You are the desktop administrator for your company. All employees in the graphics department use identical dual-processor Windows XP Professional computers. The employees in the graphics department use only 32-bit Windows applications. Veronica is a user in the graphics department. Veronica reports poor system performance when she runs a certain custom application. The application was designed for multiprocessor use with Windows 2000. Veronica reports that the performance problems have only recently begun.
You run Task Manager on Veronica’s computer. You view the performance statistics shown in the exhibit.
You need to improve application performance on Veronica’s computer.
What should you do?
A.
Create a shortcut for the application that includes the Start /separate command in the command line.
B.
Configure the application to run by using Windows 2000 compatibility mode.
C.
Upgrade the system BIOS on Veronica’s computer to support Automatic Programmable Interrupt Controller (APIC) symmetric multiprocessing.
D.
Configure the processor affinity option on Veronica’s computer so that all application processes use both processors.
Explanation:
The Windows task manager’s shows that Windows has detected both CPUs. However, while the first CPU is under heavily load the second CPU is almost idle. We change the processor affinity configuration sot that both processors will be utilized.
Incorrect Answers
A: The /separate switch is used to start 16-bit programs in a separate memory space. This method is not used to configure use of multiple CPUs.
B: Windows 2000 compatibility mode is mostly used to configure older games to run in Windows XP. It is not useful to configure use of the 2nd CPU.
C: The first exhibit shows that both CPUs have been detected already.
Press, Redmond, 2002, Chapter 10, Lesson 3