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Enable Duo-Core AMD CPU?

Just purchased an HP Pavillion dv9720us laptop from Circuit City, and the guy said that they would do all the setup for us for a fee.  I opted not to do this, but one thing he mentioned that I thought was interesting was that he mentioned all the Duo-Core CPU's come with one core disabled by default, and part of their service was to enable it.

I've checked the BIOS settings, and could not find anything specific about this.  Nor could I in any other part of the computer - can someone shed light on this?

Is this just a sales tactic to get people to get their Firedog service?

Regards,
Joe
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jamietoner
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I know in the old days when you had the hyperthreaded CPU's, the hyperthreading was turned off by default; but I've never heard of this with the new Duo-Core CPU's.

I feel its the Circuit City's sales person's way of trying to get a sale on their computer installation services - perhaps he gets commissions based upon it.

I do see the 2 cores in the performance tab, so I feel its running in full horse power - I just wanted to get another opionion.
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When they say "SETUP for a fee" what does this involve?
 Did the laptop come with no operating system(I doubt it). It would have to in order to do what he says. The multi processor aspect is built into the installation process of the operating system(Vista I presume) and HP isn't shipping any laptops without an operating system these days.
It's a scam!!
The only way both cores wouldn't be enabled is if XP or Vista had been installed with the wrong HAL (hardware abstraction layer) ==> and that's simply NOT the case with any commercial system !!

You've already done what I would suggest:   Simply look on the Performance tab of Task Manager.   If it shows two cores ... then you're using two cores !!   Just load Task Manager, and then use the system for a while => then look at the history on the Performance tab.   You'll see that both cores are being used :-)

Bottom line:  As sparkmaker noted, it's a scam.

The setup fee involved setting up the laptop - which the OS was already pre-loaded.

Part of that was creating the system restore CD's (which anyone can do), "enabling" the duo-core CPU (we all gather is now just a scam to scare people into doing it - I do recall him saying people that opt out of it, come back saying they can't figure it out and pay them to do it for them [obviously they can't find it cause it's already enabled!!]), and I guess go through the initial configuration of the HP Wizard when you first turn it on for them...

I've determined its a total scam.

-Joe