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Task-Manager shows only one CPU on dual core T60
Posted: Mon May 22, 2006 12:56 pm
by meditate2001
Hello,
I imaged my old t42 partition to the t60 and now the taskmanager shows only one CPU. In hardware manager(and other progs like cpu-z, nhc etc.) everything looks good, centrino duo is recognized with 2 cpus.
any1 knows about this ?
Posted: Mon May 22, 2006 6:27 pm
by lithium726
You have the incorrect HAL installed.
Go into the device manager, go to the computer icon and uninstall the ACPI PC. Reboot. upon starting up again, it should install an SMP aware HAL. I believe this can fuxor your windows install though, so do it at your own risk.
Posted: Tue May 23, 2006 3:49 pm
by meditate2001
thanks for the hint, but unfortunatly i cant uninstall the acpi pc. i think this is the only item i cant uninstall or deactivate. [censored]. do you know how to handle this ? and what is hal ?
tnx...
Posted: Tue May 23, 2006 6:02 pm
by astro
HAL is the Hardware Abstraction Layer:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardware_abstraction_layer
I believe Windows detects what HAL to use while it is installing itself. That's why you're stuck with the single-core HAL at the moment.
Posted: Fri May 26, 2006 5:57 pm
by Scratch
make sure that you've set the view to one graph per cpu prior to doing anything. windows defaults to a combined single graph.
Posted: Sat May 27, 2006 6:32 am
by meditate2001
guys, thanks for the help. yes it is the hal. it seems that winxp cant detect it on its own. fortunatly you can change the hal from the boot.ini. but unfortunatly ms is not supporting this; they say you have to re-install winxp which is not an option for me.
if i have the solution i will post it here...
Posted: Sat May 27, 2006 4:19 pm
by lithium726
Yes, i am aware of what the HAL is
if you delete the single-CPU abstraction layer it *should* automatically reinstall the SMP kernal... thats how it has always worked with the desktops...
Posted: Sat May 27, 2006 7:19 pm
by astro
meditate2001 wrote:thanks for the hint, but unfortunatly i cant uninstall the acpi pc. i think this is the only item i cant uninstall or deactivate. [censored]. do you know how to handle this ? and what is hal ?

Posted: Sun May 28, 2006 7:57 am
by meditate2001
lithium726 wrote:astro wrote: if you delete the single-CPU abstraction layer it *should* automatically reinstall the SMP kernal... thats how it has always worked with the desktops...
you mean in the hardsware manager ? yes, normally you could alter the hal there but unfort. i only get displayed the normal acpi for installing(but i need the multiprocessor acpi) or i can choose it on myself and i have to choose than an inf file, but as far as i know the hals are in dll and not in infs.
fortunatly you can tell which hal winxp will use in the boot.ini. so i copied the right multiproc.hal and the multikernel also to winxp and now it get at least to the logon screen and than it gets reset. i read somewhere that you need to alter more than these 2 files, but unfort. there werent an detailed explanation of which files.
i am posting it here if i have the solution...
thanks for effort.
Posted: Sun May 28, 2006 10:40 am
by darrenf
The best (IMHO) way to correct the HAL is by doing a repair install of XP. This is almost always required when switching motherboard chipsets. If you have a SP2 OEM install CD, boot press ENTER at the first prompt (*not* R for recovery console) and when it shows existing installations highlight "C:\WINDOWS" and press R (IIRC) to repair.
It takes a little while but that will install the right HAL. What's odd is that I thought Windows wouldn't run on a MP machine without the MP kernel available. It would always give me an error on startup about a missing NTKERNEL file. Of course, that's with a true MP setup, not dual-core.
Not to overlook the obvious, is dual-core turned on in the BIOS? There's a setting that will let you run single core.
-darren
Posted: Sun May 28, 2006 11:38 am
by meditate2001
darrenf wrote:The best (IMHO) way to correct the HAL is by doing a repair install of XP.
do you know what else is being "repaired" than ? coz i only want to change THIS thing.
darrenf wrote: What's odd is that I thought Windows wouldn't run on a MP machine without the MP kernel available. It would always give me an error on startup about a missing NTKERNEL file. Of course, that's with a true MP setup, not dual-core.
i guess it rans, but with only one cpu. ntkernel is the kernel for singlecpu.
darrenf wrote:
Not to overlook the obvious, is dual-core turned on in the BIOS? There's a setting that will let you run single core.
-darren
yup it is
Posted: Sun May 28, 2006 1:41 pm
by darrenf
My experience is that there are usually no consequences of a reinstall except that you might have to reinstall some drivers. I wouldn't hesitate to do it in your situation.
-darren
Posted: Sun May 28, 2006 3:36 pm
by meditate2001
ok, i will try this later...thanks...
T60p with two cores
Posted: Mon May 29, 2006 7:22 am
by mmo
After some investigation I found that one can actually specify which HAL and which NT-kernel to use in the boot.ini file. Since then my boot.ini reads as shown below. To switch to a MP-kernel and HAL on my T60p I just had to select the LAST option before the recovery console entry once. After that XP memorized the selection and now boots the correct HAL&Kernel by default.
Code: Select all
[boot loader]
timeout=10
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Windows XP (default)" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Windows XP (Non-ACPI Non-APIC Uni-Processor)" /hal=hals.dll /kernel=ntoskrns.exe /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Windows XP ( ACPI Non-APIC Uni-Processor)" /hal=halacpi.dll /kernel=ntoskrns.exe /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Windows XP (Non-ACPI APIC Uni-Processor)" /hal=halapic.dll /kernel=ntoskrns.exe /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Windows XP ( ACPI APIC Uni-Processor)" /hal=halaacpi.dll /kernel=ntoskrns.exe /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Windows XP (Non-ACPI Multi-Processor)" /hal=halmps.dll /kernel=ntkrnlmp.exe /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Windows XP ( ACPI Multi-Processor)" /hal=halmacpi.dll /kernel=ntkrnlmp.exe /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn
C:\CMDCONS\BOOTSECT.DAT="Microsoft Windows Recovery Console" /cmdcons
(mind the wrapped lines - each entry has to be on a single line!)
BTW: there is another known bug re. hibernation. If you have more than 1 GB RAM then hibernation will not work (reliable) on your T60p. For the reason and fix see:
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=330909. I was able to reliably fix this by downloading the updated NT-kernels provided on the linked page.
Have fun!
Michael