Upgraded to a quad core but vista hates me

**Pistolfied** · 08-16-2009, 01:10 AM

I just recently upgraded my e8400 to a q9550 but vista fails to recognize all 4 cores. In the device manager they are all there (after I had to uninstall the e8400 cores which were still there...). I was wondering if there is any fix to this other than a reformat and reinstall.

I've tried googling but haven't found anything useful and I'm probably using the wrong keywords. I'll probably end up starting the reformat and reinstall when I head off but I'm hoping someone out there knows! Thanks in advance.

**Bamboo** · 08-16-2009, 06:16 AM

Did you try going to the "My Computer" icon, right click and choose properties.
Under system, where you have a # rating like 5.5 or 4.5 or whatever your computer scores, click around till you find the option to rerun the test.

**Buckets** · 08-16-2009, 11:12 AM

You might also need to flash your motherboard BIOS if you're running an older version that might not properly recognize your CPU.

**Pistolfied** · 08-16-2009, 02:58 PM

Well, turns out the HDD I was going to use doesn't have enough space for everything I want to keep so I'll be waiting until Monday when I can pickup a new one.

Bamboo: I've attempted that and my CPU score had lowered from being 5.8 (old score with my E8400 OC'd) to 5.6. Sadly it didn't fix anything

Buckets: I have the latest BIOS for my motherboard right now.

**Bamboo** · 08-16-2009, 03:56 PM

What motherboard do you have.
Brand and model please.
Did you check to make sure it supported quad cores?

Right click on my computer again, and go to hardware management in the right column. When that comes up, I think there is an option to search for new hardware in the device manager. (I am stuck at work on XP right now, so can't tell you for sure the steps)
What CPU does does the device manager say you have.
Also, if that is a no go, did you look in the BIOS to make sure it was seeing the CPU right, as that will take Windows out of the equation.

**Pistolfied** · 08-16-2009, 04:00 PM

It's a 750i SLI FTW (NVIDIA board but EVGA design). I'm positive it supports quad cores and it shows the correct CPU at bootup and in BIOS. The device manager shows 4 Q9550s.

Update: I've been able to contact MS support and after some troubleshooting it seems the best (and so far only) approach is to reformat/reinstall. At least this has pushed me to get another HDD I can use in RAID 1.

**ScratchMonkey** · 08-18-2009, 08:47 AM

Does the Performance tab in Task Manager show 2 or 4 graphs on the top row? (One graph per CPU.)

**Pistolfied** · 08-18-2009, 11:28 PM

It had shown 2 graphs, I've reformatted now and everything works.

**Superfast** · 08-21-2009, 01:50 PM

Must have been some driver/software stuff, i recently did a upgrade from E8400 to Q9550 myself and didn't have to do anything but put the new CPU on the motherboard. Vista 64 bit though.