D820 Core Duo; Only One Processor Active

Question

I have a D820 with a 1.66GHz Core Duo T2300 processor installed, the default XP install was removed to put on a the company's standard distrobution of Windows XP, now only one processor is being used by the system.

The Device Manager sees two CPU's, but task manager does not register the second CPU (cannot enable "one graph per CPU" ), and dual CPU applications won't detect the presence of a second core.

Is there some kind of chipset driver missing which could fix this or is something else wrong?

Luke

Message Edited by Luke_A_P on 08-07-200610:06 AM

yogger · Answer

You need to change what Hal and Kernel Windows is using. From your windows cd, copy halmacpi.dll and ntkrnlmp.exe to the windows\system32 directory. Now at this point, you can either rename halmacpi.dll to hal.dll or you can change the boot.ini file either manually or using the bootcfg command to tell it to load the new hal/kernel.

The safer way is to use the bootcfg command from the command prompt, like this:

bootcfg /copy /d "Microsoft Windows XP Professional MP Hal" /id 1
bootcfg /raw "/hal=halmacpi.dll /kernel=ntkrnlmp.exe" /a /id 3

If you don't understand any of what I just wrote, you should get whoever imaged it to do it.

Luke_A_P · Answer

Ok, I understand that, but I think I'll get the support guys to do it, incase there is anything about their setup which may conflict, and so I can't be blamed if something goes wrong. :)

Do these files specifically need to come from the CD which ships with the Laptop, or any XP SP2 CD?

Out of interest, why does that need to be changed, how does it end up with the wrong version in there?

Luke

confused.brit · Answer

Basically the windows install the company put on assumed there was only one processor, and installed the wrong drivers for it. I would suspect they used an autoinstall CD configured for single processor computers only.

These should be available on any XP SP2 CD

Luke_A_P · Answer

@yogger wrote:

The safer way is to use the bootcfg command from the command prompt, like this:

I went for this option, bootcfg wouldn't accept "/id 3" so I changed it to "/id 1".
So now I have the 2 boot profiles, (the names are the wrong way round, but that isn't critical).

The profile which not directed to the new hal/kernel works fine. The other profile gives a "hal.dll missing or corrupt" error and won't boot. So essentailly no change.

These are the relevent lines from my boot.ini as it is now:
++++
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect /hal=halmacpi.dll /kernel=ntkrnlmp.exe

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional MP Hal" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
++++

Any ideas?

(btw, I manually renamed the halmacpi.dl_ from the CD to halmacpi.dll.)

Luke

virgiliomi · Answer

The problem might be that you manually renamed the file, rather than expanding the file. Usually (not always, but almost all of the time) files with an _ as the last character of the extension are compressed. If you expand halmacpi.dl_ halmacpi.dll then it will properly decompress the file. You probably need to do the same with the other file as well, if it had an _ in its extension.

Luke_A_P · Answer

Virgiliomi, thanks, that makes sense. Will the expand command work with the command prompt in windows, or will I have to go to the Recovery Console? Luke

virgiliomi · Answer

As long as the file isn't in use, there's no reason you shouldn't be able to do it under Windows.

Luke_A_P · Answer

Expanding the .dl_ file worked, everything seems to be operating correctly now. My thanks to everyone! Luke

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D820 Core Duo; Only One Processor Active

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