HP Z840 Clean Install

[SDH]

May I add..... HP has for years had "Replicated Setup" built into its workstation BIOS.  One can capture all the BIOS settings from within BIOS onto a thumb drive, and that is as a small text file.  That can then be sent via email to another owner who can then use the same BIOS feature to upload those settings into their workstation.

I'd ideally zip the CPQSETUP.txt file that gets created before I attached it to an email to ensure that it remained unmodified by the sending process.  This makes setting up a BIOS clone easy.

You can capture yours and receive theirs.... and you can print them both out to see where things differ if you want.  They all have the same name so archive them in carefully identified folders.  It is best to use a relatively small thumb drive that has been FAT or FAT32 formatted, and to start with that inserted before a cold boot.  This process will use BIOS as its primative operating system.

[CinéMatica]

Hi Dgroves,

I didn't have a lot of time the last days to keep my busy with the system.

I just changed some settings in BIOS that have been e-mailed me by the vendor. Some of his setting were correct on my system, and others I had to change.

This settings I had to watch for were these:
Enhanced Halt State (C1E) must Enabled.
Turbo Mode must be Enabled.
QPI Snoop Mode must be set to Home Snoop. This was wrong on my system.
Hyper-Trading is Enabled.

Settings in Windows that I mentioned before.

Then I removed the Host Bus Adapter for my Avid Nitris DX out of PCIe slot 5 (set to Gen 2 via a jumper on the motherboard).
Next I took out the Sonnet Allegro FW800 FireWire board. This was sitting in PCIe slot 7.
I also disconnected the TP-LINK TL-SG108 switch that is connected to an Avid Artist Mix, Transport and Color panel.
As last I detached the 4 HDD's out of the lower bay and the second SSD out of the front bay of the Z840.

My first reaction after powering up the system again with only all of the above removed was: Wow! This beast rocks!
I never experienced this speed in Windows and two other software applications.
Opening context menus in Avid Media Composer and Sorenson Squeeze is a breeze. I couldn't do this before. It all seems to work like it should. And very fast without hitches!

Now I am going to add the second SSD again and boot. See what this gives. Then I will add the 4 HDD's in RAID5 again and boot. The next steps will be the PCIe cards on so like you told me before.

Hopefully I can figure out what this slowness from the last weeks was occurring.

After I hopefully discovered the problem I will do a clean install of the system anyway. I’ll set the BIOS back to factory default and from there on I’ll make the changes that where giving me by my dealer.

I'll report back when I have done these tests.

Thanks again for your great help and time.

Friendly greetings and good weekend!

[CinéMatica]

Hello BambiBoomZ,

Yes, I also found it very strange to read that Windows 10 64-bit could handle 255 threads.

My dealer mailed me some settings for the BIOS that I had to set right.

They build a system like mine minus the second SSD and 4 HDD's. The graphics card was also another model of NVIDIA (K6000 instead of P4000).

One them was wrong on my machine. QPI Snoop Mode had to be Home Snoop.

After removing the added hardware and extra HDD's and SSD the system rolled like a super fast train.

So now it's trying to find the part that caused this slowness.

I'll report back when I know more.

Thank you very much for your help and time.

friendly greetings and have a nice weekend!

[CinéMatica]

Hello SDH,

Thank you very much for your suggestion. I already have been sent some changes I had to make in the BIOS. But I definitely ask at my dealer what you are suggesting. I even didn't know this was possible.

Thanks again for your help and time.

Friendly greetings and have a nice weekend!

[DGroves]

this is why i said to start with a default bios setting for the system and remove all cards/drives and if still slow reinstall windows

your making progress! i suspect the issue will be a conflict between 2 of the video/audio boards ask your reseller which slot they placed each board in and follow that config

[CinéMatica]

Hello everyone,

Finally I think I discovered the real problem that was slowing down my HP Z840.

Like suggested, I took out all hardware that I had installed myself. I also disconnected the second SSD, and the four HDD’s that are inside the system and disconnected the ethernet switch.

