Windows XP Multi Core config - Does your OEM do it for you?

fastdetect /usepmtimer

I had it in the right place then, but pretty sure I didn't put the space after fastdetect- is there any chance that could cause a bsod? By what you say there is it not neccesary to use this feature?

 

it might not be necessary... it depends if you experience any issues.

I do not know that it would cause BSOD's though... but remove it to see if anymore BSODs occur.

 

Thank you very much for this post and all the helpful info! I do have a question my Boot.ini looks like this, so how would I configure it? thanks

 

Welcome to the NBR forums.

you're system has two lines under [operating systems]
- 1st line is for standard Windows XP
- 2nd line seems to be for Windows 2000

if you want to insert the /usepmtimer, insert it to the end of the first line under [operating systems]

for your case it should look like this (if you have everything shown in your snapshot):

Code:

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect /noexecute=alwaysoff [B]/usepmtimer[/B]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional" /fastdetect

Remember to view the notepad without "Word Wrap" (under View > Word Wrap)

 

Thanks I have found my new favorite site!

 

I did the things and I am not sure it helped my system, I dont do any hardcare gaming so my system is not great but thank you for the help

This is what I got by the way:

Intel(R) Core(TM)2 CPU 6300 @ 1.86GHz NVIDIA GeForce 8300 GS 512 MB
3 GB SDRAM

Not sure of a way to find out all specs if it matters

Thanks Again

 

Well the boot.ini add-in seems to not show a huge performance increase for Core 2 Duo's.... mainly for the previous Core Duo/Pentium D's.. and AMD dual cores.

In any case, as long as your system is stable then you are fine..
if you experience any unstable issues (in games, BSODs), then I would remove the /usepmtimer.

 

Hey Gophn, I just realized when I formatted and reinstalled, I only installed the AMD dual-core optimizer. So do I need to bother with the AMD driver from windows update or no?

 

You still need the AMD driver no matter what.

As for the dual core optimization, just use either the AMD Optimizer or the XP Hotfix.... NOT BOTH.

Thats all.

 

Ok, I guess I should install it then as its been looking at me under Hardware, Optional in Windows Update for months now. What is it going to do exactly?

 

the multi-core XP hotfix will NOT show up in Windows Update.... ever.

It is manually downloaded and installed by the user, or is pre-loaded by an OEM for a dual-core system using XP.

 

Err, I was referring to the AMD driver, not the microsoft hotfix.

 

The AMD Driver is needed to give the specifics of the CPU to Windows to help facilitate full utilization... as well as add the /usepmtimer into the boot.ini for you.

 

I've got my new M72R with Intel T7500, I'veinstall WIN XP Sp2 from the cd, did all micosoft Update, should I install the hotfix( http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...48-8240-4934-BBD8-34FB8A0FCE3B&displaylang=en ) for dual core optimization?

Thanks a lot
Andrea

 

I don`t know if it was told or not, but after installing SP3 RC for xp 32 bit, you can`t apply the hotfix anymore. Maybe sp3 has it already...

 

If you have a Core 2 Duo, then yes... you need to install the hotfix... because it does NOT show up as an Automatic Update.

 

Correct. SP3 has updated the XP kernel to fully utilize multi-core CPUs.. like Vista.

 

Hopefully that's the only additional likeness XPSP3 will have to Vista!

(doesn't "Vista" sorta rhyme with "fistula"? )
(go look it up here: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=define:fistula , you'll just love the definitions

 

Off topic, but when is SP3 finally coming out anyways? I need to see this new kernel.

 

the SP3 RC1 is pretty solid from my tests... so the official release should be within Q1 2008.

 

I assume you're referring to the stand-alone package available from MS here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...4c-8423-4386-ad98-36b124a720aa&DisplayLang=en - correct?

As someone who does not have a secondary computer to use when my primary's down, e.g., because I installed a beta SP, in your opinion, is it stable enough that the odds of the system crashing are sufficiently small that it would be worth my while to go ahead and install it now?

I thought about doing it last night after I trashed my current installation doing something stupid (word to the wise: don't try to get creative when playing around with hdd formatting utilities at 2 am:SLEEP: , unless that's your normal time of day - one little mouse-slip, from "Cancel" to "Continue" is all it takes :cry: ) and I was sorely tempted to just install SP3/RC1 instead of going through the rigmarole of downloading and installing every blessed update since the last time I did a full-disk backup ('nother word to the wise: don't get lazy about doing backups and/or recovery disks - boy I really wish I was wise:confused2: , but then, that's why I'm here on this forum so much ).

The only thing that held me back was this delightful little caveat from MS: "This pre-release software is provided for testing purposes only. Microsoft does not recommend installing this software on primary or mission critical systems."

