Problems with dual processor and PCI bus: is it possible to excluded one processor?

[Francesco]

Hello. I'm doing repeated tests on some external hardware using 2 PCI
boards. The system crashes after a random number of tests and I cannot
find out why.

I tried to move all the boards in another pc and had the same result.

Both PCs have Windows 2000 and are dual processor. One is a dual
Pentium III 700 MhZ and I don't know the motherboard, all I can read
on it is: 694D Pro V1.0, the second is a dual AMD 2200 with a K7D
Master v.1 motherboard.

A colleague of mine (who is working abroad) has the same boards, the
same software, but a Pentium II single CPU and have no problems. We
checked everything and everything seems to match. The only "problem"
is that I have dual processors machines.

So I think there is a problem with PCI bus and dual processor
motherboard.

I don't have a single processor machine to test now, can anybody tell
me:

1) If it's possible that a dual processor machine have problems in
managing the PCI bus?

2) How is it possible to disable one CPU in the BIOS (I cannot find
this option in the menu)?

Thanks!

Francesco.

 

[Bjorn Landemoo]

Francesco

1) There was a problem with a PCI NIC in NT4 that only occurred in multi
processor systems, see this MS Knowledge Base article:

http://support.microsoft.com/?id=272229

This means that it might be your PCI devices, or the drivers for them that
are at fault.

2) Use the NUMPROC switch in boot.ini to use only one processor during
testing, see this article:

http://support.microsoft.com/?id=170756

Best regards

Bjorn