Re: SP1 Degrades Performance

[Ben Armstrong [MSFT]]

Do you have speed step enabled on your laptop?

If so - can you try disabling it?

--
Cheers,
Benjamin Armstrong
===============================
Virtual machine Program Manager

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
You assume all risk for your use.

Damien Storme wrote:
> Toshiba laptop P3, 1GHz
> Upgrade additions after SP1 installation
>
> Without SP1, VPC2004 was performing well. After installation there is a
> significant performance degradation. If I bring up task manager and view the
> performance graph I can see the graph stop then resume normal operation for
> a few cycles then stop. If I turn on mouse trails and move the mouse around
> the screen I can see multiple mouse pointers on the screen.
>
> If I remove SP1 (BTW also removes VPC2004) and then reinstall without SP1
> performance is normal without the symptoms noted above.
>
> Any help would be greatly appreciated.
>
> TIA
>
>

[Ben Armstrong [MSFT]]

Sorry for being vague - I meant under the power management settings
under Windows.

--
Cheers,
Benjamin Armstrong
===============================
Virtual machine Program Manager

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
You assume all risk for your use.

Damien Storme wrote:
> The three SpeedStep choices are:
>
> Performance
> Automatic
> Battery Optimized
>
> I have tried all three and the performance degradation is the same in all
> three choices.
>
> Strange, but if I uninstall and revert back to VPC2004 without SP1
> performance is completely acceptable with any of the three choices.
>
> TIA
>
> "Ben Armstrong [MSFT]" <ben...@online.microsoft.com> wrote in message
> news:uarZzCis...@TK2MSFTNGP10.phx.gbl...
>
>>I believe that you are seeing a speedstep specific issue that causes this
>>problem.
>>
>>Can you try changing your power profile to 'Always On', restart your
>>system, and see if the problem persists?

>>--
>>Cheers,
>>Benjamin Armstrong
>>===============================
>>Virtual machine Program Manager
>>
>>This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no
>>rights.
>>You assume all risk for your use.
>>

>>D. Storme wrote:
>>
>>>Yes, the laptop does have Intel SpeedStep installed. I tried various
>>>attempts to disable it but failed. I visited Toshiba but no mention as to
>>>disabling SpeedStep. I did change the settings from performance to
>>>battery optimized, but no difference on VPC2004-SP1.
>>>
>>>Why would SpeedStep so dramatically affect VPC2004-SP1 but have no effect
>>>on VPC2004 without SP1?
>>>
>>>This is very disappointing, since I will not be able to evaluate WinXP
>>>SP2 without VPC2004-SP1.
>>>The only solution appears to be VMWare, which functions fine on this
>>>laptop and does not have issues with WinXP SP2.
>>>
>>>Thanks for the suggestions...
>>>
>>>
>>>"Ben Armstrong [MSFT]" <ben...@online.microsoft.com> wrote in message
>>>news:%23TNNZnW...@TK2MSFTNGP11.phx.gbl...

[Ben Armstrong [MSFT]]

This will be the cause of the problem - we made some timing changes for
VPC SP1 - and in order to work correctly with speed step computers we
check the system settings. Can you try using Windows power management
(rather than the Toshiba utility) and seeing if the problem persists?

--
Cheers,
Benjamin Armstrong
===============================
Virtual machine Program Manager

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
You assume all risk for your use.

Damien Storme wrote:
> Under control panel-power options returns a message indicating the Toshiba
> Power Saver is to be used instead. And in Toshiba Power Saver there does not
> seem to be an 'Always On' option, just the three I listed earlier.

>
> TIA
>
> "Ben Armstrong [MSFT]" <ben...@online.microsoft.com> wrote in message

> news:uLV6z5is...@TK2MSFTNGP14.phx.gbl...

[D. Storme]

Well, this presents a challenge. I will have to do some research on
Toshiba's site to determine if just this component can be removed or if the
complete Toshiba add-on package will have to be removed. Since this laptop
is our in-house standard, the impact will be significant and far reaching.

As you might guess, my credibility is being eroded. I initially recommended
VPC2004 as a coporate standard to ensure long term compatibility with our
Windows infrastructure.

Thanks for your advice....

"Ben Armstrong [MSFT]" <ben...@online.microsoft.com> wrote in message

news:%23uQClyA...@tk2msftngp13.phx.gbl...

[Ben Armstrong [MSFT]]

Hi Damien,

The issue here is that we made some timing changes to Virtual PC in
order to improve performance on multi-processor computers. However -
these changes caused the detrimental effects that you have seen on
computers with speedstep enabled. In order to handle this - we check
with Windows power management to determine if Speedstep is enabled on
the system - and if it is - we revert to the old timing mechanism.

In your case it would appear that the Toshiba utility does not let
Windows power management know what is happening - and hence we do not
know that Speedstep is enabled.

My sincere apologies for the problems that this has caused you.

[Glenn Fincher]

Just a suggestion that may assist w/this problem. In the BIOS of the
Toshiba (enter by pressing ESC at boot), there is (at least on the
Satellite's) a setting called "Dynamic CPU Frequency Mode" - setting
this to Always High disables Speedstep in the BIOS.

Hope this helps!

Glenn Fincher

[Stephen Aldous]

Well I have an IBM T41 and have exactly the same problem. How do I fix this?
I don't have speedstep, for what I know, and checked in Windows Power
Management etc.. Any ideas?

"Ben Armstrong [MSFT]" <ben...@online.microsoft.com> wrote in message

news:%23jv7Jw4...@TK2MSFTNGP14.phx.gbl...

[Steve Jain]

Did you look in the BIOS, that's usually where SpeedStep config is.?

On Sat, 23 Oct 2004 22:25:42 +0100, "Stephen Aldous" <st...@blah.com>
wrote:

Steve Jain, Microsoft MVP for Virtual PC for Windows
Website: http://www.essjae.com
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