OT:Reinstall XP for dual-core initialization?

riredale wrote on 8/26/2006, 11:31 AM
Okay, I'm a little slow at some of this stuff.

I just rebuilt my PC using an ASUS A8V board and an AMD 3800x2 chip.

My times are satisfying faster (~2.5x faster than the AMD XP2100), but someone mentioned that I will need to re-install XP in order to put in all the hooks to use the second processor.

In the past, I've just ported my cloned XP environment from the older machine to the newer one, and everything has worked well. Do I really have to re-build XP from scratch in order to use both processors?

Comments

Cliff Etzel wrote on 8/26/2006, 11:36 AM
I just finished doing an upgrade to an AMD 3800X2 AM2 upgrade and I had to reinstall - I got a BSOD stating something about a virus and removing all newly installed hardware. As if that was going to work.. ;-)

I imagine my old install was optimized for Intel single processor and XP didn't know what to do with the AMD instruction set - it was worth it though as I am very happy with my new hardware and to be ready for when AMD quad cores become available sometime in 2007 has me smiling like a cheshire cat. A 16GB RAM supported mobo is icing on the cake...
fldave wrote on 8/26/2006, 12:13 PM
I know you had to for two physical cpus. I'm the one that brought it up, and I am not sure if going from single core to dual core requires it. You can search Microsoft's site, I'm sure it is a common question.

Edited: I went ahead and searched on MSFT, and it appears that you have to reinstall XP.

http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=624478&SiteID=1

One check before you do: go to Device Manager, and the first item is "Computer". Mine says "ACPI Multiprocessor" on both my dual physical CPU and my P4 Hyperthreaded machines. So I would assume that a dual core should be the same. So if you go from an HT machine to a dual core, all may be well.
Jay-Hancock wrote on 8/26/2006, 3:20 PM
You can also run windows setup and do a "restore" instead of a full reinstall. It's like running setup normally, except that it doesn't wipe your system disk, and you don't lose all the original stuff. I did this for a machine at work and it came out well.
rmack350 wrote on 8/26/2006, 6:40 PM
That's good to know! I just ordered an x2 4400+ this morning and hadn't considered that I'd have to do this. Ack!

Boot discs are an Nvidia RAID-1 array. What a pain, you have to reinstall the nvidia drivers as you do the repair. Evidenty there's a way to build a slipstream windows disc that includes the drivers. That would make life easier...

Rob Mack