MaximumPC 2008 08

To Affinity and Beyond!

I just completed a minor

upgrade to my system,

including the addition of a

brand-spankin’-new Intel

Core 2 Quad Q6600 CPU. My

question: When you right-

click a process in task man-

ager it gives you the option to

set affinity. If I’m right, this

gives you the ability to set a

process or task to a particular

core of your CPU.

It seems like this would

help distribute the load of

everything running and keep

things flowing smoothly, but

it looks like every process is

set to use all four cores.

Is there a right or wrong

way to go about changing

these settings? Is it advisable

to change them? I would

think that if you divided them

up, you could gain a perfor-

mance advantage.

—Michael Seymour

The Doctor has not manually

set the affinity for an appli-

cation, but he doubts that it

would yield any performance

benefit that would be worth

the time spent setting the

affinity of each program on

your machine. You’d also

have to reset the affinity

each time you started the

application. While this can

be done automatically with

Innes.org’s ROPE utility, it’s a

moot point. The Doctor thinks

it’s best to let the OS handle

thread-scheduling.

Steady Dell Decline

I’m stuck with a Dell laptop

that now fails to boot after

just two weeks of normal

use. I can accept the fact

that I will probably fight

with Dell technical support

for six months before they

do anything to help. What

I can’t accept is that I can’t

figure out what is wrong

with this box.

Quite simply, using

the laptop for an extended

period results in incred-

ibly slow performance,

which leads to a lockup or

blue screen, which leads to

Windows no longer boot-

ing on the next cold restart.

The ensuing error messages

are varied and too numer-

ous to list. After a clean

install of Windows, every

single diagnostic from the

Dell CD comes back per-

fect. Memtest86 returns no

errors.

I’ve swapped out hard

drives and CD drives. But

after two weeks, the result

is exactly the same: no boot.

I’ve tried other “unsupported

operating systems” (read:

Ubuntu), but they crash and

burn just the same. If a Dell

technician tells me to rein-

stall XP Home one more time,

I may go postal!

—Jay Minard

This sounds like a classic case

of overheating. Perhaps an

errant factory worker didn’t

put enough thermal paste on

the heat pipe and CPU. You

should also see if anything

is obstructing the laptop’s

exhaust port. Regardless

of the reason for the over-

heating, you should continue

to work with Dell to replace

the notebook since it is still

under warranty and there

is no reason this problem

should be occurring.

You definitely shouldn’t

attempt to repair the com-

puter yourself. While a ther-

mal paste issue is relatively

easy to fix on a desktop

machine, trying to pop the

bits and pieces out of your

laptop to access the proces-

sor area is quite a task—and

it would void your war-

ranty. If you don’t feel like

talking to Dell’s customer

service, try going to http://www.

support.dell.com and using

the online chat service—you

might get better results.

Seriously, Power On!

I built a computer about a

year ago and everything has

been working fine—except

one thing. When I turn the

computer on in the morning,

after it’s been off all night, it

starts and then immediately

shuts down.

If I push the power but-

ton again, the machine boots

normally. I’ve experimented

with holding down the

power button for various

durations, from one sec-

ond to three seconds, but it

doesn’t seem to make a dif-

ference. If I push it once, the

rig starts and shuts down. If

I push it again, it starts and

runs normally.

I don’t have hibernation

enabled; I do have the latest

BIOS. Nothing is overclocked,

and there aren’t any other

problems. The front-panel

connectors—and all the other

connectors—are snug. It’s

This month the Doctor tackles...

Setting Your Processor Affinity

PSU Problems

Setting Your Processor Affinity

PSU Problems

Setting Your Processor Affinity

Overheating Laptops

You can change processor affi nities in Windows Task Manager, but

for optimal performance, let Windows handle the CPU tasks.

DOCTOR^

IMPROVING YOUR PC EXPERIENCE ONE STEP AT A TIME

68 |MAMAMAXIMXIMXIMXIMUUUUMMPPPCC|AUG 08 |www.maximumpc.com