I didn’t do a clean install yet because I wanted to try to get the cause on the current install.

After rebooting the system with only the SSD with the OS and a few Apps installed on it turned out that this was working normal. Everything was fast and snappy. I also could open the context menus in Sorenson Squeeze and Avid Media Composer without any problems. This wasn’t possible before.

Then I connected the second SSD again. This drive is still empty, so it didn’t cause any further problems to the system. Again, everything like it should be.

As third, I connected the four HDD’s (RAID5) again that are sitting in lower bays of the Z840. It’s going to be boring, but everything was still superfast and snappy. Wow!

The sweat started breaking out on me because this was meaning that Host Bus Adapter from my Avid Nitris DX or the Sonnet Allegro FW800 FireWire card was causing the slowness. Keep in mind that I bought this refurbished Z840 so that I still could use this Avid Nitris DX hardware accelerator and A/V connection box.

The HBA of the Nitris DX was added again in the prescribed PCIe slot. This is slot 5, that has been switched from generation 3 to 2 via a jumper on the motherboard. Restarted, and everything worked fine, first without the cable plugged in from the Nitris, and then also with the breakout box connected. Avid Media Composer recognized the Nitris. As test I runned an HD-SDI cable from the Nitris into a Blackmagic Design Ultrascope card inside my older Mac Pro 4.1. The Nitris can generate several test patterns and these where immediately to see and to measure on the scopes of the Blackmagic card. So, Nitris DX working like charm and without any problems!

Lastly I putted back the Sonnet FireWire card in slot 7. Unbelievable, but everything was still fast and fully working like such a system has to work.

How in heaven’s sake can this be possible? What could then be the issue that is breaking my nerves for the past weeks? Well, hold on because here it comes!

After plugging back in my TP-LINK switch the system slowed down again and became unworkable. The menus didn’t open anymore like before. One mouse click became two clicks again, and so on.

So, my first thought was that this switch wasn’t compatible with Windows 10 Pro. If I pulled out the ethernet cable everything started working fine again. This switch is connected to my system so that I can use my three Avid Artist panels. The Avid Artist Mix, transport and Color panel can only be connected via an ethernet cable. As even most advanced workstations only have 2 ethernet ports it is suggested to use a switch if you use more than two panels. These panels communicate via the EuControl protocol with the system and dedicated software applications. All my three panels have another IP addresses to avoid problems between them. The panels were all recognized by the EuControl software and worked, with delay, in Avid Pro Tools 11.3.2 and Avid Media Composer | Ultimate 2019.12. To see if the switch was the problem I quitted the EuCon software and suddenly everything got faster again. So, there the real devil came out of his box. It’s the EuControl software that is causing all this delay and slowness! When I restart EuCon it is not working. When I disable it, everything works like the best. I deleted the EuCon application (version 3.3.2) and installed a newer version (3.4) that was certified by Avid in their latest readme file for Media Composer 2019.12. This wasn’t working either. Even with the switch disconnected to the system it was already slowing down everything again. On the Avid Artist support page I even find more recent versions of this software (19.12.1), but I don’t know if this also can be used with the smaller panels that I have. I believe that this for the bigger S6 mixing consoles from Avid. So, now I first have to ask Avid what’s going on with this, and probably make a support case. They are still going to say that Windows 10 Pro 1909 isn’t approved yet, the processors in my system are not certified by them, and my amount of memory isn’t tested.

Could this issue be the one that is mentioned in the HP-document from early October 2014?

Any ideas how such a thing can happen? A small application that slows down a whole system?

Without doing a clean install so far, I now first going to install all the rest my software to see what happens how the system performs. When I have done that I will wipe everything clean and a fresh install of the system. I guess that is the best thing I can do. Any suggestions are still welcome!

Thank you all very much for you help, thoughts and precious time to help me figure out what was going on with my as good as new HP Z840!

Greetings!

[CinéMatica]

In a revision of the Avid readme file for Avid Media Composer 2019.12, Windows 10 Pro 1909 is now supported since january 13, 2020.