HP Pavilion Intel 8200 runs slower than other Intel Q8200

[Ritter197]

Well, what an experience. I do thank Paul for his continued support!
I downloaded EasyBCD and installed it. When I used it then it showed 1 Core
open. I changed it to 4 and then closed it down.
That's when trouble (but also success!) started.
The computer would not boot up any longer. No F key would get me anywhere.
Just a black screen (not even blue!).

I finally re-installed Windows 7 and after some additional downloads for
latest updates it worked again.

Now the good part! Running PassMark Performance Test 7.0 it now shows 4
cores (open?) and the results are dramatically improved. From an overall
score of 655 to 1104!
All individual areas show improvements, but the biggest by FAR in the CPU
area. So, without Paul's good advice I would have never got where I am
now.!!!!

Thanks a lot again

Karl

 

[Paul]

Well, what an experience. I do thank Paul for his continued support!
I downloaded EasyBCD and installed it. When I used it then it showed 1
Core open. I changed it to 4 and then closed it down.
That's when trouble (but also success!) started.
The computer would not boot up any longer. No F key would get me
anywhere. Just a black screen (not even blue!).

I finally re-installed Windows 7 and after some additional downloads for
latest updates it worked again.

Now the good part! Running PassMark Performance Test 7.0 it now shows 4
cores (open?) and the results are dramatically improved. From an overall
score of 655 to 1104!
All individual areas show improvements, but the biggest by FAR in the
CPU area. So, without Paul's good advice I would have never got where I
am now.!!!!

Thanks a lot again

Karl

Weird. I would never have expected a change like that, to cause the
box to "fall over".

It raises the question though, of how did the box get in that state in
the first place. Does a Windows 7 computer have the ability to change
the HAL, based on "how it is feeling" ? The computer, as shipped by HP,
must have had all four cores enabled. The HAL and the BCD boot options
should have been set up for that. It would be interesting to find
out, how the OS would end up running on just one core. I mean, it
could happen to you again, if there is a behavior of Windows 7 that
does that kind of thing.

Doing a little bit of research, I see that Microsoft has changed from
the simple to understand "boot.ini" file, to the BCD. And the BCD, is
like a registry hive. Which changes what used to be a simple task,
into something a lot more complicated. Yeah, that sounds like progress
to me...

Paul

 

[Ritter197]

Paul, you are so right , unfortunately!
I will try to find out what changes, but last night I got the score of 1122
(highest ever) and I saw in Task Manager 4 windows next to the CPU.
I went to bed, got up this am and just for the heck of it ran all tests
again.
What do you think????
Back to the low 700. Ran it twice. More or less same result. AND in Task
Manager it shows 1 (one) CPU.

There are some people who do not care as long as their computer works, but
that is definitely not the case here. I like to tweak, until I have the
highest performance and then leave it (but test it again to make sure all is
at peak performance)

I used to have 3 BMW's and I did the same things to them. ALWAYS got them
running better than any mechanic at the BMW place would do it.

 

[Paul]

Paul, you are so right , unfortunately!
I will try to find out what changes, but last night I got the score of
1122 (highest ever) and I saw in Task Manager 4 windows next to the CPU.
I went to bed, got up this am and just for the heck of it ran all tests
again.
What do you think????
Back to the low 700. Ran it twice. More or less same result. AND in Task
Manager it shows 1 (one) CPU.

There are some people who do not care as long as their computer works,
but that is definitely not the case here. I like to tweak, until I have
the highest performance and then leave it (but test it again to make
sure all is at peak performance)

I used to have 3 BMW's and I did the same things to them. ALWAYS got
them running better than any mechanic at the BMW place would do it.

Does the Windows 7 machine have an Event Viewer ? Perhaps you could
look in there, for some error.

(Again, I don't understand the Windows 7 design intent. I managed to
find the Event Viewer, but it wasn't exactly easy. It is found via
Control Panels, but I had to use the "search" box at the top of the
dialog to find it.)

I don't know if I'm going to be able to find anything relevant
to help with this. Keywords would be "HAL, Multiprocessor, MAXCPUs, Windows 7"
but I was finding very little the other day. If I find some
"bread crumbs" I'll report back

Paul

 

[Paul]

Paul, you are so right , unfortunately!
I will try to find out what changes, but last night I got the score of
1122 (highest ever) and I saw in Task Manager 4 windows next to the CPU.
I went to bed, got up this am and just for the heck of it ran all tests
again.
What do you think????
Back to the low 700. Ran it twice. More or less same result. AND in Task
Manager it shows 1 (one) CPU.

There are some people who do not care as long as their computer works,
but that is definitely not the case here. I like to tweak, until I have
the highest performance and then leave it (but test it again to make
sure all is at peak performance)

I used to have 3 BMW's and I did the same things to them. ALWAYS got
them running better than any mechanic at the BMW place would do it.

Oh, and by the way, I discovered you can use "msconfig" on Windows 7, to
change the MAXCPU setting to 4 cores. But I expect the result would
have been no different than your previous experience with EasyBCD.
(Another black screen etc.) Windows 7 has some kind of Repair option
as well, which might have worked and been faster than a reinstall.

Paul