Core 2 Duo, programs only use 1 core

Hi Guys,

Hope someone here can help. We have taken delivery of some Dell Optiplex 360 Core 2 Duo E7400's We have rebuilt machines using our XP VLK slipstreamed with SP3. Machines appear nice and nippy but we experienced issues whilst playing around with IE hanging. We did some nosing around and noticed in task manager that running processes were using only one core despite TM displaying graphs for two cores. Checked on untouched Dell install and processes using both cores.

Installed CPUZ and this detects two cores. Have tried replacing HAL.dll but problem remains. Anyone got any ideas?

Might sound daft but here goes....

In Dells you can disable dual core support so the machine only uses on core. This setting is in the BIOS. On some dells it is default to use only 1 core. Have you checked this on yours?

Hi,

Thanks for your post however this is not the issue. The plot thickens. I have begun a rebuild from scratch and running processes are now using both cores. I started installing apps. Office, java, ie7 blah blah. I then came to Silverlight which then hung. I checked the processes running using Task Manager and low and behold if I look at CPU affinity there are two cores available and only one ticked. I am not saying it is Silverlight probably a coincidence but I used system restore to roll back to just after I installed Office and all is working as it should.

I am currently rebuilding from scratch again and will check status after install of every app. I would like to emphasise that both cores are detected and can be seen in Task Manager. Before problem occurs if I check affinity on explorer.exe for example both cores are available and both ticked. When problem occurs and I check affinity both cores are present and clickable but only Core 0 is ticked.

I am buggered if I know what is going on.

I presume you've installed chipset drivers and anything else it may require? Downloads should all be on Dell's website.

Unless you need Silverlight, then I wouldn't install it. Flash is still better at the moment :)

Yep all drivers downloaded from Dell and installed. All working at the moment I am attempting to break it again as I type.

If you go into device manager and expand the 'Computer' section what does it say?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Geoff

If you go into device manager and expand the 'Computer' section what does it say?

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Hi Geoff,

Already checked this it says ACPI Multiprocessor PC.

I haven't done this in several years, but I found an old note
that might be of help.

Mike Honeycutt
UNC Asheville

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Core2Duo - muliple processors

The ACPI multiprocessor HAL consists of two files namely ntkrnlmp.exe and halmacpi.dll which should be located in the System32 directory.

So I copied the latest versions from my SP2 CD and the Windows install directory respectively and modified my boot.ini file on boot drive to cater for an additional entry to test it out.

Added
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Micro soft Windows XP Home Edition MP" /fastdetect /noexecute=optin /kernel=ntkrnlmp.exe /hal=halmacpi.dll

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Michael

Unless you need Silverlight, then I wouldn't install it. Flash is still better at the moment :)

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Silverlight is way better than Flash Player, IMO. Among other things, the former supports GPU acceleration (something Flash Player still doesn't have even after 10 versions), smooth streaming (videos play straight away without buffering, even 720p ones), has far less bugs than flash player does, is easier to deploy and doesn't make even the fastest quad core processor seem slow when you're viewing a webpage with flash-based ads.

Technically you're probably right, but Flash is easily more widely adopted and accepted. I've experienced quite a number of compatibility problems, which is probably why they're upto version 3 I believe now.