Hi Michael. I'll never remember that, so I'll also say hi SoG.
Welcome aboard. I have machine envy.
I can't help you too much with 2.37.6 though others can. I've been working on the 2.4X code fork. You might want to try to see whether your issues repro in 2.42.5. If so, I can help track them down.
That said, I don't think the issues are related to XP64, at least the overflows. Crashing the OS though... now that has to be a bug in the OS or the VB runtime. DB is all 32 bit code written in VB6 and I pretty sure Microsoft's 32 bit emulation is solid though there could be bugs using the 32 bit VB6 runtime on 64 bit platforms. But my bet for most of your issues in bugs in the DB program itself. Give 2.4X a shot and tell me if you see the same.
Unfortuantly, VB6 programs are single threaded so even though your OS will schedule the thread across both your CPUs, the program is entirely serial and thus will never (until the C++ port comes along) be able to take advantage of more than one cpu at a time. When you look at it in perfmon, it will look like both cpus are being used at 50% but what is really happening is that the program is using one at 100% for 10ms then the other for 10ms, etc. as the OS schedules it. You can run two instances side by side however and use internet sharing to have them share bots between them. This would also give you some topological isolation. I want to make this super easy in coming versions....
cycles/sec will be very dependent on number of bots and to a lesser extent on the length of their genomes, the physics of your sim and the bot's morphological characteristics. Sims with 1000 bots may run at X, but the same sim with bots that create a lot of ties or shots will run slower or if you have fulid resistance turned on, etc.. The program has to do math for evyerthing, shot collision detection, tie drag calculations, etc. so perf is gernerally proportional to the number of bots, shots and ties in a non-linear way. The numbers you site are typical for smaller sims.
Again, welcome.