Enable Hyperthreading or 2nd CPU in Windows XP

This article was posted more than 1 year ago. Please keep in mind that the information on this page may be outdated, insecure, or just plain wrong today.

I came across this on a VM the other morning. It seemed that assigned the VM 2vCPU and then installing XP Professional didn’t install the correct HAL/Kernel. I’m not sure why, but here’s how I noticed the problem and how I fixed it.

I first noticed the issue when it was reported that in Task Manager the CPU graph only had one CPU showing. In the View -> CPU History menu, there was only one option to show the single CPU. I checked device manager next and noted that there were in fact 2 CPUs recognized by Windows under Processors category. I then checked My Computer -> Properties and it only reported 1 E7540 @ 2.00GHz CPU. Hmmmm. I next checked the HAL by looking at Device Manager -> Computer and seeing that ACPI was installed but not ACPI Multiprocessor!

To change to ACPI Multiprocessor, you can right-click on the ACPI and choose Update Driver and it would list whichever drivers are installed. Here are some of the options that would be available (if installed):


Standard PC, Non-ACPI PIC HAL (Hal.dll)

  • Standard PC

MPS Uniprocessor PC, Non-ACPI APIC UP HAL (Halapic.dll)

  • Standard PC
  • MPS Uniprocessor
  • MPS Multiprocessor

MPS Multiprocessor PC, Non-ACPI APIC MP HAL (Halmps.dll)

  • Standard PC
  • MPS Multiprocessor

Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) PC, ACPI PIC HAL (Halacpi.dll)

  • Standard PC
  • Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) PC

ACPI Uniprocessor PC, ACPI APIC UP HAL (Halaacpi.dll)

  • Standard PC
  • Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) PC
  • ACPI Uniprocessor
  • ACPI Multiprocessor

ACPI Multiprocessor PC, ACPI APIC MP HAL (Halmacpi.dll)

  • Standard PC
  • Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) PC
  • ACPI Multiprocessor
  • MPS Multiprocessor

Well, I didn’t have any of those. So I knew Windows wasn’t installed, seemingly, with the support for Multiprocessor, etc.

Here’s how I corrected the problem.

I attached an XP Professional ISO to the VM and then from within the VM, I launched a command prompt and changed to the CD-ROM directory (in my case, D:):

cd /d d:

I expanded ntkrnlmp.ex_ and halmacpi.dl_ to c:windowssystem32:

d:>expand i386ntkrnlmp.exe_ c:windowssystem32ntkrnlmp.exe
d:>expand i386halmacpi.dl_ c:windowssystem32halmacpi.dll

Next, I modified boot.ini to specify the kernel and hal to load:

d:>attrib -r c:boot.ini
d:>edit c:boot.ini

I appended the following to the boot line:

/kernel=ntkrnlmp.exe /hal=halmacpi.dll

So the entire line looks like this now:

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)WINDOWS=Microsoft Windows XP Professional /fastdetect /noexecute=optin /kernel=ntkrnlmp.exe /hal=halmacpi.dll

Make sure you don’t make any typos or you will not be booting and you’ll have to fix your boot.ini through other methods.

After saving boot.ini, I made it read-only again:

d:>attrib +r c:boot.ini

Then I rebooted.

Voila. Now I see both vCPUs in Task Manager and My Computer Properties and today is a good day.

This is the first VM I came across with this problem and I have to believe it was because it was installed when there was only 1vCPU configured for it.