On Windows Server 2003, or Windows Server 2008 (R2) the SAP high resolution timer delivers incorrect values. This note does not apply to Windows Server 2012 or higher.

There are the following symptoms:

• Developer traces contain a lot of warnings:

  M  *** WARNING => endtime (1177209745/443095)
  before starttime (1177209745/709153)

• sapntchk.exe delivers the following log information:

  Fast CPU timers : Not Synchronized
  OS timers : Not Synchronized
  ERROR : OS timers ‚QueryPerformanceCounter‘ must be synchronized. Ask your hardware vendor for HAL update.

AMD, X2, Opteron, Dual Core, Quad Core, Processor Driver, timers, sapntchk, QueryPerformanceCounter, /usepmtimer, bcdedit, useplatformclock

Older SAP ABAP kernels prior to 7.20 use the WIN32 API QueryPerformanceCounter / QueryPerformanceFrequency function to calculate high resolution timestamps. By default, Windows uses processor counters that increase with the processor frequency. Newer CPU technologies from Intel or AMD vary this frequency depending on the processor load. In this environment these registers are not synchronized between the processors, and the timestamps are no longer useable for our purpose.

The following solutions are available for SAP kernels prior to 7.20.

SAP kernels 7.20 and higher use a completely redesigned timer calculation method which does not depend any longer on Windows performance counters and processor frequency.

For older kernels you can use these solutions:

Windows Server 2003:
Before you install the SAP system on Windows Server 2003, download and install the latest processor drivers for your CPU from your hardware vendor’s site at:
http://support.amd.com

The processor driver ensures that QueryPerformanceCounter uses appropriate sources.

Alternatively, set key /usepmtimer in boot.ini.

Known issues: SQL Server 2005 might be affected from inaccurate CPU frequencies. For more information, see MS KB 931279, 938448, and 895980.

Windows Server 2008 or Windows Server 2008 R2:

For SAP kernel release 7.01 and 7.20, refer to SAP note 1466511.

For all other releases:
Open a command prompt with elevated administrator rights, and enter:
bcdedit /set {current} useplatformclock true

Reboot your Windows operating system.

To verify that this switch is set correctly, use the command:
bcdedit

To get an overview about the Windows boot loader configuration, set „useplatformclock“ to „Yes“.

Windows Boot Loader
——————-
identifier              {current}
device                  partition=C:
path                    \Windows\system32\winload.exe
description             Windows Server 2008 R2
locale                  en-US
inherit                 {bootloadersettings}
recoverysequence        {cc9ee2ae-8304-11e0-b554-9f3035f0d485}
recoveryenabled         Yes
osdevice                partition=C:
systemroot              \Windows
resumeobject            {cc9ee2ac-8304-11e0-b554-9f3035f0d485}
nx                      OptOut
useplatformclock        Yes