Hyper-Threading Problems [Screw This]

[NicoNel2000]

I guess by now all of you will know about Hyper-Threading Technology. If not, look at http://www.intel.com/technology/hyperthread/

I bought me a new pc, (P4 3.2Ghz Hyper-Threading, etc). Installed all the apps i use, service packs, the lot. NOTHING is missing!!!

The applications I am working on uses ADOMD.Net (OLAP Stuff). After copying over my projects I realized none of my apps using ADOMD.Net works. Went crazy a whole week-end finding the problem, with no luck.

I then installed a trial version of IQub, a great application that also is olap related. Though this app work perfect on other machines, it also crash on my new machine!!!!

After some mails back and forth between me and IQub's support, they found the bug, which was in relation to the Hyper-Threading PCs!!!! What exactly I got no idea.

So what do I do now? How do one deal with this? Soon all new machines will be this hyperthreading stuff!!!!

Any Advice, ideas or feedback is welcome.

Regards

Nico

btw...I'm using WinXP with latest SP's, VB.6 SP5, VS.Net, Office 2003, blah blah, blah...all latest software.

[NicoNel2000]

Seems this HT is a real problem.... See:

http://forums.devhardware.com/archive/t-20757%5CIf-my-BIOS-doesnt-have-the-option-for-me-to-DISABLE-HyperThreading-how-can-I-do-it

[NicoNel2000]

OK...Disabling HyperThreading in the Bios did not work, nor did editing the boot.ini help.

What I did figure out is that if I right click an exe that does not wanna work on a HT machine, click properties, compatibility, and then set "Run this program in compatibilty mode for" to Win98/Me (95 also work, but not up)

Still have the same problem with my application I'm working with though....HEEEEEEEEEELP :confused:

[NicoNel2000]

Disabled HyperThreading in the BIOS, then ran WinXP repair and now it shows as a UniProcessor Machine (as oposed to MultiProcessor Machine before).

The 3rd party applications using OLAP is all working fine now, but my own project still get jammed when trying to connect to an MS SQL Analysis Server using ADOMD.Net.

Doubt anyone will have a solution here or elsewhere as it seems no-one, let alone MS who created adomd.net, knows anything about it.

[Andy]

one more reason i only buy machines with amd inside

[NicoNel2000]

Yeah, can kick myself. But all the AMD Machines were more expensive this time, cuz they all had this new ADM 64bit processors, which is a waste if you don't have WinXP 64 bit, which apparantly only comes pre-installed on some kind of workstations.

But back to the point....how do we get around this...soon more and more problems will arise as users get new machines.

[plenderj]

Just change the process affinity :)

[NicoNel2000]

yeah yeah....LISTEN!!!!

I can manually fix the problem on my computer, no sweat, but how do we make sure it will run on a client computer? With other words INSIDE my application i'm writing in VB.Net.

[plenderj]

I'm not sure if this is the actual cause of the problem, but a lot of applications simply don't work on multiprocessor systems, or under multiprocessor kernels.

Even though there's only 1 cpu in the system, it appears for all intents and purposes that there are 2 distinct CPUs operating. If changing the process affinity to only use CPU0 resolves this issue, then I would suggest something like this.

Have a launcher application. Instead of the user going straight into the app directly, they go through this launcher first. The launcher then spawns the main application process, and sets the affinity on the process. I would imagine that might work?

[NicoNel2000]

Yes, I think it should work.

But what worries me is what about all the thousands of applications allready out there? What if all users now get this HT machines ....... sounds like doomsday to me....

Or I'm just paranoid?


:eek2:

[plenderj]

You're just paranoid. I've had a HT machine for over a year now and have had no problems with it :)

[NicoNel2000]

You sure? Thought only the latest Intel P4 3 / 3.2 ghz are HT enabled?

[plenderj]

HT's been around for a while :) In theory from about 2002: http://www.intel.com/technology/computing/htt/index.htm

[Kasracer]

But all the AMD Machines were more expensive this time, cuz they all had this new ADM 64bit processors, which is a waste if you don't have WinXP 64 bit, which apparantly only comes pre-installed on some kind of workstations.
It's not really a waste because they perform on par, or faster than the comparable P4s plus you can upgrade to 64bit software in the future intread of needing to upgrade your CPU a second time.

The prices are pretty comparable to P4s too. Where did you shop at?