Snap Crackle... Sound w/ disabled HT

[Lickety-Split]

Here is a somewhat detailed description of my problem:
When I disable HT in the BIOS my PC's sound playback is horrible. When Windows loads, the welcome sound is poppy and leapy. If I play a CD or wav file the sound leaps and pops as well. Strangley, the sound is fine on video playback- just not with sound files or CD playback.
I've checked for IRQ conflicts- there are none that I can see.
It looks like all audio codecs are working properly.
If I enable HT in BIOS the problem goes away completely. I'm hoping some of the gurus reading this can help me out.

Windows 2000 Pro SP4
MSI 865PE Neo2
P4 3.2
2 GIG RAM
Terratec EWX 24/96

[Sarrkazztic]

My question to you...would be....why would you disable hyperthreading on a p4?

[Lickety-Split]

To answer your good question- A new application- Gigastudio 3- requires that HT be disabled... its a great software sampler. Kind of a bummer, but the program works in the kernel memory.(I think) any clues for helping me out?

[DrMDJ]

I believe your problem relates to the XP HAL (yes, this may actually be one of those cases where the HAL is at play with a hardware change). When you installed XP with HT enabled XP used a HAL.DLL (and some other associated files) based around a multiprocessor environment (even though it is only a "virtual" MP environment in reality). Now when you disable HT in the bios you are turning your P4 in to what appears to the OS as a uni-processor (instead of a virtual multi-processor). But in a uni-processor setup a different HAL.DLL (and some other support files) is required (and used when initially set up). So despite the fact that the system "runs", I think there are issues introduced like the one you are seeing (and others) because of the incomatible HAL in use.

[Lickety-Split]

Thanks for the reply....
I'm wondering if this issue occurs in Win2000 as well as XP- as I run 2000SP4. If so, what might you suggest as a possible solution?
Appreciate it!

[DrMDJ]

Win2k will have the same problem (as it uses a Hardware Abstraction Layer as well).

One thing you might try is (with HT enabled and all) set the Compatability (under Properties) for the exe file associated with this particular application to run in win98/ME mode. Since neither of these support MPs this should cause the application to run on one processor (or, rather, cause the OS to only run it on one processor).

[Lickety-Split]

Again, thanks so much for your help. With 2000 I don't think (or don't know how) there is a compatibility tool as there is with XP... The new software reuires XP, so I guess I'll need to puchase it and give it a try. In the meantime, is there any other work-around that I may try with Win2000?

[DrMDJ]

It may not work, but... If you can get the program to launch, then you might be able to go in to TASK MANAGER, and for the process associated with the program set the AFFINITY to a single processor. Haven't looked at this in a while so I may be wrong, but you can check it out.

[DrMDJ]

Double checked and this shows how to set affinity in 2k. Again though, not sure if this will work for you.

[Lickety-Split]

Great- I will try this and see what happens. In any even, I truly appreciate your time and help... I'll post back with my results.

[DrMDJ]

Good luck. Keep us posted.