The Best Shareware of the Year 1997 Winter/The Best Shareware of the Year 1997 Winter.iso/wt95-faq.txt

Text File | 1996-10-02 | 23.8 KB | 594 lines

*** The Wintune 95 FAQ ***

Frequently Asked Questions
Wintune 95

wt95-faq.txt
Version 1.10, 10/1/96

Wintune is a registered trademark of CMP Publications, Inc.

***

Wintune 95, the WINDOWS Magazine Test and Tune-Up Kit for Windows
95, is available for download from CompuServe (g winmag) and
America Online (keyword WinMag). You can also find it elsewhere,
but at these officially-supported sites you'll always find the
latest version.

Wintune is also available commercially as part of the quarterly
Windows Magazine CD, which is available at many of the same fine
retail establishments that sell Windows Magazine. You can also
order one disc ($12.95) or a one-year, four-CD subscription
($39.95) by calling 800-294-0198 (or from outside the U.S.
904-445-4662 ext. 817).

From time to time Wintune may also be distributed by mail on
floppy disk. If it is currently available in that format, there
will be an ad in the current issue of WINDOWS Magazine.

***

TECHNICAL SUPPORT:

Due to the freeware distribution of Wintune, we cannot provide
one-on-one technical support via e-mail, telephone, or mail.

A combination FAQ for the WinMag CD and Wintune is available by
Internet e-mail answerback. Send a message to [e-mail]
and the latest version will be sent back automatically. Note that
the system will send only one copy per day to the same e-mail
address.

We currently provide direct technical support only through our
forums on CompuServe (g winmag, message section 13) and America
Online (keyword WinMag, then choose Message Exchange, then look
in the Wintune folder). (To sign up, call CompuServe at
800-848-8199, or America Online at 800-827-6364.)

Please read through this FAQ completely and browse messages
already posted *before* posting a request for technical support.

If Wintune won't run, it might be conflicting with some other
software, like your video board driver. To test that, reboot in
Safe Mode, and see if you can run Wintune. To get to Safe Mode,
restart your system and press F8 when you see the "Starting
Windows 95" message. To get out of Safe Mode, restart.

If Wintune still won't run, please describe the problem in
detail, including the exact text of any error message, and what
shows in the title bar of the error dialog, if any.

If you have questions about Wintune's tips or performance
ratings, please post a copy of the All Details report. Switch to
Wintune's Database tab and make sure that only the relevant test
or tests are checked. Then switch to the Reports tab, select All
Details, and select Copy (or press Ctrl-C). Now you can simply
paste the report into a Compuserve or America Online forum
message. Please look through the report and note any
discrepancies, for example an improperly identified CPU or video
board.

If you just performed the test and haven't closed Wintune, its
tips will be included in the All Details report. Due to a bug
(which will be fixed in the next release), the tips are missing
from the All Details report of saved results, so when posting
saved results please add a list whatever tips you received.

If you're asking about disk problems, please let us know what the
brand and model of the hard drive; brand, model, and bus type of
the IDE, EIDE, or SCSI adapter; what third-party disk drivers or
cache you're using, if any.

***

If you need help setting up Wintune, search for the word SETUP.

If you have encountered an error message or Wintune isn't working
properly, search for the word ERROR.

If you've run Wintune and you have a performance-related
question, search for the word PERFORMANCE.

If you are looking for general advice, search for the word
GENERAL.

***

DOWNLOADING AND SETUP

SETUP: System Requirements

Wintune 95 requires Windows 95, or Windows NT version 3.51 or
later. It needs about 5MB of free disk space during installation,
but afterwards takes up only about 2MB.

If you are using Windows 3.x, you can run Wintune 95's
predecessor, Wintune 2.0. That utility is no longer being
updated, but the final release and is still available as Wt20.zip
in our software libraries. Download Wt20-faq.Txt for more
information.

SETUP: Proper Wintune Downloading / Corrupt Downloads

Wintune is available online only in a single Zip file archive.
The name of that archive is Wt95v10.zip (or Wt95v10, if you have
Explorer's options set to hide extensions) and the file size is
1,319,180 bytes. If you have a different file size, or get an
error message (like "error in Zip," "invalid archive," "invalid
archive directory," or "no files found") when you try to unzip
the file, then you probably have a bad download, and will need to
retrieve the .zip file again. (If you downloaded the file from
America Online, see "Setup: AOL Users" below.)

