PlanetZ forums - scopeusers.com

i experience odd behaviour with sonar 6.2.1
basically, i sometimes got CPU 100% occupied (in task manager meter) even if i'm dealing only with external MIDI hardware!
the CPU is then warming a lot!
i didnt remember when this problem arose, but i have the feeling it could be due to my "standard PC" installation of winXP, which since january 2006 performed very well (never crash, etc)
on the other system (the "normal one") i have ACPI multiprocessor PC and in sonar 6.2.1. i can choose the flag "use multiprocessor engine" which i cannot choose in the "music OS" one...
could be this the source of the problem with sonar 6?
i have an asus p4c800-e deluxe with 3 CW boards (Pulsar1, luna, pulsar SRB) and 2GB of corsair ram

i'm thinking about reinstalling everything, even if this will cost me a day of work!
but in this reinstallation, should i choos standard or ACPI multiprocessor PC!?
in your experience, is there some particular winXP service that sonar needs to work at its best?
should i also install winXP service pack2? for now i have only SP1, since i never had problems with it...

thanks for the help

I use the same mboard with 3 Scope cards, no problems. I have XP sp1 with ACPI enabled and multi-processor disabled in bios.

/dave

Multi processor disabled in bios meaning Hyperthreading?

With true multiple cores or cpu's the only issues I ever had were the Active sensing bug (solved 6 years ago by a usb midi interface which I needed anyway as my parallel/serial one had crapped out) and a bug with a specific plugin that isn't under development anymore. For some reason only that plugin would cause bsod's with an IRQL error (writing outside of memory when dealing with hardware addressing is usually the problem there).

As for ACPI, if you have the knowledge and sometimes determination (depending on how lacking your motherboard's documentation is) you can usually sort any issues just by making sure your master scope card is not in a slot that is shared with anything you use while making music, especially anything high bandwidth, with crappy drivers or a lot of latency.

right - I should have written hyperthreading, not multi-proc.

/dave

dbmac wrote:I use the same mboard with 3 Scope cards, no problems. I have XP sp1 with ACPI enabled and multi-processor disabled in bios.

/dave

do you have standard PC installation?

No - ACPI. Scope cards are on irq 21 & 22.

/dave