Programm Configuration
Autostart:
Enable this checkbox to run the application automatically at Windows start.
Especially to enable autoreport feature even in autostart mode you may add command
line parameters (edit field)
Autostart parameter: See Report/Auto report for a list of parameter values.
Start minimized (to system tray): If this checkbox is enabled the application
will be minimized to system tray after it has been started. You may combine
this setting with the autostart setting.
Force system overview test: Usually no action is performed after the
program has started. The program is loaded quickly and initialized error-free.
You can however force the system overview test to be run automatically at program
start by enabling this option.
Close menu sections automatically: A previously opened section of the
vertical left menu bar is usually closed, when another section is opened. You
can force them to stay open here.
Various GUI options
Force direct (S)ATA/IDE port access: There are two ways to access (S)ATA drives under Windows: either through direct port access or by using a documented interface. In rare cases direct access can cause the system to hang.
Analyse
each processor core separately: Examining each processor core slightly increases
the risk of instabilities, while most informations about a processor model is
shared among its cores.
PCI bus count (0=autodetect): On certain machines the PCI bus number
inquiry causes the system to hang or reboot.
Should this happen then preset the number of PCI buses that are installed in
your system. In most cases todays machines are equipped with more than one PCI
bus due to numerous PCI-to-PCI bridges. In almost all cases however, the program
will be able to autodetect the number of PCI buses.
Enable
SMBus controller: This feature allows attempting to enable an SMBus controller
that is suspected to be installed in the system but disabled (and hidden) by
the vendor. Do it at your own risk! On all tested systems enabling the device
didn´t affect the system stability in any way. After rebooting the system
the device will be disabled again. An enabled SMBus controller is required for
the Serial Presence Detect (SDRAM) analysis and sometimes for the sensor test
as well.
Serial Presence Detect
- preset number of modules: If a program error occurs while performing the
SPD test you may enter the number of DRAM modules that are actually present
in your system here to avoid access on banks that are not populated.
Show status messages: Each status message is shown in a popup window.
This is for debugging tests only.
Save status messages to logfile (STATUSMSG.CSV): Each status message
will be written into a data file. This is for debugging tests only.
CPU usage chart - show fix range: Only a limited amount of data points
are visualized in the chart, which would show the chart line increasingly compressed
otherwise.
CPU usage chart - empty table after ... data points: In order to keep
the drawing process of the chart short, the number of values should be reasonably
low (default=50).
Internet Benchmark- Use Small File: Enable this option, if your internet
connection is very slow (modem speed).
Internet Benchmark: User defined URL: Enable this option, if you like
the internet connection benchmark to be based on HTTP data transfers from/to
a specific URL.
No detailed information about optical drives: Analyzing modern optical drives
can cause timeouts. In such cases enable this option.
1KB =1000 B: Up to 1996, 1KB was defined as 1024 Bytes. Nowadays KB, MB,
GB etc. are interpretated as decimal prefixes. Thus: 1 KB = 1000 Bytes. The
binary units have been renamed to KiB, MiB etc.
Detect Processor Platform ID and MCU via MSR
Log
sensor data: Enable this checkbox
to save sensor data permanently to the database. As long as it is unchecked
the data will be erased at program start..
Sensor test via LPC: Dr. Hardware sometimes has to access the mainboards
super I/O chip in order to detect the sensor chip. Uncheck this option if you
encounter problems during the sensor test (especially on legacy systems that
don´t come with super I/O chips).
Harddisk/GPU/DIMM monitoring: Besides the onboard sensor temperatures,
often the temperatures of harddisks, video adapter GPUs and FB-DIMMS can be
monitored. Especially if you want to get current temperatures of your system
while the application is minimized to the system tray you should enable this
setting.
CPU thermal sensor test: Digital thermometer on current CPUs is accessed
via low level register readings on ring0 level. Uncheck this option if you encounter
GPFs during processor analysis.
Access to RAPL MSRs according to subsequent configuration: via RAPL (Running
Average Power Limit) the energy consumption can be determined on various Intel
processors. The analysis is based on reading out Machine specific registers,
which could cause general protection faults as far as the related MSR is missing
on the particular processor. If you know, which RAPL related registers your
processor model supports, you can configure the test below.
Access to MSR_PKG_ENERGY_STATUS: if RAPL is supported, at least this
register is unconditionally supported (Processor Package)
Access to MSR_PP0_ENERGY_STATUS: Support model specific (single core)
Access to MSR_PP1_ENERGY_STATUS: Support model specific (often internal
graphics device, thus mostly missing on server processors)
Access to MSR_DRAM_ENERGY_STATUS: Support model specific (Memory, often
on server and later Core processor models supported)
Access to MSR_PLATFORM_ENERGY_STATUS: Support model specific (SoC unit)
Access to MSR_PKG_POWER_INFO: Support model specific (Design, minimal
und maximum processor package consumption)
Important
notice:
Sensor data are often mainboard specific. The monitor of Dr. Hardware is a raw
tool, to read values, according to datasheets, as far as available. It is usually
less reliable than the vendor´s thermal monitor tools for a specific mainboard,
so that you should always install these and rely on their output.
Temperature
output in system tray (Registered version only!)
Enable one of the radio buttons, to get current data from temperature sensors
whenever the program is minimized to the system tray.
1. never: (default setting, no data output)
2. at time intervalls: (Determine the refresh intervall in seconds by entering
a value from 10 to x. A value of 60 means that the data are refreshed once per
minute)
3. at increasing temperatures: data are shown
- as soon as a current value is higher than the maximum value so far. Let´s
take a series of example values: 30° - 33° - 31° - 32° - 34°
- so the first, second and fifth value will be shown. Although the fourth value
is above the third, it is below the maximum value monitored earlier.
- as soon as a user defined limit is exceeded.
4. at exceeding userdefined limits
Refresh
interval in seconds (Minimum: 10): Timespan between two measurements.
Due to the test´s overhead, an interval of two to five minutes is mostly
recommended.
Actions on temps exceeding
limits
Acoustic message: System speaker message (not sound card message)
Shutdown computer: Use this option with care. As soon as one of the userdefined
limits is exceeded the system will be shut down. Although it will be tried to
do this in a welldefined succession of first closing any open files and applications
and then shut the system down it might result in data loss. Use it at your own
risk and use high critical values as limits that should never be monitored.
And even don´t rely on the capability of shutting down the system succesfully
from within an application! Using of tools provided by your board vendor is
recommended.
Limits: Define limit values that you think are critical to the system
health and stability.
Use limits defined above: Decides, whether the previously defined limit
values are considered during the analysis.
Unit Fahrenheit instead of Celsius
Sensor chip configuration:
Allows to define, whether and how a certain sensor chip is accessed. First colum:
ISA/LPC access, second column: SMBus access. Example: <yes,no> would force
the program to check for the given chip on ISA, but not on the SMBus. Note:
Please do not change any of these settings unless you are quite sure what you
do and never delete a line from the grid!