Removing AMD Phenom II X2 Unleashing Bricks Windows 8

[CAM]

Some of you may remember that problem I had with electrical buzzing causing stalls on my PC. I haven't bought a new GPU yet because I wanted to try something else first, namely removing the Core Unleashing on my AMD processor and drop it back from 3 cores down to 2. I was reluctant to try this as it would stop BF3 from working properly but the buzzing is becoming more then a small annoyance now!

 

Unfortunately Windows 8 was installed whilst core unleashing was active. Because I use cores 0,1 and 3 it is reported as a Phenom X4, but dropping back down to two cores makes it a Phenom X2. Windows 8 doesn't like this and refuses to boot past the Win 8 splash page until I enable Core Unleashing again! It won't even let me into Safe Mode!

 

Anyone have any ideas as I am stumped, even Google has too many red herrings in the search results to net me a useful answer. I got the idea to test it today after monitoring my CPU usage showed a massive dip and flatline in CPU usage when the buzzing happens.

Edited February 4, 2013 by CAM

[SYNACK]

You could sysprep the box to make it re-check the hardware or try deleting the x4 cpu from device manager then killing the extra core and rebooting. It may be confused if it is getting the same hardware ID but different specs. Windows usually handles a processor switch without a hassel.

[CAM]

Became suspicious after Linux boot disks wouldn't work, turns out that Advanced Clock Calibration was still on even though Unleashing was disabled. Now I have to wait and see if the buzzing continues after disabling ACC. If it does, the graphics card is next to come out and see if on-board graphics will continue with the annoying buzz.

[CAM]

I think I have traced this to a dying hard disk of all things, after tearing the graphics card out, realising my spare card is actually fried and finding Windows 8 refused to boot until I createda recovery disk as it decided to put the System Reserved section with the boot loader on the old (and empty) disk. >.<