Legacy Games & Hyperthreading

Howdy Doodie everyone:

I need your help. I'd like to add a section in the General Drill for disabling Hyperthreading.
But I don't have this particular function with my Pentium IV (mine is 4years old this May).

anyway --- for those of you who have hyper threading Pentiums could you help me compile a list of older games that would benefit from having this function disabled while playing said game? I would really appreciate it.

The ones I know of so far are:

• Phantasmagoria II
• Law&Order Criminal Intent
• Black Dahlia
• Grim Fandango
• Curse of Monkey Island
• Beyond Time
• Arthur's Knights
• Broken Sword 1 & 2
• Martian Gothic
• Morrowind
• Thief
• Nautilus
• Messenger
• The Crystal Key
• Outcast
• Dracula Unleashed
• Dracula the Last Sancturary
• Dracula Ressurection
• Tex Murphy Series
• Morrowind

inferno

I think the patch fixed the problem with Syberia 1 so you don't need to disable the hyperthreading. But most of the games on that list are so old no company is going to patch them (unless fans of the game do it themselves).

that's what I thought as well, so I'll take Siberia off the list since the patch fixes the hyperthreading issue --another game you can think of?

Inferno

Inferno, hi,

That's a pretty comprehensive list. All the games I know of that need hyperthreading disabled are on there... except:

Morrowind

BTW... you should tell people the correct way to do this. It's *not* to enter the game and do it manually (this technique will not work for Grim Fandango, for instance), but rather to use the imagecfg.exe programme to permanently configure a particular game. Here's the relevant text from Steve's XP Games Corner at Quandary, along with a link to imagecfg in case you want to archive it on your site too:

Q. My game intermittently locks up. Is there any way to fix this?
A. Hyperthreading is a technique used by XP to make your single processor appear as two processors. The theory is that while one process is blocked waiting for something to happen (like a block of data to be read from disk), another process can be running away blissfully on the other virtual processor. Some Windows games that were written before the advent of XP cannot handle this thread switching scenario, and will randomly freeze up. Here are a few examples:

Grim Fandango
Thief: The Dark Project
Outcast Tex Murphy: Overseer

To find out if your PC has hyperthreading enabled:

Start -> Control Panel -> System -> Hardware -> Device Manager -> Computer

And if you don't see: ACPI Multiprocessor PC, then you do not have hyperthreading enabled.

If your PC does have hyperthreading enabled, there is a universal patch programme that you can run to permanently bind a particular application to a single processor. We have archived it for you here: imagecfg.zip . Just download that file and unzip it. To fix up a particular game, install the game first. Then open a Command Prompt, and change to the folder where you unzipped imagecfg.exe. Figure out where your game's main executable file is (right-clicking on the game's icon and examining the Properties is a pretty safe bet). Using Grim Fandango as an example, you would enter something like this at the Command Prompt:

imagecfg -a 0x1 c:\GrimFan\Grim.exe

And you should see the following output:

c:\GrimFan\Grim.exe contains no configuration information
c:\GrimFan\Grim.exe contains a Subsystem Version of 4.0
c:\GrimFan\Grim.exe updated with the following configuration information:
Process Affinity Mask: 00000001

Done! Now you shouldn't even have to run the game in Windows 95/98 Compatibility Mode.

Cheers,
metzomagic

Thanks sweetie, may I quote you? :kiss:

Inferno

So, if they have ACPI Uniprocessor PC --- does this mean that Hyperthreading does not exist on that particular System?

inferno

I don't think so Inferno . I think you can have 2 dual core , or 2 hyperthreading processors with that configuration .

Edit : I think the dual processor setup is kind of like the dual video card setup (SLI) , in that it's able to effectively double the processor speed to get beyond the 4 GHZ boundary .

