Sager 9750 AMD drivers and Dual Core Patch: possible issue

I am not sure if this happens on other non-AMD system but I did find an issue that is present on my Sager 9750 (see sig for system spec) that relates to the AMD driver, Optimizer and possibly the dual core XP patch.

After a typical M$ weekly/montly patch this week and following a HDD defrag using the Raxco Perfect Disk, I found that there were issues with using the right mouse button on the icons on the task bar.

Normally when you press the right mouse button on any app or window icon on the task bar, you get a little pop up asking for "Restore, Move, Size, Minimize and Maximize or Close". However, this time the pop up did not appear and the icon would flash orange. Also, using the left mouse click will not bring that window to the front, you have to click it multiple times. Sometimes windows that we minimized would re-appear in a "minimal" window size.

Very annoying, and quite worrying.

The only way to remove this is to:
1. Uninstall the AMD driver.
2. Reapply the AMD driver.
3. Reapply the M$ XP dual core fix (you can leave the register fix as is and the startup as is).
4. Reapply the AMD Optimizer.

For people with the AMD 9750s (or variations), this site is quite useful with the AMD and dual core patch upgrade (see the Post #1): http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=81429

Infact, its one of the earliest site to identify the patch for the dual core, eventhough it was AMD related.

Hope this is helpful to someone out there.

 

i actually posted the incompatibility of the D900K and the AMD Optimizer in my XP Multi-core thread.

I had BSOD's after installing the AMD Optimizer, so I went into Safe Mode to uninstall it, and now its fine with just the AMD Drivers and the XP Hotfix.

Thanks for bringing the info back to light, some might still be having the problem.

 

Thats interesting, I rebuilt my XP around Jan 18 2007 and so far, I've only seen one BSOD and a "suspected" BSOD when my 9750 rebooted itself when I got to it in the morning. All in all its been pretty stable for me and I am using the latest Optimizer from the AMD website. Mind you, my mobo has been replaced by Sager around mid Jan so not sure if thats fixed something or not....

Thanks for the news on this Gophn...will certainly keep an eye on it.

 

hmm.. so they might have updated the Optimizer then, because I tried many times to get it to work [back in Sept 2006] and it was not happening. I did email AMD about this issue because other AMD systems using VIA chipsets were experience similar issues.

I seem to be very stable with just the AMD Drivers and XP hotfix.

I guess I should retry it [the new Optimizer].

Thanks for the heads up.

 

Optimizer was updated Nov 2006:
AMD Dual-Core Optimizer - The AMD Dual-Core Optimizer can help improve some PC gaming video performance by compensating for those applications that bypass the Windows API for timing by directly using the RDTSC (Read Time Stamp Counter) instruction. Applications that rely on RDTSC do not benefit from the logic in the operating system to properly account for the affect of power management mechanisms on the rate at which a processor core's Time Stamp Counter (TSC) is incremented. The AMD Dual-Core Optimizer helps to correct the resulting video performance effects or other incorrect timing effects that these applications may experience on dual-core processor systems, by periodically adjusting the core time-stamp-counters, so that they are synchronized. Download Now! November 2006

Link is here: http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/TechnicalResources/0,,30_182_871_13118,00.html