On Mon, 09 May 2011 22:33:16 -0500, Russell May
wrote:

On Mon, 9 May 2011 06:48:39 -0700 (PDT), Ben Myers
wrote:

On May 7, 4:15*pm, Russell May wrote:
My 2002-vintage computer has a recently-installed CPU and LCD display.
The computer locks up with the display pivoted 90 degrees via
irotate.exe while playing AVI files using Nero ShowTime, producing a
medium-high-pitched sound. The lockup seems to happen only when the
display is pivoted. Nero ShowTime is the only program I have which
will show AVI movies while the display is pivoted.

The last time this happened, CPU temperature was 43 degrees C and CPU
utilization was about 30 percent.

I reset the computer to recover from these lockups, only to find that
CPU hyper-threading is disabled until I restart Windows, which runs
very slowly, and then restart the computer and Windows again.

Does anyone have suggestions about how to stop this lockup while the
display is pivoted?

System description
Windows 32-bit XP SP3, Nero 6.6 including ShowTime 2.0.1.9,
irotate.exe 1.37, Microsoft Security Essentials, 2010 Tune-up
Utilities. Dell 2700FP LCD monitor A02, 1600x1200 pixels (pivoted to
1200x1600), 32-bit color, DVI cable. Gigabyte GA-8IEXP motherboard
(533MHz FSB), 1.5GB PC-2700 ECC memory. 3.06GHz Pentium 4 CPU
(Northwood with hyper-threading). Radeon 9000 AGP-4X video board.
Samsung 200GB and 250GB IDE internal drives, Samsung 1.5TB eSATA
external drive, SiI 3512 eSATA controller board, 6Mbps DSL via 2-Wire
AT&T 2701HG-B gateway.

Have you given any thought to using a different piece of software to
play the AVI files? Not the Nero one? There are plenty of AVI
players around, many of them free and functional... Ben Myers

I have been busy since posting the question so I haven't had an
opportunity to experiment more. The glitch doesn't happen readily,
maybe 15 to 45 minutes into playing an AVI file.

I tried VLC, Windows Media Player, and DivX player. All of them put
garbage in the window in pivoted mode. Only Nero ShowTime actually
makes a viewable image in pivoted mode. Suggestions for other players?

The 'medium-high-pitched' sound is somewhere in the 500-1000Hz range.
I didn't try to check it when the glitch happened -- I just wanted to
stop it. Next time around, I will check it. The sound was fairly loud,
maybe coming from the speakers. I didn't check that either.

The really odd thing is the glitch's effect on CPU hyper-threading. I
can conceive of it disabling hyper-threading but I don't understand
why hyper-threading is not re-enabled after a hardware reset and
reboot (as evidenced by the BIOS Setup), and even the first time the
system goes into Windows (as evidenced by Task Manager), but it is
enabled after going into Windows a second time. Hyper-threading is not
only disabled: the line in the BIOS Setup screen does not even appear,
as if the CPU does not have hyper-threading capability, until the
system has gone into Windows once and then restarted a second time.

Russ

I discovered part of why CPU hyper-threading gets defeated: When the
computer locks up, the motherboard changes from its normal BIOS (F9)
to its backup BIOS (F6) on reboots until the system has gone into
Windows once. F6 lacks CPU hyper-threading capability, F9 has it. On
subsequent reboots, the motherboard goes back to its normal BIOS (F9).
I don't remember exactly how this dual-BIOS switching works. It's
something for me to investigate.

We have been discussing my computer at home. It uses DirectX 9.0c.
Reducing hardware acceleration allows AVI files to be played with VLC
and WMP in pivot mode. I tried this on my computer at work using its
2007FP monitor in pivot mode. It is a 3.0GHz Dell Optiplex 755, much
faster than my home computer because it has a later dual-core CPU with
faster 800MHz FSB, larger cache memory, dual-channel RAM, Radeon 2400
Pro video using DirectX 9.0c. I don't have VLC or Nero ShowTime on it
but I was able to play an AVI file in pivot mode with WMP. It produced
garbage in the WMP window until I reduced hardware acceleration, but
then the computer was very sluggish and the cursor was very jerky
which is unlike my home computer with reduced hardware acceleration.
I did not run the AVI file very long, so the computer did not lock up.

I ran an AVI file in pivot mode using VLC on my my home computer. It
locked up after about 35 minutes.

Correction to another branch of this tree: The first tone of about
620Hz was produced by the external speakers. The other two tones of
about 470Hz and 390Hz were produced by the PC speaker.

I ran into a slightly suspicious feature of my computer at home: The
Radeon 9000 video board, eSATA controller board, and motherboard USB
controller all use IRQ decimal 16. I have been playing AVI files from
the external eSATA hard drive. My next experiment will be to see
whether it locks up while playing AVI files from an internal IDE
drive, which does not use IRQ 16.

If I run out of other ideas, I will try changing the video board to an
AH3650 next week.

Russ