OT: W2k or XP on Core 2?

Billy d wrote on 2/1/2007, 10:36 AM

I have a couple of questions which may fall into the "Urban Legend" category.

I recently upgraded to a (self built) Core 2 PC and bought an OEM XP with it.
I don't really like XP, it crashes a lot without warning (like instant reboot 10 hours in to a 12hour render) where W2K almost never crashes.

If I format my hard drive and start over with good 'ol W2K :
1) will I lose the dual processor support?
2) will I lose 24bit audio support?

I only do pan and scan on still photo's so no need for HD camera support.

Vegas runs so fast on the Core 2 and most of my audio stuff now is 24bit. I would be reluctant to lose this.

Comments

Cliff Etzel wrote on 2/1/2007, 10:44 AM

First off, XP is rock solid after close to 5 years on the market .

Is this a clean install or upgrade over win2K? I was a staunch Win2K user when XP came out, but after SP1a, I made the switch and never looked back. I would say install ZP and make sure you run live update to make sure you are up 2 date. Defrag is a must and I would look at using something other than XP's built in defrag (I like O&O Defrag)

I have also seen such things as moving the RAM around into different slots will make a difference on stability, I would use a burn in app to stress test your machine to make sure you aren't running into hardware issues - XP is actually very stable once your hardware settles in. You may need to look at things like uping the voltage ever so slightly on your RAM as an example (I had to do that when I moved to x64 XP Pro - I had my first BSOD's in over 2 years when I built my AMD machine last fall).

You may find that XP works even better than Win2K does - once you resolve the reboot issues...

Cliff

Billy d wrote on 2/1/2007, 11:07 AM

Ahh yes, you bring up good points.

I did a clean instal of XP SP2 on a RAID 0 C drive.

Absolutely no upgrades, I don't like the idea of that at all. (I use Firefox, Thunderbird, Open Office ,and I have 2 firewalls and of course an anti virus app).
As far as I'm concerned XP is just an updated form of my first operating system, DOS 2.1. Well actually I suppose my TI99 4A must have had an OS too and that predates DOS.
So all that nasty stuff floating around for MS's browser and their other apps shouldn't affect me.
I defrag daily but that built in defrag has itself caused problems (I think). After some defrags I get an error message and then (when I reboot) the system insists on booting only into safe mode before rebooting normally.

I'll try a burn in app, my RAM is supposed to be able to run at 800M but even with the correct voltage it was way unstable so I went back to stock frequency.

TheHappyFriar wrote on 2/1/2007, 6:06 PM

get an app to record the cpu/system temps & fan speeds. I built a new computer once that did the exact same thing, ends up the CPU heatsink/fan was bad. For safety the BIOS auto-shuts down the PC at the overheat temp (which you CAN disable for most motherboards). My Asus MB came with Asus Probe that keeps a record of all temps/speeds while it's on. I have all that data in a nice graph from the last time I installed windows. :) It comes in real handy to help diagnose problems such as yours.

farss wrote on 2/1/2007, 6:13 PM

Hm,
just my 2 bobs worth. I'd avoid using RAID 0 on a boot drive. It doesn't take much to have a RAID 0 array spit the dummy. I only run RAID 0 when I have to. If you want a faster boot drive perhaps a 10K Raptor is the answer although I'd have doubts about how much that'll really speed things up.

Chienworks wrote on 2/1/2007, 6:57 PM

I never understood the attraction of W2K. It's like ME gone bad, and ME was bad enough to begin with. *shudder*. I've never had it on one of my own computers, but i've supported many who did have it. I can tell you, the vast majority of my support calls came from W2K users, far more so than users of all the other versions combined. More than any other Windows version, 2K seemed to force users to do everything in Microsoft's own arcane ways rather than letting the user do what he/she wanted to do. I suppose it was all a lot of little interface issues, but added all together it made 2K about the most annoying user experience of the whole Windows line.

2K also seems to be the most network-paranoid version. I know IT departments had been badgering Microsoft for better security when 2K came out, but this was ridiculous. Setting up network shares and connecting to file servers was a huge nightmare. Seems like every single 2K machine had it's own unique set of issues and hurdles to overcome, and they were issues that couldn't be permanently solved either. Get the machine running fine today, and tomorrow it's not talking to the network again and requires pretty much starting the network setup from scratch. Compare that to 98SE and XP that have no problems connecting to the network and setting up secure shares.

After XP came out i started upgrading the 2K machines to XP. Glory! Support calls dropped to almost nothing. All the former 2K users had to say to me were things like, "hey, everything works now." and "why didn't we do this ages ago?"

2K? Good riddance. I hope i never see it again, ever.

fldave wrote on 2/1/2007, 7:35 PM

XP: I have 3 PCs running XP Pro. The most used machine ( about 10 hours per day ) I reboot about once every 2 weeks, just to keep things clean.

My daily play machine gets rebooted about every 4 days (old PIII), and my Vegas machine about once per week, or right before a critical render.