SETUP: Download Time

It should take around 15 minutes to download Wt95v10.zip at 14.4
kbps, and about half that time at 28.8 kbps. If it takes you 90
minutes, you're actually connected at only 2400 bps. Contact your
online service or Internet access provider for assistance in
getting up to speed.

SETUP: Installing Wintune

Wt95v10.zip is a Zip file archive. (An archive is a file that
contains other files, usually compressed.) To install it, you'll
need to download an unzipping utility, like PKzip or WinZip.

Here are step-by-step instructions for installing Wintune from
Wt95v10.zip. (If you have Explorer set to hide extensions, the
archive name will be just Wt95v10.) If you're using WinZip, see
the instructions below.

1. Create a working directory, like C:\Wtinst. (Select the C:\
drive icon in Explorer, select New/Folder from the File menu,
type wtinst, and press Enter.) If you've already downloaded
Wt95v10.zip, move it to C:\Wtinst. (If you're using America
Online, this step may have been performed automatically--see
SETUP: AOL Users below.)

2. Next, extract the files contained in Wt95v10.zip to the
working directory. If you use PKunzip, you'd use the DOS
commands:

cd \wtinst
pkunzip wt95v10

3. Go back to Explorer, open C:\Wtinst, and double-click on
Setup.exe to launch Wintune 95 Setup. (If you have Explorer set
to hide extensions, the file name will be just Setup.)

4. Once you're satisfied that Wintune is running properly, you
can recover about 2.8MB of disk space by deleting C:\Wtinst. (You
might want to copy Wt95v10.zip to a floppy first.)

SETUP: Installing with WinZip

WinZip greatly simplifies the installation process.

1. Start WinZip, then open the Wt95v10.zip archive by using the
Open button or by dragging the Wt95v10.zip icon out of Explorer
and dropping it on WinZip. (If you have Explorer set to hide
extensions, the archive name will be just Wt95v10.)

2. Click the Install button to run the Wintune Setup utility. By
default Wintune is placed in the Program Files directory, but you
can put it anywhere you like.

3. Once you're satisfied that Wintune is running properly, you
can recover about 1.3MB of disk space by deleting Wt95v10.zip or
moving it to a floppy.

SETUP (AND DOWNLOADS): AOL Users

If you downloaded Wt95v10.zip from America Online (AOL), the
extraction may have already been done for you. AOL has an option
(Members/Set Preferences/Download/Automatically decompress files
at sign-off) that causes it to automatically extract files from
any .zip archives you download. In that case, you will find the
contents of Wt95v10.zip in the directory
C:\Aol25\Download\Wt95v10. Open that directory in Explorer and
double-click on Setup.exe to launch the Wintune 95 Setup utility.
(If you have Explorer set to hide extensions, the file name will
be just Setup.)

By default Wintune is placed in the Program Files directory but
you can put it anywhere you like. Once you're satisfied that
Wintune is running properly, you can recover about 2.8MB of disk
space by deleting C:\Aol25\Download\Wt95v10.

If you download Wt95v10.zip to a floppy disk, TURN OFF the
automatic decompression option first. Otherwise AOL will attempt
to extract the files onto the floppy and fail due to insufficient
disk space.

Sometimes AOL appears to download Wt95v10.zip but the file
doesn't show up in the download directory afterwards, so you have
to start all over again. Our current theory is that this is the
result of the AOL software not recognizing a corrupted or
incomplete download. If you uncheck "Delete ZIP and ARC files
after decompression" you should be able to resume the download
instead of having to start from scratch.

If you're upset by download problems, please complain to AOL
support. Unfortunately there's nothing we at WinMag can do about
these problems, and feedback from unhappy customers is the best
way to persuade AOL to improve matters.

To read AOL's FAQs on download problems:

Go to keyword Help.
Click the "Members Online Support" icon.
Click the "Technical Help" icon.
Click the "Download Help" button.

To get credit for incomplete AOL downloads:

Go to keyword Credit.
Double-click the "Getting Credit for Incomplete Downloads" folder
and fill out the form.

SETUP (DOWNLOADS): Compuserve users

How you download depends on what software you're using to access
Compuserve.

If you're using WinCIM, see the online help for "Libraries."
Wintune is in library 4 of the Windows Magazine forum. Choose Go
from the Services menu, type "winmag," and click OK. Then choose
Browse from the Library menu, and double-click on "Wintune &
WinMag CD." Select "Wintune 95 Version 1.0," click Retrieve, and
click OK to start downloading.

