Geoff Worboys
December 9th 03, 02:44 PM
A friend and I were chasing down the same problem with
some database software, we found the MSKB article 815227
which seemed like a possible answer. My friend installed
the hotfix from MS and it solved the problem on his
computer (a single Xeon P4 with Hyperthreading on). I
installed the hotfix and the problem persists. So I
started to look at exactly what the hotfix installed and
discovered something curious...
My system shows ntkrnlpa.exe in the system32 folder (and
the hotfix backup shows that only that, and the
ntoskrnl.exe, file was updated). There is no sign of
ntkrnlmp.exe anywhere on my system at all.
I thought that a multi-processor system should be using
either ntkrnlmp.exe or ntkrpamp.exe - but neither of
these files exists anywhere on my system (except inside
the hotfix, which did not try to install these files).
I also found it strange that ntkrnlpa.exe was used, since
I thought this was only for >4Gb installations, which
mine is not.
I am running Windows XP SP1 (the OEM install CD had SP1
already integrated).
My system has dual (physical) Xeon P4 2.4GHz CPUs. It
has 1Gb of RAM, about 2.5Gb of virtual. I've always had
hyperthreading on (XP was installed with HT enabled). My
device manager describes the computer as a "ACPI
Multiprocessor PC" and the expected four CPUs are
displayed. Other than a strange problem with this
database software the XP installation has not given any
problems or reason for concern in terms of performance.
What I want to know is; Does the fact that my PC does
not have ntkrnlmp.exe or ntkrpamp.exe installed indicate
that there must have been an installation problem? (Or
am I chasing shadows? :-)
If the existance/use of ntkrnlpa.exe does indicate a
problem what can I try to do to resolve it?
I thought about setting up an alternate boot option that
used /NUMPROC=1, to force the system to single CPU. And
then revert to multi-CPU - in an effort to see if I could
get Windows XP to reconfigure itself. But before I tried
that I thought I should see if the problem is real or
imagined.
TIA
Geoff Worboys
some database software, we found the MSKB article 815227
which seemed like a possible answer. My friend installed
the hotfix from MS and it solved the problem on his
computer (a single Xeon P4 with Hyperthreading on). I
installed the hotfix and the problem persists. So I
started to look at exactly what the hotfix installed and
discovered something curious...
My system shows ntkrnlpa.exe in the system32 folder (and
the hotfix backup shows that only that, and the
ntoskrnl.exe, file was updated). There is no sign of
ntkrnlmp.exe anywhere on my system at all.
I thought that a multi-processor system should be using
either ntkrnlmp.exe or ntkrpamp.exe - but neither of
these files exists anywhere on my system (except inside
the hotfix, which did not try to install these files).
I also found it strange that ntkrnlpa.exe was used, since
I thought this was only for >4Gb installations, which
mine is not.
I am running Windows XP SP1 (the OEM install CD had SP1
already integrated).
My system has dual (physical) Xeon P4 2.4GHz CPUs. It
has 1Gb of RAM, about 2.5Gb of virtual. I've always had
hyperthreading on (XP was installed with HT enabled). My
device manager describes the computer as a "ACPI
Multiprocessor PC" and the expected four CPUs are
displayed. Other than a strange problem with this
database software the XP installation has not given any
problems or reason for concern in terms of performance.
What I want to know is; Does the fact that my PC does
not have ntkrnlmp.exe or ntkrpamp.exe installed indicate
that there must have been an installation problem? (Or
am I chasing shadows? :-)
If the existance/use of ntkrnlpa.exe does indicate a
problem what can I try to do to resolve it?
I thought about setting up an alternate boot option that
used /NUMPROC=1, to force the system to single CPU. And
then revert to multi-CPU - in an effort to see if I could
get Windows XP to reconfigure itself. But before I tried
that I thought I should see if the problem is real or
imagined.
TIA
Geoff Worboys