Hi,
If any of you are using Creative Labs sound cards you may want to confirm
you don't have the newsupd.exe program running on your computer.
I won an AMD 1800+ processor and a motherboard and just built a system
around it this weekend. I ran the setiathome program to get a benchmark for
how this system stacked up against my other computers (Athlon 900, Athlon
700, Pentium 200, Pentium 120). I used Win2k for the OS and used the
onboard soundcard chip (Gigabyte GA7DX motherboard). The only software I
installed other than the device drivers for the onboard soundcard were
drivers for the video card and lan card, as well as the text version of the
setiathome software.
I used my Athlon 900 as a proxy server with Setigate software working as a
workunit cache and keeping the workunit statistics. I started the setiathome
software, waited 5 minutes to make sure the Athlon 1800 was communicating
with the Athlon 900 and went to bed.
In the morning the workunit was only 10 percent completed. I knew
something must be configured incorrectly since the Athlon 900 averages
around 9 1/2 hours to finish a workunit. I checked the power configuration
to make sure the computer wasn't going in to suspend mode. I then examined
the processes that were running and newsupd.exe was using 94% of the
processor time.
I searched Google for this exe and found this site:
http://www.cexx.org/newsupd.htm
After following the instructions and deleting this executable from my
computer (don't edit the registry if you haven't done this before, or make
sure you have a backup copy of every file that you think is important). I
then averaged 3 1/2 hours per workunit for 10 workunits. Setiathome now
uses 99 percent of the processor.
I'm going to load Writelog and the rest of the applications that I use on
this computer but just thought that those of you that have choppy CW, or
have computers that slow down after getting a few hundred qso's might want
to check for this exe.
Wayne and others on this reflector tell everyone to check your active
programs when you have problems with erratic Writelog performance. This is
just another reason to do so and it may save one of you from a few hours of
head scratching and cursing.
I don't have any problems with Writelog on any of my slower computers and
I don't think I will with the Athlon 1800+. It does take some
troubleshooting to get everything working correctly, but I have found that
it has always been a problem with a software driver or my MS Operating
System configuration that has been the problem.
Hope you all have a great New Year (hope you all work me in the contests
also!!!),
73,
George / KF9YR
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