Crashes without warning is probably an overheating problem.

XP vs. W2K or W2003: XP probably has more multimedia support. The W2x are more server oriented.

blink3times wrote on 2/1/2007, 7:47 PM

As with the others above... if you're crashing XP then the machine is the problem... XP is pretty bloody sturdy. My machine is on ALL the time and I'm running a P950 dual core overclocked at about 4.3Ghz. The only time I ever reboot is just before I do a render... just to cleanup and get a fresh start.

John_Cline wrote on 2/1/2007, 10:07 PM

I agree, I've got 11 machines here all running WinXP and they all get pounded pretty hard. I can't remember the last time ANY of them crashed for any reason.

John

Chienworks wrote on 2/2/2007, 3:32 AM

I think the last time i rebooted my video workstation was during the XP install after i upgraded it about 3 months ago. I've done hundreds of renders without rebooting. I've got an old XP machine sitting in the corner that i use for testing purposes. It's probalby been running for over a year without a reboot and it's still going strong.

Billy d wrote on 2/3/2007, 3:21 PM

Good input, much thanks to all of you.
For me pretty much the opposite, W2K (on several other machenes) rock solid dependable. XP on my new machene about as bad as it gets. Horrible.

So the answer seems to be to look for a hardware source rather than in the OS.
Probably should look for an intermittant connection or maybe an incorrectly seated RAM chip and try an increase in RAM voltage as suggested.

My C drive is a couple of 10K WD 150G Raptors and one suggestion is to get rid of the Raid 0. But that leaves me with a 150G C instead of 300G. I'll have to think about that one - not sure if I can use the RAID as JBOD, I don't think so. Ahh, wait I think I can just use the RAID as non RAID, that would do it. I would just end up with another drive letter to deal with.
All other drive connectors are in use and I'm short one IRQ already.

Oh well, one thing at a time, I'll start with the RAM.

fldave wrote on 2/3/2007, 3:38 PM

With XP, IRQs are no longer a problem from what I understand. There are a bunch. You still need to be conscious of not doubling main components on one IRQ though.

My C: drive is a 40GB Raptor. System and program install drive only, and I have 20-25GB free. Data goes on other drives.

You might try downloading SySoft Sandra to test your machine. Lots and lots of good testing options, with clear instructions on how to fix.

TheHappyFriar wrote on 2/3/2007, 3:42 PM

i only get people needing help with XP. :)

2K's near perfect. Network issues? nothing that I didn't have in 95, 98, or XP. but those were always MS server software/connection related. I put in a Linux anything & the problems go poof (for all MS OS's).

XP just works because instead of letting people do what they wanted, they did it MS's way, so everybody did it the same way. But, again, take any MS server out of the look & it works perfectly. At least it has for me. :D

craftech wrote on 2/3/2007, 4:19 PM

Billy,

Instead of going on and on about all this please list your hardware and include the bios revision for your motherboard + your bios settings. Also, if you updated the bios did you use the CD that came with the MB or did you download and flash. If you flashed, excatly how did you do it.

John

farss wrote on 2/3/2007, 4:29 PM

I'm trying to workout why you want such a huge C: drive, 80Gb even would seem more than enough for all your systems files and application files.

I'd get a small drive for your C: drive and keep the two big drives for a RAID 0 data drive.

There's also some suggestions around on this forum to move the page file to it's own drive / partition. I'm no expert int these matters but it makes sense to me.

And yes, check your RAM and all cables, anything that can be physically plugged and unplugged you should be suspicious of. PAy attention to any wide ribbon cables too, if you're running SATA maybe not such an issue. In my experience maybe 80% of all computer problems are contact / connection problems.

Bob.

rmack350 wrote on 2/3/2007, 6:04 PM

I once read a review on Tom's hardware that claimed the 10k raptor was competitive with a pair of slower spinning disks striped as RAID0. So if you really need a boot disk that's fast then that ought to be more reliable.

It's more common to stripe a non-boot set of disks to use for media playback in Vegas. Since you don't really want the system disk to also be the media disk, it makes more sense to have a plain-jane boot disk and an array for media.

(OT: I'm typing this out in Firefox on Ubuntu Linux and I see that the browser is underlining my spelling mistakes. Wow. I like that!)

Anyway, if this XP system is crashing I'd expect win2k to do it to. It sounds like heat. Hard to tell though when you also say you've been tweaking memory voltage, using a striped boot disk, and defragging causes crashes. Maybe start with a more predictable baseline system before thinking it's the OS.

Rob Mack

rmack350 wrote on 2/3/2007, 6:15 PM

You could re-plug everything. You could also try just opening the case and setting a house fan to blow into it during a render, just to see what happens. I'm betting on heat.

The general disk setup is one drive for programs, OS, and maybe personal files. A second one, or an array, for video data. Part of the point is to keep OS and swap file activity away from the media and render disk.

If swap file were to be in it's own partition make that partition on the boot disk. The main point is to give it an unfragmented partition all to itself.

Rob Mack