTLLvX4rYFkhwCwiVMh (file: succes_tfs_checkout.txt)
Hi,
Thanks for you reply
Unfortunately we already tried "delete all files in the checkout directory before the build" so many times, it seems to help sometimes , but after new commits comes along it fails sporadically again.
server-side checkout seems to be “better” but we believe because it seems to to preform up to 3 retries on fail.
It seems teamcity just have some new issues when checking out files from TFS.
We tried reinstalling the agents , it does not some to change anything/help.
Please let us know how can furtherly debug/solve this issue.
We keep investigating the issue.
We installed a new agent on other windows 11 machine , everything seems to works perfectly.
Same builds/setting on existing agent , agent checkout miss files from time to time , sometimes .csproj/.sln ones (which causes failure early on) sometimes .cs files or other files which causes to build to fail later on.
At the moment , the only problematic agent is the one which runs on the same machine teamcity is running.
We cleared the agent folder , same problems , we change the user of the service to new user , changed TFS user (which is working fine on other agent on remote machines) , installed the agent again on different folder/partition, nothing helps, the agent folder almost always misses some files on TFS checkout.
Another thing is , when using server checkout there are other issues , when forcing server checkout , from time to time there is an error of “fail to start build” even on remote agents which works just fine on agent checkout.
Any idea/clue what can be wrong when agent and teamcity is on the same windows 11 machine (as stated before , we upgrade the machine from windows 10 to 11 and then this issue started)
Any pointers/help would be appreciated.
I'm sorry for the wait.
Could you reproduce the issue with the local agent and share all the server logs (<TeamCity Server home>/logs directory), all agent logs for this build agent (<TeamCity Agent home>/logs directory), and also the build log for this new reproduction (to compare all the time stamps)?
Best regards,
Anton
Hi
Thanks for the follow up.
The issue seems to be resolved somehow.
We did a lot of changes as mentioned above but it seems everything suddenly started to work fine after updating windows 11 to 24H2. (The machine which run teamcity and the problematic agent)
It is been over a week and no TFS issues since this update.
We'll update if anything changes.
It looks like Windows 11 isn't handling Efficiency cores well for your TeamCity builds, likely due to changes in how it schedules tasks across Performance and Efficiency cores. Disabling Efficiency cores in the BIOS is a solid workaround, but you might also try: Setting the TeamCity agent to use only Performance cores. Checking for BIOS or firmware updates that might improve CPU scheduling. Making sure Windows 11 is fully updated. Switching to a different power plan (High Performance or Ultimate Performance). As for the TFS issue, it could be related to Windows 11’s security changes affecting authentication. Since creating a new TFS user helped, it might be a permissions or credential caching issue. Try clearing saved credentials or adjusting TFS settings.