Only one core showing in windows xp help

  • Thread starter Thread starter Kalvin McCormick
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Kalvin McCormick

i just but together a asus a8n32-sli deluxe with amd 4200+ with windows xp
home sp2 installed
I installed the amd windows xp dual core drivers.
I show only one core in the device manager. it says it is an amd dual core
x2 4200+ cpu under processors but only one shows.
the asus bios show the processor as an amd x2 4200+ cpu also.

Where is the second core?
 
That's strange. I wonder if you have some inappropriate BIOS entry. (Is it
possible to turn off dual core support in the BIOS? I know that it was
possible to deactivate ACPI, at least on mainboards that are much older than
your A8N32-SLI.)

I once swapped in an X2 CPU onto a system with a single-core CPU, and XP
Home SP2 automatically installed the multiprocessor HAL (hardware
abstraction layer), and told me that it was doing so. It worked fine as a
two-CPU system afterwards.

You can try switching the HAL manually:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/309283/en-us

The short version: do a driver upgrade on the entry in Device Manager under
System devices. On my machine, the entry is Microsoft ACPI-Compliant System.
(I'm moderately sure that's the right one.)

I have no idea what level of risk may apply, although MS points out that
switching to an inappropriate HAL will make the machine unbootable (into
Windows).

The next level of fix would be to do a repair install of XP. (Back up
everything first.)

The ultimate fix would be a clean installation of XP, making sure that all
BIOS settings were OK before proceeding. Unless you have a virgin system (no
applications installed), that could be a lot of work.


Address scrambled. Replace nkbob with bobkn.
 
When you hit ctrl-alt-del and click the "performance" tab do you see one or
two graphs?


--
Scotter
Tyan Thunder K8WE
Dual Opteron 252s (2.6ghz)
4 gig Corsair XMS DDR400 RAM
XFX 7800 GTX 256 w/VGAsilencerV3
500 gig Hitachi SATA 300
160 gig Seagate SATA 150
Dual Dell 24" wide aspect LCDs
550W Antec power supply
X-Fi Platinum Soundblaster
-
 
Kalvin McCormick said:
i just but together a asus a8n32-sli deluxe with amd 4200+ with windows xp
home sp2 installed
I installed the amd windows xp dual core drivers.
I show only one core in the device manager. it says it is an amd dual core
x2 4200+ cpu under processors but only one shows.
the asus bios show the processor as an amd x2 4200+ cpu also.

Where is the second core?
Click to expand...
Doesn't WindowsXP have to be told in the beginning that it's either
Uniprocessor or Multiprocessor system? Also,I remember hearing or reading
that one of the differences between XP Home and XP Pro was that XP Pro had
support for more than one CPU and XP Home didn't. Now that was a long time
ago and lately this seems not to be the case.
 
I heard XP home supports either ONE dual core processor or ONE single core
processor while XP pro supports up to two single core or double core
processors. In other words, XP home supports only ONE PHYSICAL processor,
but if that one chip has two cores in it, it's okay and it see's it as two
cores. If you install either home or pro on a motherboard where two cores,
physical or not, exist, XP really should see both cores. But if you had only
one core when you installed the OS and then changed that out for a dual core
CPU later, THAT is when it may not recognize the other core without you
doing some dinking or even reinstalling the OS.

--
Scotter
Tyan Thunder K8WE
Dual Opteron 252s (2.6ghz)
4 gig Corsair XMS DDR400 RAM
XFX 7800 GTX 256 w/VGAsilencerV3
500 gig Hitachi SATA 300
160 gig Seagate SATA 150
Dual Dell 24" wide aspect LCDs
550W Antec power supply
X-Fi Platinum Soundblaster
-
 
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