Cannot Run Proliant 6400R in MPS Multiprocessor

[CHANGE USERNAME TO westes]

We have a Proliant 6400R with four processors installed and 4GB of memory
that we wanted to run Windows 2000 on. We installed Windows, and
configured devices, without a problem. But for some reason the install did
not see the additional processors and installed just a single processor
model under Windows Device Manager. Task Manager clearly shows just one
processor running. When you boot the machine however, at the BIOS level
you clearly see four processors.

I went to Device Manager and attempted to replace the Single Processor
device with either ACPI Multiprocessor or MPS Multiprocessor. In both
cases, Windows warned me it could not confirm my selection. I decided to
go with MPS Multiprocessor, since ACPI has its own issues, and I was at
least sure there were four processors.

Now when you boot the machine it gets to the end of the "Starting Windows"
update bar, and the system hangs. When I try to do a "Safe Boot" mode it
does not show me any drivers being loaded, but exhibits the same behavior.

I am hoping I have just forgotten some detail about how to configure the
BIOS for multiprocessor use in Windows. How can I made the Proliant 6400R
run multiprocessor under Windows?

Finally, how can I recover this machine to run Windows 2000 again?
Assuming I can even get the recovery console going, is there anything I can
do there for this case to make the system bootable again?

 

[Bob I]

What Version of Windows 2000? Professional can only handle 2.

 

[CHANGE USERNAME TO westes]

We installed Windows 2000 Server.

In any case, if there we had installed Professional wouldn't you expect two
processors to be enabled?

 

[Bob I]

Hard to tell what happened, yes I would expect that to be the case BUT
there seems to frequently be one issue or another when dealing with
Compaq boxes. Since you are using a Windows Version that supports the
active number of processors I would take the issue up with the folks at
Compaq/HP to get whatever drivers/patches are necessary.

 

[Gerry Voras]

This model of compaq has a custom HAL.