Windows Timing Bug

Problem

A bug has been discovered with Windows and many modern computers (see here).

The problem centres around two features of many modern computers:

1. CPU stepping. This is present on many laptops, which allows them to slow the CPU down under certain situations to save battery power.
2. Dual-core CPUs. This is where 1 processor pretends to be 2 processors to provide increased performance.

Effects

These technologies can cause Windows to report inaccurate times, causing applications that use the Windows timing functions to experience problems. This only effects RC-Timing 2006 (as 2002/2004 used different timing functions). The most common effects of this are:

1. The clock shown on the RC-Timing race screen runs slower than real time (so at 5 minutes it may only show 4m30s).
2. Cars which are still running are force-finished unfairly (as if they had taken longer than the maximum last lap).

Solution

v3.3.0 works around these problems by using different timing functions that are unaffected by CPU stepping.

It is recommended that all RC-Timing 2006 users download the latest version of RC-Timing to avoid experiencing these issues.