Windows 2008 Server and P-6831FX (T8100 and 3DMark06)

I am a .Net consultant by day and gamer by night. I wanted to make the switch to windows 2008 server after reading all the stuff out calling it windows 2008 'workstation'. People said it smoked vista and you could have the same look and feel, etc, plus all the cool server stuff, one of which was Hyper-V. Basically Hyper-V replaces virtual PC/server software for built in virtualization...running multiple OSs within one(this being win2008 server).

Now I have an MSDN license so win2008 server was 'free'(msdn costs money) so cost wasn't an issue to try this baby out.

To run Hyper-V I had to have a CPU that would support virtualization and so since I just bought the P-6831FX two weeks ago, it would have to be a intel chip. Of course, the T5450 does NOT have intel's virtualization. You can see what chips do support it here:

http://www.intel.com/products/processor_number/chart/core2duo.htm

I decided to install windows 2008 server x64 and use this forum to find all the correct drivers. Basically same as the x64 vista instructions on this forum. Now the webcam I ended up getting the driver from gateway support and just ran it even thought it said 32bit. After a reboot the webcam works fine.

Last night my T8100 chip came in and I put it in with no problems and booted up and picked the chip up right away. Hyper-V installed and ran fine. I haven't tested that fully just yet. I'll do that today.

I did manage to run COD4 with no issues with everything on high running thru single player. I also ran 3dmark06 and it came back with a score of 8211.

As for the OS performance....AMAZING!!! I ran thru the same checklist you find elsewhere on the web when you search for "windows 2008 workstation" and it SMOKES and looks just like vista, only difference it is SO much faster. This was the case even with the T5450 in it.

Only upgrade I did to my machine was the CPU..I went with the T8100 cause it supports the virtualization i wanted to use Hyper-V(normal user will never ever need to use this), and I wanted the cheapest virtualization, 45nm, chip I could get, which was the T8100. I bought mine from www.monstronix.com. They had 2, now they have 1 left last I checked.

There is still an SATA controller thingy and something else unknown left to install drivers for. I just haven't spent the time yet to even do that yet. I'll let you know my findings there. I'm sure it is probably something simple.

 

I'm surprised no one has commented on this yet. I would like to hear more if possible.

 

This is very interesting.The last version of Microsoft Windows Server that I tried was 2003 version but I had a lot of problems finding the drivers for it so i uninstalled it.

 

I tried to sign up for the Heroes for Microsoft launch event for Server 2008 in the Boston area, but registration was closed. I'm so mad at myself for not being able to sign up in time because they give you a free copy of Server 2008 for free at those launch events. I really want to install Server 2008.

 

After reading this review I may try Server 2008 that I'll get at the launch event next month. Thanks for the info.

 

This sounds really intesresting, how do you like the virtualization. Is it similar to vmware?

 

I thought I did all my research before I went down this road but I guess not. VT(virtualization) isn't enabled on the bios I guess. When I go to HyperV and go to start an instance it says hypervisor not running. I have read a lot of sony owners have had VT enabled by opening the bios in phoenix editor and changing some flags and it either enable it or enables a menu with it in there. I would be willing to take a look at this but I can't get my bios in rom/bin form to open it up in the phoenix editor I have.

does anyone have any idea on this? I know there was some talk about the bios when it came to the graphics card in there.

Other than that it is still running great. I am a long way from giving up on getting VT enabled, so I'll give updates as I go.

 

Justified check this page out and ask crpngdth2001 I believe he has a working way to get the bios editor.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=229544&page=4

 

Good tip, Lights, I posted there with my output from symcmos the tokens/values that are currently set in my bios and hopefully someone looking in the bios could tell me which flag to change....basically with symcmos you can change that output file and then run a command with symcmos to put the new updated file back in the bios to replace the current settings. All I would need to do is find which token(s) I need to set to 0001 to enable VT.

 

No problem you may want to look here.
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=225982

It may simply your life to get a better bios editor, reading those symcmos output isn't easy

 

I'm making some progress! I have decided to use Virtual PC 2007 to see if virtualization is on(bios) and can be used. Now what I did was do the symcmos.exe change tokens and trial/error see if it is on before I tried virtual PC 2007. Hyper-V did give me that hypervisor error but I'm thinking now the issue wasn't entirely VT, though I think that was part of it. Anyway I changed all the 2xxx tokens that were 0000 to 0001 to see if that did it and I had a diff error in Hyper-V in the event viewer..I think it wants soemthign else enabled now. Cool thing is I installed Virtual PC 2007 and the hardware virtualization works and it says on the right: "Note: Hardware-assisted virtualization is available on this computer."

