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Significant Clock Problem on Dual Core PCs

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by curt.goodhart

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Colleagues,

I have found what seems to be a significant problem on some (intel) Dual Core Processors.

On a number of dual core processors running XP Pro, when we play a beep (or any sound) our clock advances. A test program we created causes some PCs to advance their clock up to 20 sec per minute (that's 8 hrs per day). The behavior is independent from Visual Basic, I've been able to generate the effect manually using the MS Windows Sounds dialog also.
Has anyone heard of such behavior or know what may cause it. I've only tested Intel Dual Core processors.

If you would be interested I can send the simple app to you to try. You just start the app, which simply plays a beep every 10 msec and it can advance a clock by up to 20 seconds every minute.

5 replies

by mjd420nova

I have diagnosed this problem on a number of machines and found it's not the CPU's fault, but the BIOS version that has a problem with the audio driver. I t first cropped up for me in May, and it took me a week to track it down. Swapping CPU's, audio cards and under three different OS's (Linux, WINXPPRO and WINXPHOME). I had one on a Dell, a couple on Compaqs and a couple on Gateways.

by curt.goodhart

Thanks for your reply. You're the first I've found who is aware of this. I'd loaded the latest bios upgrade on my Dell and still had the problem. Were you always able to get a BIOS update to fix the problem, especially on your Dell?

I've only seen this on Dual Core, do you concur?

Do you understand how the audio driver manages to advance the clock?

Finally, do you know of any links or POCs where this issue is discussed or addressed.

Thanks very much! Curt

by tonythetiger

probably the easiest way to deal with it until you can find a fix is to synchronize the time often with a time server.

by curt.goodhart

Thanks for the input.

We were resyncing every 30 seconds and still we had some problems where the resets were more than our application could tolerate.

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