If you're using terminal emulation, G WINMAG, then from the main
forum menu:

choose LIBRARIES
choose library 4
choose DOWNLOAD

At the "File name:" prompt type "wt95v10.zip" and press Enter.

What you do next varies depending on what software you're using
and what file-transfer protocol you've selected.

SETUP (DOWNLOADS): Internet users

If you're downloading from the Internet, be sure your ftp
software is set for binary transfer. If you accidentally ftp in
ASCII mode (a common mistake when using command-line ftp), you
won't be able to unzip the file.

SETUP: Wintune 2.0 Setup stops before it reaches 100%

As discussed in readme.txt, this is a minor bug in InstallShield,
the program we used to create Wintune 95 Setup. The assumes it's
going to have to install every DLL required by Wintune 95. If you
happen to have some of the DLLs already installed (from either
Wintune or some other Visual C++ application), the bar never gets
up to 100%. That doesn't mean , but the program has still been
installed correctly.

SETUP: Installing the optional Word and Excel macros

For instructions on using Wintune's Apps Analyzer, switch to the
Details tab, right-click on the Apps icon, and choose Tell Me
More. Be sure to install only macro files into the \Apps
subdirectory. If you put the text file included with the optional
Word and Excel macros (Wt95app1.zip) in the \Apps directory,
Wintune may hang. These macros may also have problems if you have
Word or Excel set to run other macros at startup.

Note that these macros are not the same as the ones used to test
performance for the magazine's reviews, so you can't compare the
results.

***

ERROR MESSAGES AND PROBLEMS

ERROR: Nothing happens when you click the Analyze Now button

Usually this is the result of installing over a beta version. To
remove the beta, use the Add/Remove Programs control panel to
remove Wintune 95. When that's complete, manually delete the
"c:\Program Files\Wintune 95" directory, then reinstall.

ERROR: "Setup Initialization Error: Setup requires _SETUP.DLL and
_ISRES.DLL (located in _SETUP.LIB) in order to operate properly.
Please ensure these files are located with SETUP.EXE."

You'll get this message if you double-click on setup.exe in
WinZip. Click the Install button instead, or extract the archive
and double-click on Setup.exe in Windows Explorer.

ERROR: "C:\Windows\System\Mfc30.dll was not found"

This DLL is not loaded if you do choose the minimum option in
Windows 95 setup. It's loaded automatically when you install
certain Windows 95 components, like WordPad (Add/Remove Programs,
click the Windows Setup tab, select Accessories, click Details,
check WordPad, and click OK). Alternatively, you can download
Wt95nt.zip from our software library on America Online or
Compuserve.

***

GENERAL QUESTIONS

Why does my notebook PC show an ISA bus type?
Why does my BIOS info have strange characters in it?
Why is my BIOS info wrong?
Why don't I see the "other programs" running?

These questions are answered in Wintune's online help. Switch to
the Details tab, right-click the SYSTEM icon, and select Show Me
More.

***

PERFORMANCE ISSUES

PERFORMANCE (GENERAL): Test scores lower than expected

The most common reason for low test scores is other software
interfering with Wintune's operation. You should disable all
memory-resident software, including power management, antivirus
utilities, undelete trackers, uninstallers, screen savers, and
fax software, and have no other applications running when you
start Wintune. Third-party memory managers, disk caches, and
alternate Windows desktops can also interfere with Wintune's
operation. Conflicting software may be loaded in CONFIG.SYS,
AUTOEXEC.BAT, the load= and run= lines in WIN.INI, or the Start
menu's StartUp folder.

Also check the CPU Load value, which should be lower than 10% if
no other software is running.  See Wintune's online help entry
for CPU Load for more info (right-click on CPU Load and select
Tell Me More).

If you've upgraded a 486 motherboard with a Pentium Overdrive
chip, you'll probably get tips about checking RAM wait states. In
most cases there won't be a problem with wait states--the tip
just appears because the 486-style motherboard's 32-bit memory
subsystem doesn't perform at the level of its 64-bit counterpart
in motherboards designed for Pentiums.

PERFORMANCE (GENERAL): Test Scores and/or Tips Vary

If you run Wintune several times, you may notice a variation of
plus or minus 10% on the individual test results. This is normal,
so don't worry about it.

These minor variations mean that if your system's performance is
right around the point where Wintune displays a particular tip,
that tip may appear only intermittently. For example, if your
video board is slower than average but not a real dog, the
"Upgrade your video board" tip might appear the first time you
run Wintune, disappear the next, and come back the third time.

