Share via

Windows 10 only shows 1 core on 4 core CPU

Anonymous
2020-08-23T00:40:10+00:00

I've had my old Windows 7 AutoCAD machine lying around for a really long time in storage, and I just thought I'd drag it out and clean it up. I erased the hard drives (which still had Windows 7 and some of my old school stuff on them) and installed Windows 10, only to be greeted with an extraordinarily slow experience. at first I thought it was just because it was an old q6600, but I later found out Windows was only using a single core.

I checked in BIOS, all of the cores are enabled. I also reinstalled Windows 7 (although I've lost my activation key, so I can't activate it which sucks) and I have confirmed that in Windows 7 it does indeed show four cores. I know for a fact I've used Windows 10 on q6600 CPUs, because one of the machines at my job has the same CPU and is currently running Windows 10 with all four of its cores enabled.

I found a couple potential fixes, but none of them seem to work at all, windows simply refuses to see any more than one core. Is this because I haven't activated Windows yet? I made sure to run all updates after I installed Windows 10, but once I saw that it was only using one core, I decided to hold off on activation until I knew if it could be fixed or not

Q6600, 8 gigs of RAM, 100 gig SSD, 1Tb HDD, dual Quadro FX 4800 and an EVGA 680i motherboard

Windows for home | Windows 10 | Install and upgrade

Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.

0 comments

Answer accepted by question author

  1. Anonymous
    2020-08-23T00:55:58+00:00

    Hi Kitsep. I'm Greg, an installation specialist, 10 years awarded Windows MVP, and Volunteer Moderator, here to help you.

    Set a System Restore point first so you can go back if necessary: https://www.windowscentral.com/how-use-system-r...

    Type msconfig in Search box, Run as Administrator, go into Boot tab, then Advanced Settings, uncheck the box for Number of Processors, restart PC. This will rescan processors and should correct error. If not:

    For Windows 10 only showing one of four cores see working fixes here:

    https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/for...

    https://forums.tomshardware.com/threads/windows...

    https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/for...

    I hope this helps. Feel free to ask back any questions and keep me posted. If you'll wait to rate whether my post resolved your problem, I will keep working with you until it's resolved.

    ______________________________________________

    Standard Disclaimer: There are links to non-Microsoft websites. The pages appear to be providing accurate, safe information. Watch out for ads on the sites that may advertise products frequently classified as a PUP (Potentially Unwanted Products). Thoroughly research any product advertised on the sites before you decide to download and install it.

    20+ people found this answer helpful.
    0 comments

3 additional answers

Sort by: Most helpful
Most helpful Newest Oldest
  1. Anonymous
    2020-08-24T03:36:13+00:00

    I have all updates installed, including the 2020-08 cumulative update and I can't replicate the problem. It's possible there was a problem with my initial installation of Windows 10, although I've never seen that before. 

    I guess problem solved? Although I'm still curious as to what caused it in the first place.

    Thank you for the assistance

    2 people found this answer helpful.
    0 comments
  2. Anonymous
    2020-08-23T23:10:52+00:00

    I tried that and it still only showed one core one thread. I tried rolling back to the system restore point and again, one core one thread. I noticed there was a drop-down menu right belowthe number of processors checkbox, so I once again unchecked it and rebooted, then I went back into it and when I opened the drop-down menu, it still only had "1" as an option. 

    I went into work to look at the q6600 computer we have there just to confirm that it was working as expected, and on that computer the number of processors menu shows 4. 

    Since had just installed Windows 10 and there wasn't any data I had to worry about losing, I decided to reinstall Windows from scratch and test it then.

    After installing windows from scratch, all four cores showed up just fine. I installed feature update 1909 and all four cores showed up just fine after that. I'm currently installing update 2004 and will report back after that.

    2 people found this answer helpful.
    0 comments
  3. Anonymous
    2020-08-23T23:27:26+00:00

    Sounds good so far. Let me know.

    0 comments