Author Topic: Dreaded Desktop/blue screen SMP hang....  (Read 9885 times)

Dariusz Piatkowski

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Dreaded Desktop/blue screen SMP hang....
« on: November 23, 2014, 12:12:21 am »
OK...so I've got my MSI motherboard / AMD Phenom XII 6-core based system. It chugs along plenty nice with the exception of 1 (one) thing...I can not for the life of me get the 6-core configuration to get past the dreaded Desktop/blue screen hang. 5-core though...no problemo!!!

Neither the IBM origial OS2APIC.PSD driver nor the ACPI ACPI.PSD drivers impact this...something in the WPS boot process does.

Who else here uses multi-core configuration? And if so, what have you been able to do about this hang?

I spent a few hours today trying to narrow this down further...based on some on-line search hits I disabled the system wide sound and moved WarpCenter to the Startup folder (SET AUTOSTART=TASKLIST,FOLDERS). This actually got me to a point where the WPS did come up, WarpCenter started but whole machine froze (soft-hang) when about 1/3 of the WarpCenter toolbar displayed.

I'll try a few more combinations...as in previous search hits the suggestions always point to some kind of a "WPS boot timing" issue...OK...but what issue is that???

Any pointer would be greatly appreciated!

(BTW: ATI XT850 video, SNAP v505 driver)

Sigurd Fastenrath

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Re: Dreaded Desktop/blue screen SMP hang....
« Reply #1 on: November 23, 2014, 01:30:23 am »
The Problem you have is the SNAP Driver. Please read here for more Information:

https://translate.google.de/translate?sl=de&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=de&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.os2.org%2Fviewtopic.php%3Ff%3D2%26t%3D11&edit-text=

You can use all kernel with the Panorama Driver but your Video Performance will drop.

Holger from Germany tries to adress the SNAP / SMP Problem.

guzzi

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Re: Dreaded Desktop/blue screen SMP hang....
« Reply #2 on: November 23, 2014, 02:04:13 am »
It might be interesting to try if by using QSINIT it will work better. Since it sets the MTRR's correctly it might solve some SNAP problems.

OS4User

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Re: Dreaded Desktop/blue screen SMP hang....
« Reply #3 on: November 23, 2014, 09:01:43 am »
(BTW: ATI XT850 video, SNAP v505 driver)

I have the same set  -  it works excellent for me.

If you meet SMP SNAP issue,  you may try  os/4 + new sddhelp.sys    -  it will definitely help you   -  otherwise it is not a SMP issue.

http://gus.biysk.ru/os4/    http://gus.biysk.ru/os4/test/sddhelp/ 

Doug Bissett

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Re: Dreaded Desktop/blue screen SMP hang....
« Reply #4 on: November 23, 2014, 06:04:40 pm »
This is not a Snap problem, and it is not even an SMP problem. It is not fixable by QSINIT, or OS4. It is a startup conflict that happens just as the WPS starts up. It is more likely to happen when you have many things trying to start, all at the same time (all of the CALL and RUN statements in CONFIG.SYS, plus STARTUP.CMD, plus the startup sound, plus whatever is in your STARTUP folder. The more things that you have starting, the more likely you are to have the problem).

On my quad core machine, it seems that the problem lies in the early part of starting the WPS. Most of the time, the sound plays, and STARTUP.CMD shows the window, with no controls, and that is the end. Reboot usually succeeds. It seems that there is a "window of opportunity" where something goes wrong. If you can make the "window" happen when it doesn't matter, you have bypassed the problem. If it gets moved to a time when something else is affected, you have a problem.

Some supporting observations:

I made a VBox install of eCS 2.1. After the install, I was having the blue screen hang, about 4 out of 5 boots. I used the VBox controls to limit the machine to about 60% processor usage. I tried booting 20 times, with no hang. I put it back to 100%, and it was failing 4 out of 5 tries. Okay, so I finished my install, and setup, at 60% processor usage. This included adding a number of things that put entries into CONFIG.SYS. After all of that, I put it back to 100%, and had no more trouble. The additional entries in CONFIG.SYS slowed down the boot enough to get whatever was causing the problem to cause the problem at a time when it doesn't matter. Doing that with a real machine is a little harder.   :(

Some things to try (any of these can cause, or bypass, the problem):

Put a file named AltF2on.$$$ in the root of the boot drive (this effectively does Alt-F2 without user intervention). Displaying the information slows the boot process a little, and sometimes it will change it enough to let it get past the problem (or, it can cause the problem if you don't have it).

Use http://www.tavi.co.uk/os2pages/utils/delay.zip to insert a one, or two, second delay at the beginning of your CONFIG.SYS, and/or at the end. That should allow all BASEDEV and DEVICE statements to complete, before proceeding to the next step.