It's common to see substantial variations if you run Wintune
twice without restarting Windows. Each time you run Wintune,
restart Windows before running it again.

Wildly fluctuating or seemingly random results are usually caused
by memory-resident software interfering with Wintune's operation.

PERFORMANCE (CPU):

- Why isn't the CPU type right?
- Why isn't the clock rate right?
- Why does Dhrystone MIPS vary so much?
- If the CPU load is really 100%, wouldn't the system be locked
up?
- How can a program cause a high CPU load when its just sitting
on the task bar?

These questions are answered in Wintune's online help. Switch to
the Details tab, right-click the CPU icon, and select Show Me
More.


PERFORMANCE (CPU/FPU): Wintune 95 shows higher MIPS and MFLOPS
than Wintune 2.0

Wintune's MIPS and MFLOPs ratings reflect not just CPU/FPU speed
but also the efficiency of the operating system and the different
compilers that were used to create the code. Thus you can't
compare Wintune 95's results with those you get with Wintune 2.0.
(The same is true for any other high-level benchmark, e.g.
Winstone 95 and Winstone 96, or SPEC92 and SPEC95.)

PERFORMANCE (CPU): Pentium Pro

Intel's Pentium Pro is optimized for 32-bit code. Thus the 32-bit
CPU benchmarks in Wintune 95 don't accurately reflect real-world
performance when running 16-bit applications (e.g. Windows 3.1)
or software that uses a mix of 16-bit and 32-bit code (e.g.
Windows 95). On average, a regular Pentium will outperform a
Pentium Pro of the same clock speed when running Windows 3.1 or
95, but the Pentium Pro will pull ahead when running Windows NT.

PERFORMANCE (CPU): Cyrix 6x86

The Cyrix 6x86 is optimized for 16-bit code. Thus the 32-bit CPU
benchmarks in Wintune 95 don't accurately reflect its superior
performance compared with Pentium CPUs when running 16-bit
applications (e.g. Windows 3.1), or software that uses a mix of
16-bit and 32-bit code (e.g. Windows 95).

Comparison of the 6x86 and Pentium CPUs is further complicated by
Cyrix's use of "P ratings" instead of actual clock speeds. For
example, the 6x86 P200 actually runs at 150MHz. The "200"
reflects Cyrix's claim that the chip performs simliarly to a
200MHz Pentium--which in fact it does, when running 16-bit code.

PERFORMANCE (CPU): Tuning the 120MHz AMD 486

There have been quite a few questions posted online about our
report on the 120MHz AMD 486 chip in the Windows Magazine June
special issue. Here's some information that may help you to
resolve any problems you're having.

We haven't received any AMD systems/motherboards with this
problem at our labs, so we were working from information off
postings from users in our AOL and Compuserve forums. Their
reports were that the AMD chip was performing very poorly
compared to even lower-speed Intel chips, but worked much better
when the motherboard was jumpered for the P24D.

Before you spend a lot of time on this, be sure you have the
problem in the first place. The AMD 120 that's in the database
gets a respectable 136 MIPS; if your MIPS are less than 80 then
you *may* have the problem. (It could be due to other problems as
well.) You'll need to check the documentation on your motherboard
to see if there's a P24D setting; some motherboards have the
jumper info silk-screened right onto the board.

We do not know the details on jumpering these motherboards, and
there may be many different brands affected so the instructions
for one system may not work in all cases. AMD tech support
(www.amd.com/html/support/support.hmtl or 800-222-9323) may be
able to help. In September 1996, one reader reported that his
motherboard had a special jumper setting just for the AMD chip,
but since it wasn't documented in the manual he had to call his
motherboard supplier to get the info.

PERFORMANCE (FPU): Wintune's MFLOPS don't match another
benchmark's MFLOPS

MFLOPS (millions of floating-point operations per second) is a
vague term. Different benchmarks' MFLOPS ratings vary widely
depending on what mix of floating-point instructions each uses.

Wintune's Whetstone MFLOPS indicates how many million floating
point operations per second the computer performs while running
the industry-standard Whetstone benchmark, originally written
20-some years ago in Algol, later ported to C. Variations between
one Whetstone benchmark and another on a given computer reflect
the efficiency of the compiler used to turn the standard
Whetstone source code into an executable.

The version of Whetstone used in Wintune was slightly modified by
Martin Heller to adapt it to multiprocessing environments. On a
single-CPU system it comes within 1% of the standard C Whetstone
results, but on a dual-CPU system running Windows NT it comes in
about 60% faster.

