Re: Hwinfo Fan Control Windows 10
Basilio Jarvis
I'm Martin, author of HWiNFO. Just like Franck (CPU-Z) and Ray (SIV) I'm very interested in improving support of vintage hardware in HWiNFO and for this I need your help.
HWiNFO still offers a DOS version for the eldest systems, which is however no longer maintained due to several reasons (most serious was its large size and thus the system memory requirements).
One big advantage of HWiNFO for DOS is the support of very old systems, direct access to hardware and ability to even read the CPU ID of 386+ CPUs that don't support the CPUID instruction. For those interested in details - this is achieved by issuing a soft-reset to the CPU and gaining control before the BIOS does (to catch the signature registers) via an A20M trick, then returning back to the previous state. This process is absolutely transparent and the user doesn't notice it.
very cool, I loaded it on my PC Chips m535 (and it detects and gives me a motherboard name among other names used for the same board, unlike other software I tried recently like cpuz and aida!) PC and it seemed to work pretty well, what I notice it didn't detect was anything about the sound card (ISA YMF719), also I have to look into it a little more but perhaps the video memory size of the Stealth 64 2001 was also not correct (but I have to check if the card actually has 4MB or the 2MB detected right now, I think it has 2MB soldered and another 2MB in socket ? )
also I had a blue screen, I ran the benchmark and it displayed results (one interesting is that it offered me MMX benchmarks by default, even if the software is aware the p54c doesn't support it! but I unchecked that manually), but the moment I clicked to close the benchmark results window I got a blue screen, not sure what's going on there.
edit for report file; also regarding the video memory I checked the card and it has soldered 8x hy534256alj-60 and 2x km416c256bj-6, I guess this configuration doesn't make a lot of sense and hwinfo is right and the card is only using the 2MB soldered?!
Thanks for the feedback. It's not that new, so I'd love to get the report files from that system to check what can be improved/fixed.
The YMF719 sound card can't be detected, not even sure if the DOS version would be able to do so. And I haven't ported detection of ISA sounds cards into the Windows version yet.
Problem here is that those detection methods can be destructive - testing for a certain card can result in overwriting registers of another one. That wasn't a very big issue in DOS, but under Windows this can result in serious issues and crashes.
Yeah, I'm aware of those issues. Memory Managers are problematic as many of them (those which switch to V86 Mode) don't allow HWiNFO to perform certain checks or low access to hardware. I implemented a trick for this, but sometime it didn't work well.
Large memory footprint was the biggest issue, HWiNFO has grown very large over time and adding any further extensions or support of new systems would result in further growth. Even though I did several optimizations over time, it wasn't possible to continue. The only solution to go ahead was to port it completely under a DOS Extended and that would be a really huge effort.
But I believe it is still possible to run HWiNFO for DOS when using the optimal configuration. Most important is to load HIMEM.SYS, use DOS=HIGH and avoid loading any unnecessary drivers or TSR programs.
Thanks from me too, been using the windows versions for a long time, cracking bit of software. I've got to be honest, wasn't even aware that a DOS version existed, for old stuff DRHARD has been my go to, any interest in seeing if your DOS version will run on on a Cyrix Media GX system, it's a Compaq Presario 2232, never found ANY diagnostics program so far that will work on the thing most just outright crash or at best get it totally wrong! I've had it for years and still don't know the actual CPU clock speed. It'll be a bit of a pain as it has no ISA slots for a network card, no USB ports to use a stick and the CD-ROM drive doesn't like CDR's so transfers will have to be via floppy disk. It's running windows 95 with 40 MB RAM.
I have a few other oddities that perhaps folk on here might not use as they are not the best choice for games, a DOS based AMD K5 PR 166(DOS), a couple of Cryrix MII 333 based machines with Windows ME, Amstrad 486 DX/2 66 WB with Win 95 at the minute plus the 286 and 386 machines in my sig.
Anyhow, let me know, if any of this crap is of interest to test and fool with I'll drag them out over the weekend and see what does what.
Edit: Also a Zida tomato 4DPS with a UMC U5S 40 MHz 486 class chip I can have a go with under DOS, this is probably my only other real obscure chip.
Okay, but what brought you guys all here at around the same time? First SIV, then CPU-Z, now HWINFO... did you all talk to each other? (I hope so - AFAIK you're all closed-source utilities and some of your discoveries are worth sharing with each other.) Or are you all still "competing"?
Yes, HWiNFO data is reliable and accurate and will inform you about everything it possibly can about your computer. The information is split in 3 windows: a system summary, a full report, and active sensor readings.
Technically, yes, HWiNFO shows you real-time data on hardware components and allows you to manually control fan speeds. However, you must use this feature carefully. HWiNFO was primarily designed to show system information. If you're looking to control CPU and GPU fan speeds you should take a look at SpeedFan or FanControl, which are specialized tools, both are free and have been tested extensively.
Yes, HWiNFO is compatible with Windows 7. Depending on your OS, you should choose the corresponding HWiNFO version. HWiNFO32 is compatible with Windows 95 32-bit and later, HWiNFO64 is compatible with Windows XP 64-bit and later. There is also a DOS compatible version.
Exhausting information about hardware components displayed in hierarchy unfolding into deep details. Useful for obtaining a detailed hardware inventory report or checking of various hardware-related parameters.
Real-time monitoring of a variety of system and hardware parameters covering CPUs, GPUs, mainboards, drives, peripherals, etc. Useful for detection of overheating, overload, performance loss or failure prediction.
A couple of users and myself have been suffering sudden reboots with our computers composed of Ryzen CPU systems (Ryzen 3000, but especially 5000) under different load conditions. The quickest way for us to trigger it, however, has been by using software designed to test RAM stability such as TM5 or Karhu RAM Test.
We have recently discovered that this problem only occurs if we have HWiNFO loaded in the background on Windows 10. Most of us also have AMD Radeon graphics cards, but we yet have to determine if that is a contributing factor. We don't know exactly where the conflict is, but the pattern is clear: we see the dreaded WHEA-Logger Event ID XX Cache Hierarchy error in the Event Viewer of Windows after those sudden reboots.
This has been tested by multiple users across different setups: motherboard manufacturers, AGESA/BIOS revisions, RAM brands and configurations, settings, and even after a fresh install of Windows (including different versions of the operating system). The only common denominator we have been able to find this far is the use of HWiNFO (we've only tested this using the latest versions - we still don't know if it can be solved by rolling back to a previous version specifically).
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