Use REXX Autostart http://hobbes.nmsu.edu/download/pub/os2/util/wps/rxast1911.exe to delay starting the contents of the STARTUP folder. Unfortunately, on my system, this never gets started when I have the problem, so I assume that the problem lies in the CALL and RUN statements (but it is not caused by those).

I also use my Logical Config.Sys Sorter (LCSS) http://hobbes.nmsu.edu/download/pub/os2/util/config/lcss-0-4-8.wpi which seems to help (at least on all of my systems). READ the instructions.

Of course, there may be other things that can case the problem, and there may be other things that can move the "window" far enough to prevent it.  Good luck...

Dariusz Piatkowski

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Re: Dreaded Desktop/blue screen SMP hang....
« Reply #5 on: November 26, 2014, 04:04:31 am »
Sigurd: thank you...I went through that post, actually pretty decent translation...problem is there really was no solution identified...I did grab the modified SOM.DLL, tried it here, but no difference.

OS4User: I pulled the latest releases...will try this upcoming weekend

Doug: great advice regarding the DELAY.SYS driver...I had previously gone down exactly the route you suggested, "dumbed down" the CONFIG.SYS to literally the bare essentials, still got stuck. This time around I deployed the DELAY with a 30 sec pause however there are other drivers that load beyond this one, so in my case this had no imapct. I have XWorkplace installed here, so my native OS/2 startup folder has been replaced with the XWorkplace one, it is already on a 5 sec start-up delay, then each object has a 1 sec delay in-between...as best as I can tell the WPS boot never actually gets that far though. To rule our WarpCenter I had re-moved it from the "SET AUTOSTART=TASKLIST,FOLDERS,WARPCENTER" statement and tossed it in the XWorkplace start-up...still no go.

On top of all this I played with a number of other settings, anything from VIRTUALADDRESSLIMIT=2560 to the size of my HPFS386 cache...none of it mattered.

Can anyone explain/identify any other methods I could use to actualy peak behind the covers here? So what I'm actually suggesting is running a DEBUG kernel and tying in through another OS/2 machine over the COM port or maybe even NIC...my biggest challenge is that even if this connection was successfull I know absolutely nothing about where to go next with it. The OS/2 Debugging guides are pretty decent, I had spent some time reading through them but they very quickly got into the discussion of OS/2 internals (page allocations, etc, etc) that I simply could not follow.

Doug Bissett

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Re: Dreaded Desktop/blue screen SMP hang....
« Reply #6 on: November 26, 2014, 04:52:57 am »
Quote
Doug: great advice regarding the DELAY.SYS driver...I had previously gone down exactly the route you suggested, "dumbed down" the CONFIG.SYS to literally the bare essentials, still got stuck. This time around I deployed the DELAY with a 30 sec pause however there are other drivers that load beyond this one, so in my case this had no imapct. I have XWorkplace installed here, so my native OS/2 startup folder has been replaced with the XWorkplace one, it is already on a 5 sec start-up delay, then each object has a 1 sec delay in-between...as best as I can tell the WPS boot never actually gets that far though. To rule our WarpCenter I had re-moved it from the "SET AUTOSTART=TASKLIST,FOLDERS,WARPCENTER" statement and tossed it in the XWorkplace start-up...still no go.

That is why I suggest using DELAY.SYS at the front, AND end, of CONFIG.SYS. It is a device driver, so it executes after the BASEDEV statements. If you use it at the front, it should delay starting other device drivers. At the end, it should delay the next step, and allow the device drivers to complete. There is no reason to delay more than a couple of seconds, unless you have something odd that is really in trouble. Of course, after the delay, you get STARTUP.CMD, the system sound, and other automatically started items. Your problem seems to be in that section.

XWorkplace folder should be okay, but I have to question why you would even consider using WarpCenter, which is known to be buggy, when you can use the far superior XCenter (perhaps even two of them).

I doubt if OS/4 will affect this problem.

Quote
VIRTUALADDRESSLIMIT=2560

I have heard that the best value is 1536, but many things can affect that.

Quote
Can anyone explain/identify any other methods I could use to actualy peak behind the covers here?

That is beyond what I have tried to do. I expect that you will need help from one of the real experts, and they don't have much time to work on such things.

One thing to try, is to complete your install (add all of your programs), using a limited number of cores, then open it up to see if it works. I had one system that was having real problems after the initial install. By the time I got it completely installed, it worked every time. (more stuff in CONFIG.SYS seems to help).

Sigurd Fastenrath

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Re: Dreaded Desktop/blue screen SMP hang....
« Reply #7 on: November 26, 2014, 07:33:48 am »
I had one system that was having real problems after the initial install. By the time I got it completely installed, it worked every time. (more stuff in CONFIG.SYS seems to help).

That is what I see when I use the creating image/cloning method with DFSEE - as it is a "full feature installed clone" it works on machines where the initial installation is not possible.