But --ok, just so I'm clear in my mind, so that that would mean that there is the potential to have 2 hyperthreading processors with this configuration, and if the system did it would show itself in the Device Manager. So the term
ACPI Uniprocessor would mean that right now there is only one processor existing. And another processor could be added later? Making theACPI Uniprocessor change to ACPI Dualprocessor - thus enabling Hyperthreading?

inferno

Sorry Inferno , that's my brain vapor-locking again . It was the prefix "UNI" that threw me . For some reason , I thought you were referring to motherboards which have dual processors . I don't know if that ACPI Uni-processor configuration would or could be capable of Hyperthreading .

Aha! So the key wording here is Uni meaning one. I think I got it.

inferno

For some odd reason , my feeble brain thought (at first glance) that it meant 2 or unified

I think it's just Uniprocessor and Multiprocessor (not Dualprocessor). One, or more than one repectively. This page may help in your walkthrough setups regarding said computers with this feature.


Gamehound

Gee thanks --- I've never mentioned this on my site because I don't have it. -- May ne I should put that in my Specs.

Inferno

Inferno, it would appear that Black Dahlia would also require the disabling of Hyperthreading.

I followed the instructions on this thread, downloading the file listed, got the appropriate message and now the game responds much better.

Just stumbled on this post and will add my two cents worth. I do have hyperthreading on my new Dell. When I check device mgr. and computer it says ACPI MultiProcessor PC. If it says such, as I understand it, it means hyperthreading.

Was trying to play Grim Fandango and having problems. Learned here on GB that there is a very simple procedure to do(one I was comfortable with)that cured the GF game ills and I am playing merrily away.

The procedure also reverts back to default but I do not mind having to do the procedure over each time I open GF game to play awhile.

The second procedure from referral here at GB to steve quandary site involved the download imagecfg.exe and installation etc. This as I understand it does not have to be redone with each game.

Not sure whether my feeling is legitimate but somehow am uneasy with programs that might change my PC configuration permanently. Have had soooo many computer problems that I am trying to be very careful with a new PC to not do something to cause me more problems. Of course my lack of tech knowledge interfers with much of what I am trying to do.

Sure am glad you guys are around to help think things straight.

The imagecf.exe program will not change any of your computer's configuration . All it does is the same thing that you're doing manually to Grim Fandango , except it does it automatically , and only for that game (or any other game that you use it for)

Ok Robert - that is reassuring. As I said I am not a PC tech so can get really confused about things. Will give imagecf.exe a try for some of the other games.

Am going to impose and ask you another question. Trying to install Tex Murphy Overseer but all I get is a window that says this game must be played in Win95 or 98. Can advise?

desertlilac, hi,

Sorry, been away from this thread for a few days. All of this stuff mentioned above, including how to correctly disable hyperthreading for a particular game, *and* how to get the DVD version of Overseer running in XP, is covered in my column at Quandary.

Just follow the link in my sig below

Regards,
metzomagic

I'm sorry, but when I click on the link to download the file, I get a message that says "server not found."

Benedict, hi,

Oops. Our server is indeed down at the moment. I'll just do a Google search for imagecfg... and you can get it here:

http://www.robpol86.com/Files/imagecfg.exe

Cheers,
MetzO'Magic

One thing that I forgot about DOS and that is that it IS case-sensitive.

imagecfg -a 0x1 E:\Syberia\Syberia.exe

is NOT the same as

imagecfg -a 0x1 E:\syberia\syberia.exe

Be sure of the case of the letters in your file name.

Jack

DOS is generally not case sensitive, so it's good to know this is an exception.

Wow Sierra Rat, good spot!

I've never seen a DOS programme that was case sensitive to path names. Very strange.

Thanks,
MetzO'Magic

Sorry, poor example. What I meant to show is that DOS is at least case sensitive on file names. I'm not sure if it is or not on the folder names. But then again, it doesn't hurt to keep the case the same for both names. The way I found this out was that imagecfg kept telling me it could not run on syberia.exe and I was only able to get it to run when I matched the case of the file and folder names (Syberia). I did not try matching folder and file case names independently.

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