VCool 2.0 Alpha Testing


Alpha 6

Fixed a bug in the Nforce 2 SMBus routine

fixed "silent" crash

Nforce 2 cool bit (?) added.
Not sure if this is really the cool bit as it is influenced by other bits as well and the power saving seems to be less than on other systems. You probably have to turn off the halt detect bit to achieve cooling with this bit.

Switched to VC7


Alpha 4

Fixed a bug in the detection routine for Asus sensor chips.

fixed sensor detection loop (100% util)

Added Nforce detection and smbus (experimental)

fixed detection of some via chipsets

 


If you want to help the development of VCool you can download the latest alpha version from this section.
Keep in mind that this is an alpha version which means that it is by no means feature complete or intended for normal use. The sole purpose of alpha versions is to test certain stuff on various systems as I need to get feedback for different hardware.

The current version includes a Dump Data feature that attempts to save various information about your hardware into a file (vcool_dump.log). Please return that file along with the specs of your system and any additonal info you may have (e.g. from MBM).

Depending on your board you might be able to see and change the status of the halt detect and the cool bit.

In the new version each data you can retrieve from the system is associated with a channel. The current version has a feature called channel setup that should give you a list of the autodetected channels on your system. You'll be presented with a window that should look like this one:

Select Channel ScreenshotYou can select a channel by clicking on it in the list. This will fill in the edit boxes with the selected channel data. You can name the channel and enable or disable it. You can also activate a mini window for the selected channel.
To apply the changes click on "Update".

Note that currently the changes will not be saved, i.e. any changes won't survive a restart of VCool.

Installation

You need to download this archive first.

Then unzip the files to a folder of your choice (Caution: do not overwrite previous versions of vcool).

If you're unning NT/W2K/XP you need to install the driver using the loaddriver executable: Copy vcool.sys to your system32 folder and run loaddriver.exe, enter the path to vcool.sys and press "Install" and "Start". Check out the Beta Page for some more details
Note: If you're alread running the latest beta version of VCool (1.8b10) you can skip this step as the alpha version uses the same driver.

If you're runnig a previous version of VCool please terminate it before starting the Alpha version by double clicking on vcool.exe in the explorer.

Feedback

With VCool-Alpha running (double click on vcool.exe in the explorer) right click on the "VC" Icon in the system tray to bring up a popup menu.

Select Dump Data - vcool should produce a file called "vcool_dump.log" in the folder where the alpha executable resides.

Feel free to toy around with the channel setup and the mini windows.

Send an email to mpet@bigfoot.de with vcool_dump.log attached. Be sure to include you system specs (board, chipset, etc) and any other useful information you might have, e.g. the actual temperatures/voltages/fans from the BIOS or MBM, etc.
Also include any problems you encountered or other observations.