Looking at the ActiveState sources, it seems 5.8.3 had the first Win32 implementation of alarm(). Here's the changelog comment -

[ 21901] By: nicholas              on 2003/12/13  21:22:15
        Log: Integrate:
             ...
             
             [ 21895]
             alarm() is now implemented on Win32.
             
             ...

[download]

And from looking inside win32.c it seems that win32_alarm() uses SetTimer.

And yes, the behaviour of SetTimer has changed from Win 2000 to Win 2003

On 2000 if the timeout "is greater than USER_TIMER_MAXIMUM, the timeout is set to 1."

On 2003 SP1 if the timeout "is greater than USER_TIMER_MAXIMUM, the timeout is set to USER_TIMER_MAXIMUM."

That might be your problem, maybe.

 

In reply to Re: alarm() on windows 2003, overview by EdwardG
in thread alarm() on windows 2003, overview by bonjedward

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