hey guys,

I purchased a Zotac N73V motherboard with the nforce 610 chipset recently. To go along with it, i bought an intel e2180 processor mainly because of it's reputation as a very strong overclocker. Well, all was good for about a week after installing my new components until the other day when my pc reset and the motherboard told me to reset the bios. Now, Windows XP will not recognize that i have a dual core processor.

I thought perhaps that i somehow corrupted the bios, so i downloaded Winflash from the Zotac website bundled with bios updates. Unfortunately, when i try to flash to the newest bios, the utility tells me to pick the right file. I have tried both .bin files but neither will work. I then tried to re-install windows but XP refuses to recognize the second core. cpu-z, core temp, the task manager, and well the device manager most importantly does not say "ACPI Multiprocessor" like i'm told it should.

I did try to force XP (during windows setup pressing f5) to install the acpi multiprocessor hal, but setup just hangs right at the beginning before i am able to choose the drive, format, repair, etc. I've tried this with a different hard drive as well but xp still hangs at the exact same spot.

I'm sort of at a loss but i'm suspecting one of 2 things; the second core blew or i messed up the motherboard bios.
Anyone with more knowledge able to help? I'd really appreciate it.

Go to device manager, open Computer, do you have ACPI? If not, you will see only one core. Another thing is with the boot.ini. There's a parameter. I can't remember what it is. You can google. Basically, if it's not a fresh install of windows, do one.