Hyper Threading Problem

[greatwhitebuffalo]

Hello everyone,

I've had an ongoing issue with my PC that's been driving me bonkers. My PC worked fine for about 4 months after I built in and then started having a random rebooting problem. I believed it was related to a bittorrent client, so I did the usual thing and updated all my drivers and I updated my BIOS. The problem continued, so still assuming this was a driver issue (that's what the BSOD pointed to, although NEVER to a specific driver) I decided to do a fresh install of Windows XP Pro.

Long story short, clean machine, fresh install, all new drivers, random rebooting still happening. It can happen under full load or at idle, it doesn't seem to matter. I've checked the temps and they're fine. My power supply is a new Antec 430W.

Once I reinstalled XP I figured it had to be hardware, so I started removing things like my sound card, all USB devices, memory, etc. The only thing I didn't try was a different video card, as I don't have one handy. (I'm running an ATI RADEON 9800 Pro 128MB)

I was about to wits end when I read something about disabling Hyper Threading, which I did, and all of a sudden my system is rock solid with all hardware installed and running. The minute I turn off Hyper Threading, the random reboots and BSOD occurances start again.

My question is, does this most likely point to a motherboard hardware problem with Hyper Threading?? Am I safe to say it's not my soundcard, video card, etc. since they work fine with Hyper Threading disabled?? Is there any known issue with Hyper Threading on the
P4C800-E Deluxe??

I'm running a P4 3.0, 1GB of Corsair matched pair RAM, ATI RADEON 9800 Pro 128MB, Soundblaster Audigy 2 ZS Platinum & a Plextor PX-708A DVD burner.

Any help or assistance would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks,
Darren

[TimP]

Message Edited by tim18 on 08-25-2004 03:56 PM

[greatwhitebuffalo]

I have checked into just about every device and software app that I use and I thought there might be an issue with my Soundblaster Audigy 2 card so I deleted the drivers and uninstalled it and the system still crashed.

I then thought it might be a video card issue, but I can find nothing about the ATI Radeon 9800 Pro having issues with HT.

I thought it might be my anti-virus software (AVG 7.0) so I uninstalled that and installed NOD32, when the machine still crashed I did a trial run uninstalling all Anti-Virus software and still had system crashes.

After the fresh install of XP about all that was installed was the video card and the hardware on the motherboard and I still got random BSOD and crashes.

When the system was stripped down, almost all the error messages were STOP 0x0000007f errors. Once I reinstalled the audio card and other devices the errors are all over the place and the full memory dumps don't point to any specific driver or app, which is what makes this the most frustrating problem I've ever had in many years with a PC.

-Darren

[klh6]

just a thought. i was running an AMD system before last week with an audigy2 card. no problems. i switched to a P4 3E. and kept getting random reboots in a game FarCry. it took me forever to figureout disabling HT fixed it.

then when i switched to another older sound card, it was solved. but i have to use the audigy2 for my games. so im stuck with hyperthreading off. otherwise it will reboot, everytime

hope this might help? :)

if anyone has any ideas, on the farcry + HT + audigy2 problem let me know

[ludwig_rey]

Hi this is a comment and question about tcprince answer.
You said that some application might have compatibility issues with hyper threading and using the win9x compatibility tab will fix the problem.
What about drivers ? I have an ISDN card that is crashing the system (xp sp1) randomly when video conferencing. The more up to date drivers are still not xp-certified and this wont change since isdn card is definitively not mainstream nowadays. I have disabled HT, and the system is no longer crashing.
Question : Is there a way to keep HT AND this driver running and working together ??

Message Edited by ludwig.rey on 07-04-2004 12:58 AM

Message Edited by ludwig.rey on 07-04-2004 01:05 AM

[endagrey]

my problem is virtually identical to his problem.... i have tried calling dell to microsoft but the BSOD and 7f error stilloccur...

if anyone has a legitimate answer to this, im in dire need...

please help.

[pppeterd]

Hyperthreading creates the same driver compatibility problems as SMP systems. Creative Labsdrivers havea long historyof poor SMP support. (Their official stance is that it's unsupported)

The problem is so bad that thereare actuallyopen source attempts to write athird party windows driverto run theirhardware. After listening to years of bitching about this on the newsgroups I gave up. Get a turtle beach card if you care about HT...personally I would just disable HTand forget about it. If you are going to use HT I wouldgenerally recommend staying clear of cheaphardware because of general quality/driver problems with SMP.

And while I'm here...Linksys v5 nics have outstanding bugs /w burts of several short packetsthat have been well known for ages and have never been fixed.This results in BSOD in some file sharing apps and video games.

Also if you have a winmodem (Uses your main CPU as a DSP) and you have HT enabled you really are asking for it. Spend the extra $40 and get a real modem or better still, a cable modem :)

[pppeterd]

Look on the internet for SMP on windows NT/2000 resources. There are several workarounds to non SMP safe drivers that apply directly to the windows XP/HT world. For example there are utilities avaliable that allow you to set the CPU affinity of specific interrupt lines which for the most part make the driver always run out ofthe same CPU. In my experience they tend to make things work better but not 100%. Disable HT, your computer is fast enough :-)