PERFORMANCE (DISK):

- Why does the cached speed vary between tests?
- Why does the uncached speed vary between tests?
- Why is cached speed slower than uncached speed?
- How can disk free space be more than total space?

These questions are answered in Wintune's online help. Switch to
the Details tab, right-click the DISK icon, and select Show Me
More.


PERFORMANCE (DISK): Slow Hard Disk Performance

Many factors affect disk performance, including the drive itself,
the adapter, which bus the adapter uses, CPU speed, RAM speed,
CMOS settings, size and configuration of the disk cache, and disk
compression, if any.

A number of software factors can also affect disk performance,
including fragmentation on your hard disk, and use of a
compression program such as DoubleSpace, DriveSpace, or Stacker.
See Disk Performance Improvement Tips in the main Wintune help
file for some suggestions.

PERFORMANCE (DISK): SCSI Hard Disk Performance

We got this e-mail from a user, and pass it along in case the tip
may be useful to others:

"I was getting uncached disk scores ~.5MB/s on my Fujitsu 1GB
SCSI-2 drive connected to an Adaptec 2940 PCI adapter. I was
pretty disappointed in the results, especially since the EIDE
drive was hovering around 2MB/s uncached (both were ~13MB/s
cached). I installed Adaptec EZ-SCSI 4.0 last week and ran their
SCSI Explorer. It found that Read Caching for the drive was on,
but Write Caching was *off*. I set it to on, rebooted and reran
Wintune. Now my uncached disk scores on the SCSI are ~2.5MB/s,
*amazing* improvement. The only change was to set Write Caching
to on."

Note that not all SCSI drives have such an option. Also, Wintune
95's disk test uses relatively small files, and they may not be
large enough to trigger the high-speed burst mode many high-end
SCSI drives offer. SCSI disk performance with small files is also
affected by the higher overhead (i.e. longer delays) of the SCSI
command set compared with ESDI's. In one case we got an uncached
speed of 1.4 MB/s for a Fast-Wide 7400RPM drive, but our
stopwatch found that when reading or writing large files we were
actually getting around 5 MB/s. We hope to address these issues
in a future release.

PERFORMANCE (DISK): Cached speed and uncached speed are the same

To test uncached disk performance, Wintune uses a Windows 95
"don't cache this" flag on the test files. Some disk drivers
ignore this flag, in which case the uncached speed actually
reflects cached performance.

To work around this, you can temporarily disable Windows 95's
disk cache by adding the following entry to the [vcache] section
of \Windows\system.ini:

[vcache]
MaxFileCache=0

Reboot your PC, run Wintune's disk test, and the uncached results
should be correct. Then delete the MaxFileCache entry and reboot
to turn disk caching back on.

PERFORMANCE (RAM):

- Why isn't all my RAM showing up?
- Why is Windows RAM less than Installed RAM?
- Why do I have so little Free RAM?
- Why are some Pentiums slower than a 486 in the RAM Write test?

These questions are answered in Wintune's online help. Switch to
the Details tab, right-click the MEMORY icon, and select Show Me
More.


PERFORMANCE (RAM): Slow memory

RAM speed is affected by CPU, L2 (secondary) cache design, amount
of L2 cache, and SIMM speed. The memory improvement tips in
Wintune's online help can help you make sure that your PC's CMOS
setup is configured for best RAM performance. Since RAM speed is
determined by the motherboard design, there's no hardware upgrade
path like there is for CPU, disk, and video. If you want better
RAM performance, you'll need to replace the motherboard or buy a
new PC.

PERFORMANCE (RAM): Slow memory after upgrading RAM

If RAM performance drops after an upgrade, check the CMOS
settings. Some systems require you to set the region of main
memory covered by the L2 (secondary) cache manually.

Some systems slow down when you upgrade past 8MB of RAM. Some
users have reported fixing the problem by upgrading their L2
(secondary) memory cache, e.g. from 128K to 256K. Contact the
vendor's technical support for more information.

PERFORMANCE (RAM): Wintune shows two RAM values

In WIntune 95 1.0, if the amount of RAM recorded in Windows 95's
Registry doesn't match the amount detected by Wintune, the
Registry value appears in parentheses after the detected value,
for example "8 (16)" or "16 (31.5)." This will be removed in
later releases.

***

Wintune is a registered trademark of CMP Publications, Inc.

*****************************************************************