So, to ask the short question: notwithstanding the disclaimer, is SP3/RC1 really beta, or is it stable enough to justify the risk of installing it on a primary system?

 

I would recommend for you to just wait for the official release if you intend to use it permanently.

 

Gophn,

Thanks for the advice

 

So basically, a DWORD Value of 0 is for battery life and a Value of 1 is for performance?

I'm reading this article and it's difficult to understand.

Does setting it to "0" eliminate these problems?

 

Just leave the DWORD to 1 and leave t alone, it does not affect battery life from my tests.

Soon the XP SP3 will not even need this because it will update the kernel to Vista 32-bit... which already has the feature as default on.

 

Well I applied the patch to my dell 1502 (I have a vanilla installed XP home, with only automatic updates. I did not see the hotfix in my installed origrams list). using Wprime, my score didn't change what so ever, so it didn't do anything to my laptop. ::shrug::

Now to play some more with Wprime. ^^ Now I can directly see how fast my dual and quadcore is compared to my old and puny athlon XPs.

 

I know this might sound crazy, but my desktop loaded quicker. I don't know if that's because of this or not...but it seems to have made at least a slight impact.

 

if you have a CPU that is dual core using XP SP2.... then you would find an improvement in most cases.

The hotfix is to make sure the OS is utilizing all cores... even if benchmarks do not fully reflect that.

 

Indeed. It's definitely improved. Programs are loading faster, shutdown times are quicker, and no stuttering when programs load.

Thanks for the tip, it really works!

 

One curious question. Why is this only in Sager?

I have a ThinkPad and I had to do this myself. And it really isn't something common to search NBR for..

This needs to be moved to the Windows forum I believe.

 

It started with Sager a long time ago... and the title change to "OEM" from Sager.

The location can be moved if needed (i do not care), its just that this location (address) has gotten international attention... especially when it was linked by TheInquirer.net

Although its time is almost up... when Service Pack 3 comes out, I will probably do a final update on this page.. and let it retire.

 

Got my 9262 on Tues, with XP Pro and the Core2 Quad Q6600, and what a complete slug! With 4 gigs of ram, it felt like it only had about 512mb!
Well, it was a complete slug until I installed the KB896256 patch that was listed here. Thanks again. I can't figure out why Sager wouldn't want to install this patch on all XP rigs before they go out the door.... For a small update, it sure makes a big difference!

 

that it does.... but get ready for the Service Pack 3 official release...

its going to be awesome.

 

Hello i am trying this on xp sp3 but it says it has newer version, then i checked registry there is no such key...

maybe sp3 has built in multi core support ?

 

Correct.

Service Pack 3 updated XP's kernel to near Vista's kernel.... which has full multi-core support without needed an extra hotfix.

 

Gophn,

You are a king among men for having the patience to deal with all these noob questions from people who didn't bother to carefully read the first post!

That said, I was all ready to post my own noob question ("why didn't I see an improvement using the 32M wPrime test after applying the hotfix?") when I stumbled across one of your messages saying "You can do a CPU benchmark (wPrime) before and after.... but from previous experiences, Core 2 Duo's do not have a significant difference in performance after this hotfix.... but it does not hurt either."

First, my system details: I have XP Pro SP2 32bit on a Dell Inspiron e1705 - T5600 processor @1.83GHz, 2GB Ram 4-4-4-12 PC2 5300. I did not find the hotfix in my Add/Remove programs list. Both cores show up in the task manager performance tab.

I ran the 32M wPrime benchmark both before and after the hotfix and got 78 seconds both times. Per your statement above, achieving the same score doesn't seem to be an issue, but the fact that my system only achieved 78 seconds, when there are a couple of comparable systems in the "Measure your Dual/Multi Core Notebook CPU Speed - Bye Bye to SuperPI" thread that achieved 48 seconds - both had the same CPU and XP Pro, though different notebook brands. So, unless they have somehow hotrodded their system, other than overclocking the CPUs, I would expect roughly the same score. Given that it is a CPU test, I don't see why anything else should matter.

I haven't been gaming lately, so I can't really compare qualitatively the difference before and after the hotfix, though on another dual core machine that I haven't yet hotfixed I manage a monster image library with Photoshop Elements, which is supposed to take advantage of multicores, so I do have a strong interest in optimizing for dual cores for that machine.

Any idea of what could factor into my achieving a significantly slower score than those two comparables?

Thanks!

 

Welcome to the NBR forums.

The wPrime Hall of Fame should not be taken too seriously since the people that are on the list lightened up their resource hogs and OS settings to get those nice times.

If you read the bottom of that thread... you will see how I explain to get the best times.

So if you are running a Anti-virus suite (the worst are Norton and McAffee), spyware detector, using themes (instead of reverting back to Classic Mode), you have System Restore enabled, etc....

then your score reflects that.

