OPTIONS MENU
The CPU menu choice lets you tell the
program how often the program will run and how much memory the program can
use. The dialog box also displays your
CPU type, speed, and capabilities.
The Preferences menu choice lets
you control how often a line is written to the main window and how often a line
is written to the results file. It also
lets you change how often intermediate files (to guard against power failure
and crashes) are created. You can
control how often the program checks to see if you are connected to the
Internet. The program polls whenever it
has new data to send to or work to get from the PrimeNet server. If you are low on disk space, you can select
one intermediate file instead of two.
However, if you crash in the middle of writing the one intermediate
file, you may have to restart an exponent from scratch. You can also tell the program to be quiet,
rather than beeping like crazy, if a new Mersenne prime is found. You can also make prime95 go idle whenever
your laptop is running on battery power (does not work under Windows
NT/2000/XP).
The
Benchmark choice times the program on several FFT lengths. You can then compare your computer's speed
to others list at http://www.mersenne.org/bench.htm
The Torture Test choice will
run a continuous self-test. This is
great for testing machines for hardware problems.
The Tray Icon choice will cause prime95 to
have a small icon on the taskbar when it is minimized. You can activate or hide the program by
double-clicking on the small icon. If
you place the cursor over the small icon, a tooltip will display the current
status.
The No Icon choice is only
enabled if the Advanced Menu is activated with the password. Using this menu choice means there will be
no prime95 icon on the taskbar once you minimize the program - making it very
hard to reactivate! You can reactivate
the program by trying to execute prime95 a second time. Alternatively, you can turn this feature off
by editing prime.ini and change the line "HideIcon=1" to
"HideIcon=0", then reboot.
Checking the Start at
Bootup menu choice will run prime95 as a service that is started when your
computer boots up. Windows NT/2000/XP
users need administrator privileges to use this feature. This method of starting prime95 is better
than creating a shortcut to prime95 in the startup folder. That is because services run even when no
one is logged on. These are the details
you should be aware of:
In Windows 95/98/Me:
The
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\RunServices
registry entry is created. You will not
be able to tell any difference between prime95 running as a service and prime95
running as an ordinary process.
In Windows NT/2000/XP (without
administrator privileges):
In this case the menu text is changed to "Start
at Logon". The HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run
is created. Prime95 will run only when
you are logged in.
In Windows NT/2000/XP (with
administrator privileges):
There are a few minor quirks when running as a
service. You shouldn't run into these
quirks in normal operation. You can
only change this option once and it will take effect when the service is
started or stopped. You will need to
exit prime95 running as a normal process before starting the prime95
service. Finally, the prime95 window
will only appear on one users desktop.
Only one prime95.exe program can be run as a service. If you have a dual processor system you'll
want to run two instances of prime95.
Instead of running a second prime95 from another directory, run the
second prime95 from the same directory with the -A1 switch and add a
NTServiceName entry in prim0001.ini.
Finally, if you are worried about giving users access to a GUI service
running in the Local System account, you can turn off the "Allow service
to interact with desktop" option in the services control panel applet or
run the GUI-less NT service version available at
http://www.mersenne.org/freesoft.htm.
These options are more secure than using the No Icon menu choice.