I want use all 16 processors instead of the standard 1 processor to increase performance

Question

My Acer Aspire 14 laptop has 16 processors. I want to adapt the boot settings on my Windows 11 System Configuration laptop so that it can use all 16 processors instead of the standard 1 processor to increase performance. However, when I click on the Apply button, this pop-up appears:

"BitLocker Drive Encryption is enabled on your OS drive. Because these changes modify the machine's boot settings, the machine will enter recovery mode at next boot and you will need to provide a BitLocker recovery key or recovery password. Are you sure you want to proceed?"

Is it safe to proceed? I don’t know my BitLocker recovery key.

Answer 1

On your laptop, you have one processor, you do not have 16 processors, your processor like all modern processor has multiple cores and threads, but only one processor.

WIndows is a multi-threaded operating system and so are most games and apps and large tasks are split up between the many cores/threads on the processor to make your system more efficient.

I presume the setting you are trying to change is in the MSConfig utility on the Boot - Advanced tab, is that correct?

If so, do not change that setting, that may cause WIndows not to boot up, and you would either need to run a couple of commands in the recovery environment to get Windows working again or may even need to re-install Windows.