Dual Core CPU large file issues.

We have several new dell GX745 desktops here at work. Some of our employees need to open fairly large XML files with Internet Explorer. As soon as they open the XML file IE immidiately closes.

The solution we found was to disable the dual core mode in the bios. This to me is a temp solution at best. We spent extra money to have these dual core machines and having to disable this is well a waste of money and performance.

Do any of you have any suggestions I could try so that these machines can use the dual core mode and still work with these large 1.5 - 3 meg XML files?

They come stock with 512 megs of ram, I have upgraded all of them to 1.5gb of DDR2 and that had no effect on the problem. These are all WinXP Pro desktops

Thanks in advance.

Kazz

What version of Internet Exploder are you using? If it is 7, I suggest removing it and installing IE6 at least on a test PC to see if that fixes the problem.

It is version 6 with 128 bit ciphering. Our corporate IT team is pretty slow in upgrading things. We just recently moved to SP2 and I was the guinnea pig for that as I had to have SP2 for some development work I was doing at the time.

I also tried loading firefox on a test machine to see if that made a difference and it did not. It would not parse the XML adapter at all.

FYI I have also tried the WINXP Duo Core patch from Microsoft KB896256 to no avail.

"XML Page Cannot Be Displayed" Error Message When You Open An XML File Attachment in E-Mail
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/303487

System Does Not Respond When You Open Large XML Files in Internet Explorer
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/269488

Hope one of them helps out..

Long time no see!

You can also set the affinity of iexplore.exe to use just one CPU instead of disabling the second core in the BIOS. That way only one application is affected until you find a solution.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by ua549

You can also set the affinity of iexplore.exe to use just one CPU instead of disabling the second core in the BIOS. That way only one application is affected until you find a solution.

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This sounds interesting, but alas I have never heard the term "set the affinity" before, can you be more specific?



Jim,

Neither of those articles apply really. Smaller XML files open no problem, and I do not get the cannot be displayed issue, IE opens and I can see the XML/invoice but it closes as fast as it opens. As if IE was crashing.

Launch IE. Bring up Task Manager->Process tab ->Right click on IE and select the Set Affinity option.

You can also create a shortcut to start IE with the affinity you want.
For the syntax open a CMD window and enter help start.

Thanks SRJ, I will give that a try after I get back from Dairy Queen...it is blizzard time :-)

I tested this and it works, however I need an automated process to handle this. We cannot rely on our non technical employees to do this every time they have to handle a large file. I found this article http://www.microsoft.com/technet/pro....mspx?mfr=true

Which describes how to add a script to the system to set the affinity. I have admin access on the machines, but it is not full blown with local machine rights. I have passed this article off to our corporate IT staff and will see if they can put this in place for us. It definately seems like a better solution than their suggestion which was to disable dual core functionality in the bios. I mean if you are going to pay the extra money for dual core machines you should at least be able to use them.

Thanks for all the tips and suggestions.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by ua549

You can also create a shortcut to start IE with the affinity you want.
For the syntax open a CMD window and enter help start.

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I think this one might work too, but I did not see anything under help start that would point to affinity.

of course the person assigned my ticket in corporate IT is putting up resistance, I think it is more work than he wants to do. It is my responsibility to make sure this gets done, so if anyone can help me with the shortcut to IE with the affinity code in it that would be helpful

Did you go to a CMD window on a Dual Core machine when you type "help start" to see the syntax? (it's looks a bit complicated)

A bit off topic, but why on earth can't a dual CPU handle a large XML file?!

SRJ, yes I was on a dual core machine when I ran the cmd help start. I did not see anything in there about the affinity. (This is the same machine that I ran the test at the process level)


Usil,

Not really off topic...it is a question I asked myself....If it was just one machine I would chalk it up to something wrong, but we have at least 3 of these GX745 machines and all 3 exhibit the same behavior....we can use older p4 machines on these files with no problem at all.

What ticked me off was our IT guy saying to just disable dual core support at the bios level. They had us pay extra for this ability and now they want us to just shut it off because they do not want to help us solve the problem.

This is what happens when a subsidiary company has to use resources from the parent company on windows, but we have to support out own applications. Which is my role in the company, tech support for our custom applications and oracle databases.

I found problems with my AMD Dual Core on my Dell system trying to run certain games.

http://discussions.virtualdr.com/sho...d.php?t=215074

Here is the first part of the HELP START display on my machine. The START command is probably OS version dependent.

Code:

---

START ["title"] [/D path] [/I] [/MIN] [/MAX] [/SEPARATE | /SHARED]
      [/LOW | /NORMAL | /HIGH | /REALTIME | /ABOVENORMAL | /BELOWNORMAL]
      [/AFFINITY <hex affinity>] [/WAIT] [/B] [command/program]
      [parameters]

    "title"    Title to display in  window title bar.
    path        Starting directory
    B          Start application without creating a new window. The
                application has ^C handling ignored. Unless the application
                enables ^C processing, ^Break is the only way to interrupt
                the application
    I          The new environment will be the original environment passed
                to the cmd.exe and not the current environment.
    MIN        Start window minimized
    MAX        Start window maximized
    SEPARATE    Start 16-bit Windows program in separate memory space
    SHARED      Start 16-bit Windows program in shared memory space
    LOW        Start application in the IDLE priority class
    NORMAL      Start application in the NORMAL priority class
    HIGH        Start application in the HIGH priority class
    REALTIME    Start application in the REALTIME priority class
    ABOVENORMAL Start application in the ABOVENORMAL priority class
    BELOWNORMAL Start application in the BELOWNORMAL priority class
    AFFINITY    The new application will have the specified processor
                affinity mask, expressed as a hexadecimal number.
    WAIT        Start application and wait for it to terminate

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I have had no problems with large XML files on my dual systems. However, they run Win2k3 and Vista Business. None of them run WinXP.

*edit*

I just ran a test by reading a 4.369MB xml file with IE7 on a dual core Dell Latitude D620 (T7200) WinXP Pro SP2 machine without any trouble. The file I read: Using Software Restriction Policies to Protect Against Unauthorized Software by Microsoft Corporation, Published: January 2002, Updated: August 2002.

Are you sure the xml files you are trying to read are formatted correctly with all the proper header information? Any missing XML header can produce unspecified results.

I wish I could say that I was 100% sure, but XML is not my strong suit. I would think it is, but I wont assume. There is some conversion going on with XSL style sheets to make a viewable invoice.

What I am wondering it this may not have been resolved in IE7. I do know we cannot upgrade from IE6 for sure.

I never had trouble with IE6 either. The big file I tested with I obtained almost 5 years ago and read it then without trouble.

To test the files open them in Word 2007. You should see formatted pages rather than raw xml code. If there is an issue there will be an error message.

There is a free add-on available from Microsoft for earlier Office versions so they can handle Office 2007 file formats.

You keep referring to this as some type of office document. It really represents more of a web page than a document of any type. The XML code is laid out similar to html for a web.

By the way, we are using office 2003....not many companies these days on the cutting edge of software due to way too many risks.

I can open them in word just fine....but the total presentation is off.

I double checked the test machine and affinity is not listed in the help start. I am wondering if its because the user is set with lower security priveleges. I will try it again when she leaves using admin privs.

XML is the native document format for MS Office.

I discovered that setting affinity via the start command is new in Vista.
You can use scripting to start IE with affinity set to a single core.
Make the script; then make a shortcut to it for users to click when starting IE.

Is it possible to provide a reference? I am a hardware guru not software or scripting.

What I have found is the affinity switch is not presented in 32bit flavors of XP.