Windows Bootup / 1 or 2 processors

In 'MSCONFIG' under 'Bootup' tab there's an option that says "Processors" and it has the number 1 under it.
I have dual core and have the option of choosing 2.

My question I guess is why does it not default to 2, should I change it? Is there a reason it only says 1?

Thanks.

 

i guess you could change it to two, but i don't see the point. i processor is enough to handle boot up.

the way i see it, let one processor handle the boot up in the background while you use the other processor to surf the web while the system is booting up. i'm not sure using both cores to boot up will speed anything up.

 

It could be because you only have one processor. That one processor has two cores, yes, but it's still only one processor. YOu could dig into Microsoft's documentation to find out exactly what the Processors field in msconfig does. But remember that it might just be something that only works/is relevant for dual- processor systems. It might cause singleprocessor (no matter how many cores they have) to fail, for all you know.

 

Somehow I find having set it to 2 processors made my boot time a lot faster. I haven't actually timed it but it is definitely a noticeable difference

 

i think this relates more to Vista's hardware detection than tapping some unknown power. it's unchecked by default, and Vista automatically recongizes multi-core systems.

 

So it DOES work ? And its booting wthout problems ? I'm afraid i'll screw something up if I change the value. Mine is not even set, nor 1 or 2

 

I have mine set @ 2 with the default memory. Does seems to boot and run faster.

 

Sorry, but "seems to boot and run faster" doesn't really tell us much. I'm not singling you out about this but there are an awful lot of "tweaks" being bandied about that have no measurements to back them up. Just someone saying they think it made things faster. Some of these tweaks are actually detrimental. I don't think this one is, but I am always a bit reticent to try any tweak based on someone's "feel'.

Gary

 

It may boot faster, but it seems unlikely that it would run any faster. Vista already has multi-core support; I know that I haven't changed this setting, and my core2 duo is definitely running on both cores. I would surmise that it has a negligible effect on boot time as well, but I'm willing to give it a shot once I get home. It would be very surprising if it would hurt anything.

 

Hi all,

Here's a little benchmark i performed with Bootlogxp. It shows that by setting your processors to "2", my notebook does perform slightly better (from 226 seconds to 175 seconds).

I'm running XP, specs in sig.

 

Good benchmarks. That's over a 20% decrease in boot time. Definitely nothing to sneeze at as far as performance, and much better than "slight"

 

So I'm measuring my boot time from the time I press the power button to the time my desktop loads (no password prompt). System's running XP Pro on a C2D T7300.

With one processor selected I averaged 27 seconds over three cold boots.

With two processors selected I still averaged 27 seconds over three cold boots.

Timing inaccuracies aside, I don't think it made much of a difference for me XD

 

No harm in leaving it to 2 processors though. So I guess why not just set it to two and forget about it.

 

Because Jalf may be correct, this might really be for multiprocessors (remember the old NT written for the DEC Alpha?), and the Core2Duo is not really a multiprocessor in the true sense of the term. In any case, until you encounter the first serialization error, when things that would have occurred sequentially on a uniprocessor, but now occur in parallel on a multiprocessor, it can't hurt.

 

What? The Pentium 4 Hyperthreading isn't a true multiprocessor, but a Core2Duo is closer to a multiprocessor as you define it than even the AMD X2's, because the cores are still connected via the FSB in the Intel chips just like they would be if they were separate physical processors. AMD's chips use an off-FSB hypertransport link for inter-core communication. Point is, dual-core CPU's are EXACTLY the same functionally (and often better because of decreased latency and decreased power usage) as two physical CPU's. If you don't have any problems with 2 CPU's enabled, keep doing it. It won't slow anything down, the worst that will happen is a process starting up will have to wait for another one to start up, which it would have to do with a single CPU anyway.

 

I've turned it on. If my computer blows up, I'm blaming all of you guys.

 

Here's a real multiprocessor, capable of multiprogramming, too .