chess program causes 100% use of CPU, crashes WindowsXP

[Denis Kholodar]

Hello,

Please suggest, if you can, what I can do to address this problem.

I purchased a chess program from ChessBase, Fritz8, which is one of
the best chess engines availabe. If you follow chess, this program is
one of those few that drew a match against a world champion recently.
Many people use it (for analysis and games) and it works fine for them
(diferent Fritz versions, different computers, etc).
After installing it without
problems, I first decided to play a few games, and out of all my 7-8
tries it
turned the computer of in the middle of the games.
When I monitor the CPU usage when playing
those games, I noticed that before crushing on my laptop,
Fritz8 uses 100% of the CPU for a while (say for a few moves some 5-15
sec on a move). So I brought the program to work and installed it on
another WindowsXP machine (a pretty powerfull workstation).
There for the first time I was able to
finish a game, which went on to about 35 moves, while on my personal
laptop it would crash around moves 15-20. Moreover the CPU usage on
the machine at work was oscillating during the whole game and never
stayed steady at 100% for too long as it does on my personal laptop.
So obviously 100% usage of CPU turns some mechanism in my laptop,
maybe due to the overheating threat, maybe due to something else - I
don't know this subject. I had this happen no more than a couple of
times
in the 8 months that I have this laptop when I was using a realplayer
online
for a broadcast from one particular web page.

Is it possible to do anything to make my laptop and this program work?
I really need it for studying chess.


The people from chessbase have not replied so far.

This is my laptop:
Compaq Presario 1525:
processor
Intel® Pentium^Ù 4 Processor 2.4GHz
memory
512MB DDR SDRAM (2 x 256MB) at 266MHz
hard drive
40GB Ultra DMA hard drive
multimedia drive
8X DVD/CD-RW Combo Drive
display
15.0" TFT SXGA+ Display
communications
Integrated 56K ITU V.92 PCI modem and 10/100 Base-T Ethernet port
video
ATI Radeon^Ù IGP Integrated Graphics with 32 MB shared video memory
sound
JBL Pro Performance Audio with Bass Reflex



thank you very much for reading.
Denis

 

[Jim]

Maybe your too good at chess and the computer is working
really hard to beat you ;-)

 

[Denis Kholodar]

I'm still running Fritz6. 8>. Yes, any of these programs will use all
the CPU they can get - often to the point of making the machine look
'locked up'. You may be able to alleviate it a bit by opening task
manager, selecting the process 'chessprogram.exe', and right clicking,
then setting the priority to 'below normal - that will let other things
get a shot at the processor from time to time. However it may not help
your crash.

The problem with laptops is they just are not designed to run 100% cpu
for a long period of time - they overheat.

You might want to download and install the 'motherboard monitor 5'
utility, which will track cpu temperatures for you (google for it) and
display them in your systray. If you want to demonstrate that CPU
load/temperature is the problem, try downloading and running 'Prime95'
(use the 'torture test' facility) from www.mersenne.org. That'll get
things toasty hot without user intervention.

If your laptop is under warranty, You might want to invoke it. It ought
have a better/saner response to overheating than 'crashing' .. i.e. it
should throttle back the CPU (give you an easier game) to reduce the
temperature, not just go belly up, or burn your knees off.

Thank you for your help!
Denis