Enabling HPET on Dell R420 Server /w W2K8-SP2

Hello Herman

I'm showing that the Intel C600 chipset used by the R420 has HPET functionality. I do not show HPET mentioned in any of our internal or external documentation. In order for me to find out for sure if HPET is enabled or disabled on the R420 I would need to put in an information request to our engineering group.

If you would like to send me a private message with your phone #, email address, company name, and server's service tag I will put in the information request.

Thanks

I was informed that HPET is enabled by default and there is not an option to disable. HPET is a requirement of windows logo hardware certification for server 2008:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/windows/hardware/hh833776
http://download.microsoft.com/download/6/9/4/694DAD2D-B38D-4BA5-95DE-7F0193233817/windows-hardware-logo-requirements-systems.zip

The R420 is Windows certified: 

http://www.windowsservercatalog.com/item.aspx?idItem=5ca4ca96-a02e-0a3a-b59e-6c68d85e2212&bCatID=1333

HPET should be enabled in the OS by default, but you can run this command to manually enable it from a command line:

bcdedit /set useplatformclock true

You will then need to restart for the change to take effect.

I tried the manual command and it seemed to work, but after rebooting the machine, the High Precision Event Timer still is not listed in System Devices under device manager, and the application that is trying to access the HPET still reports an error

**UPDATE**

We have been able to reproduce this issue in our lab. We are trying to locate the root cause of the problem.

I will update this post again when we find a solution to the problem.

Resolved

The R420 was run through logo testing again, and was verified by other tools. The High Precision Event Timer is functional. This issue appears to be a compatibility problem with 3rd party software.