Q6600 showing 1 core in Win XP

I checked for similar threads before starting this one and only found one that wasnt the answer for me.

I have a buddys system that I built for him and the hard drive went bad. I replaced the hard drive and reinstalled Windows XP and all the drivers. I noticed in the task manager that it is only showing 1 core. I went into msconfig and "detect Hal" isnt even on the menu to check. I checked the box to manually select the number of cores and it only shows one.

I scoured the internet for other articles on this and only saw one thread that was halfway related and still not the correct resolution.

Anyone with any fresh ideas on how to correct this?

Hardware is as follows:

XFX MG-630i-7159 motherboard
Q6600 cpu
2G OCZ DDR2 6400 ram

CPUZ is only recognizing 1 core as well. It sounds like I either have a screwed CPU or motherboard.

Any ideas?

Do you have an 'enable MCP' option in mobo BIOS?

Multicore Processor? Yes, it is enabled. I just got up for work and no sleep for 2 days prior to.

Any other suggestions?...

Im about to go to work and wont be back until another 12 hours. I havent tried to reset the BIOS. I will do that 1st. I might try and see if there is another BIOS update and then flash.

thats the only other things I can think of personally...

Thanks for the help.

Anyone else??...

I just formatted and installed Windows XP the day before this was noticed. I might have to try to reinstall again and see if it corrects the problem if no other solution surfaces.

I did reset the BIOS and it didnt fix it. I flashed the BIOS and I get 4 cores in the device manager but it still doesnt show in the task manager or on CPUZ. Is this wierd or what?

http://i581.photobucket.com/albums [...] 4cores.jpg

It appears the BIOS was corrupt and this fixed that issue but Windows still doesnt see the correction.

I would guess a reinstall would be in line due to windows seeing it as a single core during installation.

I will reinstall and start over and post here if it fixes it. I can say the corrupt BIOS was the issue that started the problem.

Hopefully this helps anyone else with this issue in the future that can see this thread. I will post after everything is done to verify it is fixed.

Thanks for the input so far guys...

What CPU driver is being used in the device manager? (its either uni or multi) You don't need to reinstall windows, you can just update the driver. Also, make sure the task manager is set to show a seperate graph for each core. I don't remember how to check, and I'm using my single core laptop so I can't review either. A quick yahoo/google search should tell you however.

I installed the drivers from the motherboard driver disk and figured that would do it. How do you get a specific driver for a processor? I have never had that to be an issue.

To Mousemonkey:

I didnt even notice the fsb wasnt reading. I just updated the BIOS and it showed 4 cores in the device manager but windows still couldnt recognize it as a quad core so I just reinstalled windows and now everything is fine.

It appears to have been a corrupt BIOS. Hopefully this will help anyone else that has this issue. I had never had this to happen in the 9 years I have been messing with computers. Thats just proof anything can happen.

check bios and make sure all cores are active, then go to task manager and uninstall cpu driver. then reinstall. if this doesn't work then you need to reinstall your os. This happened to me 2 days ago and this is what i did to correct it.

Lol, thanks! I saw Terminator 4 too and no kidding to that. It was a good movie with some good surprises. I wont say so it doesn't spoil it for others who havent watched it yet.

I can't wait to get it on Blu-Ray and watch it on my 10' projection screen! It will be awesome.

Thanks again guys!

you are right... doesn't matter late or not.. important thing is always helpful