Getting Windows XP off of domains

[Tristan Lall]

To nitpick, you want it to say "ACPI Multiprocessor PC". This process will change the HAL (Hardware Abstraction Layer) to the multiprocessor version, which Windows XP Pro supports. For some unfathomable reason, whoever installed the OS didn't make the 2^nd processor visible to the OS (either by not enabling it in the BIOS, by physically removing it, or by installing while connected to a different motherboard).

Incidentally, speaking of using dual processors, various Windows NT 5 versions have different ways of treating this situation. 2000 will allow up to 2 processors (real or virtual) for Professional, 4 for Server, 8 for Advanced Server, and as many as you feel like paying Microsoft to validate for Datacenter Server (currently 64, as far as I know). XP, however, works differently: it can distinguish between real and virtual processors, and counts a single socket (even with dual cores) as a single physical processor. So XP Home can see one physical plus one virtual (or twice that for dual cores), and Professional can do 2+2 (or 4+4). Server 2003 works similarly, with more capabilities as you pay more and more for the software. By all accounts, NT 6 (Vista and Vista Server) will work similarly.

If you have any problems with this, might I suggest asking on the 2cpu.com forums. They'll be able to give you precisely the information that you need.

But, dual 500s? That's not going to be too fast...any Turion or modern Celeron will absolutely smoke it, multithreaded or not.

[sanddrag]

I know it's not too fast, but it is still useful. The motherboard is a SuperMicro P6DBU with AMIBIOS 2.6

I read all about the HAL thing and it seems like I would need an XP installation CD (which I don't have) in order to change it. Is there any way to do it without? I wonder if updating the BIOS would so the trick. What do you think? I already went in Device Manager under the "computer" item and it just says "Standard PC" and will not let me update the driver to anything else.

[Tristan Lall]

I don't think that the BIOS update will help (though it isn't necessarily a bad idea, if there's an improved version available). The only thing I could see wrong with the BIOS is if SMP mode is disabled—there should be a manual on the Supermicro website describing how to enable it, if it can be changed. (With some really old motherboards, it's controlled by a jumper, but I'd suspect it's a BIOS item on this board—maybe something like "Enable CPU 1" or "Enable SMP".)

Your problem seems to be with Windows alone; in this case, using the CD (or at least the set of appropriate files) seems like the only reasonable way of doing this. Interestingly enough, it is not illegal to use a copied Windows CD for this (or practically any other) purpose, provided that you own a licence for that copy of Windows (e.g. if it was included with the computer, but you received no installation media). Here's the appropriate instructional resource from Microsoft, detailling the procedure. It's written for Windows 2000, but should apply equally to any NT 5 variant.

And, since you mention that you couldn't select the right HAL, in Device Manager, did you select "Show all hardware of this device class" in the Update Device Driver Wizard? See the attachment for what I mean.

[sanddrag]

Thanks for the picture but mine isn't quite like that. I don't haver the radio buttons. Is that 2000? It does give me the option to browse for the files, but of course, I don't have them and couldn't find them anywhere to download.

[Tristan Lall]

Originally Posted by sanddrag

Is that 2000?

Yes.

[sciguy125]

Originally Posted by Tristan Lall

For some unfathomable reason, whoever installed the OS didn't make the 2^nd processor visible to the OS (either by not enabling it in the BIOS, by physically removing it, or by installing while connected to a different motherboard).

I've never tried it with XP, but when I did major hardware upgrades, I used to just transplant the hard drive and let windows sort itself out. For the most part, it was able to figure out the new hardware and install new drivers on its own. If you say XP needs to see the second processor during install, maybe the hard drive doesn't belong to this system?

Now don't you wish you were using linux so that you just have to change your kernel to get multiprocessor? That reminds me. Sanddrag was playing with various linux distros some time ago and apparently still has at least one lying around. If I recall, Knoppix has an smp kernel. If you have it around, you can boot it, get a command prompt, and do "cat /proc/cpuinfo". It should spit out info about each processor.