Dual Core problems.

My setup:
AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ 1GHz FSB Socket 939
MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum Socket 939 NVIDIA nForce4 Ultra ATX AMD
eVGA 256-P2-N516 Geforce 7800GTX 256MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 Video Card
CORSAIR ValueSelect 2GB (2 x 1GB) 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400 (PC 3200)
SONY Black IDE DVD-ROM Drive Model DDU1615/B2s
SONY 16X Dual Layer DVD+/-RW, Model DRU800A
Microsoft Windows XP Professional X64 Edition
Antec SmartPower 2.0 SP-500 ATX12V 500W Power Supply
HITACHI Deskstar T7K250 0A31636 250GB
LG L1981Q Black-Silver 19" 8ms LCD Monitor
Logitech G5 Laser 931376-0403 2-Tone 6 Buttons 1x Wheel USB Laser Mouse
Saitek PZ30AU Black USB Wired Standard Eclipse Keyboard

Hopefully someone can shed some light on my problems...

I assembled this machine and got the OS installed without much trouble last week. Played some games... did some work... and pretty much left it alone until last night.

Last night I used the Hitachi utility to enable the SATA2 and Spread Spectrum option for my HD and noticed after reboot that there was only one proc showing up in the device manager. I knew that I had not yet updated my BIOS so I went and checked it and it showed the proc but stated that the exact model was unknown. So, I went ahead and did that... I was at the 1.3 BIOS release and went to 1.A0 BIOS release which is the latest off the MSI site. The machine slowed way down and locked up a few times but eventually I was able to log into Windows only to see that "A new device had been found" and it identified my dual core proc. But every time I did anything the PC would lock up... no mouse... no keyboard. But now the BIOS recognized the exact model of proc. I eventually went back to the original BIOS and again the BIOS said that the exact model was unknown. I reinstalled Win x64 and was able to have fairly normal operations... so I went to the AMD site and downloaded the latest driver for my proc and installed it and the Device manager recognizes it as a "Multiprocessor" but still only one proc in the task manager.

I am not sure what to do here. I am seven minor releases back on my BIOS version... but concerned that another BIOS flash will result in more problems. On the other hand, I can not see having the dual core 64 bit proc and not actually using it.

Any suggestions?


Thanks

Direwolf

 

Disable spread spectrum,it is only needed when your using your computer in an area of high electromagnetic interferance

 

ok, did taht, any other suggestions or am I looking at RMA on the MB and or Proc?

 

have you tried resetting your bios options to fail safe,also do you have a copy of win xp you can try