GKnot 0.27, DivX 5.02, WinXP and P4

[bwalerud]

Would like to share the trouble I had when my old PC running Win2000 broke down and I had to replace motherboard to a new one.
My old system ran Gknot ver 0.27 quite well without any problems whatsoever. A few weeks ago the motherboard broke down together with the diskdrive and it was time to do some upgrading. Got a new P4 2,4 Ghz processer, new diskdrive and decided to go for Win XP.
Got the new system up and everything was OK until I tried to encode a DVD. XP died completely after a while and the reset button was the only way to get the system up. Tried again once and twice with same problems.
Tried DivX 3.11 and things worked again. New try with DivX 5.02 crash again. New release of Divx 5.04 (5.05), tried these and suddenly things worked again.

Conclusion:

DivX below ver 5.04 and Gknot 0.27 does not seem to agree with the combination P4/Win XP.

Have now upgraded to Gknot 0.28 and everything seeem to work fine.

Hope my trouble can save someone from the same experience.

[piscator]

Not true. It worked overhere :-)
Usually such crashes can be contributed to overheating problems. Though it might seem strange that some codecs work and some don't, but it is explainable.

So if you encounter further problems, be sure to monitor your cpu temperature. Ah, and don't overclock!

greetz,
Piscator

[manono]

Hi-

Yeah, as I was reading that I also was thinking some sort of system instability such as overheating. But as you said, that doesn't really explain why one codec works and another doesn't. My guess is that bwalerud's not through with the problem. If it happens again, I might suggest running Prime95 to check for CPU stability, and mem86 to test the memory.

But plenty of people (myself included) run stable overclocked systems, and bwalerud didn't say his was overclocked. But I do agree that he should monitor heat buildup. And I also agree that it has nothing to do with running a P4/WinXP combination, as that's what I have also.

[piscator]

In my experience, when a computer locks up or auto-resets it indicates overheating. bwalerud didn't say anything about overclocking, it was just a hint to turn it off. Personally, I'm not too enthousiastic about overclocking; I don't really see the need for it.

I don't think it's a memory problem. The divx codecs are not that much memory consuming and you would have more arbitrary crashes, not only im the aforementioned combination.

It can be explained why some codecs might crash (or better said: cause overheating) and others not. But of course, it's a bit of guessing. It just depends on the type of instructions it uses. For example, multiplication or floating-point instructions tend to use quite a lot of (electrical) power. The dissipated heat is an exponent of the consumed power (that's why heat dissipation is such a huge problem!). When a codec contains a lot of those instructions, your CPU might just go over the edge with inadequate cooling.

Piscator

[bwalerud]

Thanks for the feedback but I'm pretty sure there is a software issue involved either in DivX below 5.04 or in VirtualDub.
I don't overclock and my first reaction when this happened was a hardware issue.
To test this I ran Prime95 for 12 hours without any problem, while monitoring CPU-temp - no problem.
Then run mem86 for another 8 hours - also no problem.
The reason I took the trouble was to ensure that the new system was completely stable at least from a hardware point-of-view and rule out this potential problem before posting.
Have no wish to argue the point but if someone else have a problem with this combination of OS/processor they should consider upgrading to Gknot 0.28/latest version of DivX.

Cheers