What I'm going to do is put the 2xxx tokens that were 0000 back to 0000 (yes I was smart enough to write down the ones that were already 0001, hehe)

Then I'll see what Virtual PC 2007 says then.

In the mean time i'm downloading the WDK that has a program called detectvp that will detect vt as well.

I'll keep you posted.

btw, I opened the bios in the pheonix editor and there isn't anything in there from just using that that tells me anythign, except there is a string in the strings list that is the verbage for VT enabled option in the bios...but this is just the text strings, nothing more.

 

SWEEET!!!

Okay, so the token to enable VT is in the 2xxx range. I just put the defaults back and Virtual PC 2007 now says: "Note: Hardware-assisted virtualization is not available on this computer."

so I have to go back and one by one do the 2xxx range and see which one it is. I'll let you know once I find it. Also, one slightly humorous thing happened when I did the whole 2xxx range....my bios and post startup was in french...oolala

I'm thinking the Hyper-V hypervisor is somethign else. And no, when I was using hyper-v i didn't have virtual pc 2007 installed...I read that note that they don't play well together, though virtual pc 2007 ran okay...probably cause hyper-v has more to fix with it.

Okay, so woot woot, I'm excited to find this token and I'll document the steps for everyone to enable it once I narrow it down

 

Okay, so to have VT on and have Virtual PC 2007 pick it up I need to set the following tokens:

0213 set to 0001 (originally 0000)
0219 set to 0001 (originally 0000)

I'm not sure why two have to be set, I'd be interested to find out though if any of you know.

Now Hypervisor is giving the following error:

Hypervisor launch failed; at least one of the processors in the system does not appear to support the features required by the hypervisor. (leaf: 2147483649, required features: 537921536, features available: 536872960)

On this page under known issues: http://download.microsoft.com/download/e/4/8/e48d5cff-53d2-4eed-85bf-4af50e25b78c/relnotes.htm It says that "Execute Disable bit" is not enabled, this is also known as DEP not enabled.

Now I have seen in the log during my troubleshooting this that hypervisor started at one time...whether that was a fluke or a bad reading or what, not sure. I'll keep you posted on when I figure out this one.

so there you have it...0213 and 0219 both set to 0001 will enable VT.

 

Nice find, I'm assuming you are using symcmos still. How has your VT testing been going so far any issues?

 

No issues on Virtual PC 2007 using hardware virtualization. I run a MOSS 2007 dev environment that runs win2003, is a Domain controller, sql server 2005, and MOSS. UI interaction is like it is on my machine and quickness of programs opening and overall OS performance are amazing. I'm really enjoying it.

Now I haven't messed with the Hyper-V yet in windows 2008. I looked in the log for Hypervisor and twice it started successfully yesterday and this was during the course of my switching flags around. There is a small percentage that Hypervisor might be erroring out now cause of virtual pc 2007 being installed. I heard they don't like each other on the same box, moreso, hypervisor the one having issues.

I have waited to post the walk thru of the whole process till I figure out the HyperV issue to see if there are some more flags I can document in the walk thru post.

Yes, I used symcmos. I ended up ultimately making a bootable dos usb flash drive and put symcmos on there and i downloaded pedit(16bit version i think) to edit the text files.

I'm going to mess with Hypervisor(Hyper-V) and the tokens/flags to see if I get the right combo tonight and either way after that I'll post the walkthru.

 

Thanks for posting your findings justified. I had purchased the T9300 CPU for my P-6831FX specifically for the hardware virtualization and was extremely irritated when I found that the Bios didn't have an option to enable it.

I just finished updating my BIOS using the information you posted here and it worked perfectly. My VMs are now enabling and using the hardware virtualization.

The hardest part was making my thumbdrive bootable.

 

Has anyone done this on a Gateway P-6860FX laptop? I upgraded to a T9300 in order to get the VT support (and play games better >_> <_<), but now I'm peeved that the BIOS won't even let me activate it without hacking the thing.

I've figured out everything all the way up to dumping my symcmos bios text file stuff. But I have no idea what to change inside of it because the entries 0213 and 0219 (doesn't even have it) are different. Specifically it has:

(0210) [0001]
(0213) [0002]
(021C) [0001]
(022B) [0001]
...

and so on.

Edit: I'm really not comfortable changing 02xx values from 0000 to 0001 because I just spent $1500+ on this setup and don't wanna totally screw it up. So I'm hoping someone's already done this?

Edit2: This other thread also by justified has some more info:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=234287