Hmmm... Win2k affecting my CPU speed?

[cbman]

I have run a battery of tests and trials and have come up to the following conclusion -

My Win2K install is somehow affecting my processor.

I know it sounds maybe odd... maybe unbelieveable... but I have just about driven myself nuts to point out the hardware culprit.. but in this case it seems to be software orientated.

I have been racking my brains as to why it isn't coming up with the right clock speed.

Deciding that I couldn't find out anything in windows (Other than my processor runs at exactly 1/2 of whatever it is set to by jumpers and reported as being on POST.

I took a dos bootdisk and got me some nice dos benchmark programs. (System Analyzer 5.2, and a dos benchmark called Test v5.4)

In dos everything looks and works like a charm.

In Win2K... everything is reported at half speed and it benches at half speed (Same Dos Benchmark Programs).

At least I have an idea where the blame is to be laid... time to take this lead and see what develops.

[Rags]

How can you run programs designed for DOS under win2k and expect consistant results?

Rags

[Kruzin]

Win2K is NOT DOS based, as win 9x/ME is.
You cannot expect DOS based progs to run well, or even at all under 2K.
Your observations are not unexpected.

[Nuno]

cbman are you for real?

DOS in Win2k is *emulated* through a virtual machine. Think of running DOS programs in Win2k as running a gaming console emulator.

[smanzo]

Check the MS Knowledge Base . There was a known bug with AMD chips that was fixed with a Hotfix initially) and the latest Service Pack.

It's at least worth a try.

[cbman]

Gee whiz guys... I had no clue that Win2K wasn't based on DOS .

I was using the dos diagnostic programs in dos from a dos boot disk to check that the bios is correct and that when the computer boots it is running at the proper speed (A La POST message)...(Family 5 Model 4 Stepping 3, 166Mhz P55C)

So why then while in windows when checked with Dos and Windows Diagnostic programs does it show up as (Family 5 Model 4 Stepping 3, 83Mhz P55C)

The benchmarking has only been done to check to see if its a descrepancy with how the programs get the processor information or if there is actually a performance hit.

There is a performance hit and yes it is ~50% each and every time.

Beyond that I just discovered that Win2K clean installed with ACPI disabled in the bios and the standard PC hal chosen during setup causes the computer to reboot after the "Startup Windows Logo Screen" finishes its little display.

Oh well... I'm off to try to make some sense of this.


edit: It does it both under a clean install and with SP2 applied.

[Rags]

Originally posted by cbman
Gee whiz guys... I had no clue that Win2K wasn't based on DOS .

I was using the dos diagnostic programs in dos from a dos boot disk to check that the bios is correct and that when the computer boots it is running at the proper speed (A La POST message)...(Family 5 Model 4 Stepping 3, 166Mhz P55C)

So why then while in windows when checked with Dos and Windows Diagnostic programs does it show up as (Family 5 Model 4 Stepping 3, 83Mhz P55C)

The benchmarking has only been done to check to see if its a descrepancy with how the programs get the processor information or if there is actually a performance hit.

There is a performance hit and yes it is ~50% each and every time.

Beyond that I just discovered that Win2K clean installed with ACPI disabled in the bios and the standard PC hal chosen during setup causes the computer to reboot after the "Startup Windows Logo Screen" finishes its little display.

Oh well... I'm off to try to make some sense of this.


edit: It does it both under a clean install and with SP2 applied.

*ahem* I already gave you your answer. You are using software that isn't designed to run in an NT environment. These things will happen with such programs. It's no surprise to me whatsoever.

Use CPUID.

Rags

[Technoid]

Originally posted by cbman
the computer boots it is running at the proper speed (A La POST message)...(Family 5 Model 4 Stepping 3, 166Mhz P55C)

Let me gues:

You press the power button when you go to work in the morning and in the evening when you come home your just in time to wait another 5 minutes to enter your password?

[Nuno]

cbman, download Sisoft Sandra and check it out. It should report a more acurate speed and you can do a couple of benchmarks to see if its on par with a standard PMMX system.

http://www.sisoftware.co.uk/sandra

The latest version has win2k/NT support.

[The PIT]

Err umm err it's not April the 1st is it ????

[cbman]

I was using sisoft in the first place that is where I first noticed the problem.

So why then while in windows when checked with Dos and Windows Diagnostic programs does it show up as (Family 5 Model 4 Stepping 3, 83Mhz P55C)

But I had to use dos mode to be sure that the board or bios wasn't screwy as anything I did showed the wrong speed.

If my previous posts are a little hard to understand it's because I haven't had more than 3 hours sleep a night for the past half month.

Anyways its all fixed now.

After repairing, reinstalling, formatting, changing, forcing... it works.

Bios has to have ACPI enabled
You have to select standard PC HAL as it autodetects as ACPI if you don't press F5 to pick your own HAL.
After it installs the files and reboots you have to disable ACPI in the bios but leave on PM by APM in the bios.
After it autodetects the hardware and reboots... then you have to re-enable ACPI for it to boot into windows.

Under the ACPI Hal it booted fairly quickly.
Under the Standard PC Hal it boots fairly ok. It take about the same time to boot as my Fast Computer if it runs Norton Disk Doctor when it starts up.

Anyways... it doesn't matter I have it fixed and one of these days I will figure out exactly what was going wrong.

Anyways... thanks for the comments guys.