Intel Dual Core Processors Advance System Clock When Playing Sounds

This is an amazing and troubling problem. It seems to relate to
Windows XP and dual core processors. Simply put, playing a sound
advances the system clock. I've seen extremes of about 6 to 10
seconds per minute. I suspect the problem is XP/Intel/MS related.

Our PC is a double dual core Intel Xeon: a Dell Precision 690 (which
has 2 Dempsey processors, Xeon 5050 series). We are running XP Pro OS
've also seen this on another offbrand PC with a Core 2 processor.
This does not happen on non-dual core processor machines. Executing a
"playsound" command (which is in the winmm.dll) instead of beep has
the same effect (I suspect Beep probably executes a playsound
command).

One way I demonstrate this is with a very simple program in Visual
Basic 6. I have a timer that executes a Beep statement every 20
milliseconds. That's all.

It can also be demonstrated manually by repetitively playing a sound
from the Windows Sounds dialog.

If anyone would like to try to replicate this on your dual core system
I would be very interested in your results. I can be contacted at
curt.goodhart@xxxxxxxxx

Thank you,

Curt

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