I am sure that if you killed all of your resource hogs and switched your theme to Classic Mode.... your score should be better.

 

Alright - I will try to minimize resource hogs. I'd be surprised if that accounted for the difference, though... that's a big difference! Like 60% or so.

I do have AVG, Spybot search and destroy, and am not in classic mode. plus things like Daemontools, a download manager, and more... so yeah, it's worth a shot

 

you would be surprised on how much an AV and System Restore would affect the scores.

 

follow the instruction but i didn't work
have no idea WHY????

 

how do you know it didnt work?

 

sorry for being OT, buy this thread is the 2nd most viewed thread in nbr history. Sorry for being so random but thought that was cool

 

actually its 3rd...

1st is Chaz's GPU Guide, and 2nd is the Random Thread in OT

 

oh yea, forgot the GPU guide

 

Is this necessery if i have install Windows Xp Home with Service Pack Sp3 (rc2) ???

Thank you

 

No, you do not need it if you have Service Pack 3 installed.

 

.... Thank you

 

Hi you all, specially Gophn for your dedication and kindness

First of all, please excuse my poor and basic English, I hope to get understood

May be my question is off-place but I searched a related topic and couldn´t find it, so I try here 'cause it´s somehow related and I see you´re very gentle and well informed

Let´s go straight to the point, I have an Acer Aspire 7720G w/ Core 2 Duo and Nvidia graphics Card. Unfortunately (at least for me) it came with Vista preinstaled, with no support for Win xp nor drivers to download from official Acer Site, so after doing heavy search I managed to install every single device and have them working fine, except for one "little" problem: I do have frecuent "general slowdowns", for example: When I´m playing some music (regardless what player I´m using) and for instance I trigger the DirectDraw and Direct3d tests from "dxdiag", my sound gets slow for a while (from 2 to 10 seconds), like "robotized", and even maximazing or minimizing any window goes bad , it does it by "steps", not fluidly. If for example I´m also doing a "wPrime" test, things gets even worse, it makes my computer seems an at286 running at 4 Mhz . It´s important to clarify that this failures occurs "randomly", I mean that there is no need to "effort" the system to obtain that sort of "crash", sometimes it occurs only by minimizing a windows, while listening or not to any music. Of course, by heavy loading the system as I stated before, it seems to unleash that fail. I also have to say that I do not have this problem on Full-Screen aplications such as games (played NFSU for hours without any problems), it´s "only" disturbing on Windows Shell.

When I found this thread I thought "Oh my God at last I found it!!!" , cause this matter has been annoying me for 3 months and counting, even to the point that I´m considering returning to Vista, despite how much I hate it. Well, I applied the two patchs I did find here, do the registry and boot.ini "job", praying for that to solve my problem (suspecting for a while that it has to do with procesor or somewhat), but sadly it did not work . Just to contribute to the topic, I did also not notice any performance improvementent nor in boot times nor at wPrime tests (around 85 secs. at 32M test).

I really have no idea what to do . Tried different sound and video drivers, reinstaled Xp, but unfortunately with no result. I´ve checked all my start programs and even by disabling them all, the "issue" continues. Discarted 100% virus, spywares or anything like that.

I´ve looked all over the Internet to find a solution, but I only found people with the same problem, but no solutions at all. Also tried SAT help, but I have only recieved silly advices , that why I´m here in a sort of "beg" for you to help me.

Once again, I do excuse myself for my bad English and the length of my post, I´m a "bit" hopeless at this point and really don´t know what else to do

Hoping you could help me, I greet you and once more thank you for your patience

 

Welcome to the NBR forums.

Your English seems fine... even better than most native speakers.

I recently did the same thing for a friend that got a new notebook with Vista pre-installed... and I wiped it and installed XP instead.

If you are still experiencing performance issues, I would do the following:
1) make sure your system is free of HDD errors:
- go to START > RUN > type: CMD
- type: CHKDSK C: /F
- say yes, and restart to let windows do the HDD scan

2) make sure your system is defragmented:
- get Diskeeper Lite (x86 + x64) for free here:
http://www.intel.com/design/motherbd...u/download.htm
- Its in the Intel Desktop Utilities... in the 88.9 MB download
- Just extract the files from the EXE and you will see the Diskeeper folders (one for 32-bit, one for 64-bit). And install it.
- Run the program
- Analyze and Defrag your C: Drive

Lastly, I would try to disable unneeded program, like Anti-virus, Firewall, etc... from running in the background to see if the performance is better.

Then go to www.laptopvideo2go.com and download a 167.xx driver for XP 32-bit. (you might have to download the modified INF and overwrite the one in the drivers)

Tell us how it goes.

 

A bit off topic, but how does that Diskeeper Lite compare to the defrag program that is under System Tools in XP?