Disappearing Core!

[Hesky82]

I built a little mini ITX system a while back consisting of a Zotac 9300 ITX board and an Intel Celeron E3200 dual core processor, the little rig has been running absolutely fine for a good while until a week or 2 ago it decided it would no longer load the OS. It would get stuck at a point just after posting saying “verifying dmi pool data……” or something along those lines.
I managed to finally sort it by going into the bios and loading the safe default settings for the motherboard (resetting the bios oddly didn't help), unfortunately the OS was garbage so I had to reinstall the OS. Its taken me a few days after installing the OS and putting all my programs back on to notice today that XP can only see one core (both in device manager and in task manager).
I thought ok XP can be funny with dual cores so I quickly loaded CPU-Z up and to my surprise it shows this dual core operating with only 1 core and 1 thread!

I’ve reset the CMOS a couple of times but to be honest I’m not sure how I would go about trying to enable the second core again, as Ive never had to with any other rig other than an old pre SP2 XP system that needed an AMD dual core patch to correctly run an old X2 athlon.

I have cpu-z screenies of this chip running on this board with both cores enabled so its not like its a compatibility issue Ive never picked up on. I’ve not flashed the bios or changed any hardware. The system has been running stock and rock stable for a good few months until it had that nasty OS loading issue a week ago.

I have a feeling the “verifying dmi pool data……” could have been the motherboard trying to recover from a catastrophic hardware failure and now the pc is limping along on one core.

Anyone know what could be up??

 

[buttkinz]

iv got the same issue here lol, popped a e8200 under phase, fryed the board and now cpu-z says its a 90nm single core celeron, then decides to pump insane voltages through it

try it in a different system if you can, if not, sounds liek a rare chip failure on one of the cores

 

[Hesky82]

That's my next step mate, yup

Actually just noticed there has been a new bios release that states in its notes....

Version 2K091009
.Fixed power up "Verifying DMI..." hangup issue

So my OS not loading issue was definitely down to the motherboard.

Just this minute updated the bios successfully but the CPU is still only showing up a a single core

I have a feeling this DMI issue took out the chip. Mehhh

Thing is I couldn't really give a crap if its fried the chip its just the down time that's going to hurt me as its a work machine that's needed everyday for invoicing etc...

 

[ghop]

I had the disappearing core problem on my E2160. An OS reinstall actuall fixed it.

 

[Fatpigeon]

I had the disappearing core problem on my E2160. An OS reinstall actuall fixed it.

Same here

 

[Phatzy]

have you unticked core in the msconfig advanced option?

 

[Hesky82]

Its such a fresh install of XP I'm yet to go into msconfig.

I sort of doubt its an os issue as the bois no longer recognise the processor as a dual core when it posts.

Ideally need to test the cpu in another rig.

 

[EGuitarStar]

Either a dead core or issue with mothboard but strange the processor is still working.

Tried to Google the fault but nothing relevant returned.

Would be useful to try in another motherboard/rig will help discovering where the problem stems from.

 

[Hesky82]

stable as! if I was non the wiser I would have thought it was just a single core processor.

I have a couple of 775 rigs, just need to test it.