Enabling Dual-CPU Support in Windows 2000 under VmWare

Filed under: TechNotes, VMWare — lars @ 04:21:45 pm

After my triumph converting a VmWare virtual machine for use with VirtualBox, I thought I'd attempt another job that I've been meaning to give a go for some time - enabling Dual CPU support in a Windows 2000 VM that I use, so that the guest can take advantage of both cores in my dual-core CPU. Windows 2000 selects a HAL (Hardware Abstraction Layer) at install-time, which either supports or does not support multiple processors. To enable SMP support after this time, you have to do a repair installation which enables a new HAL to be detected. (Some background info can be found here).

To do this, you'll need:

  • Your original Windows 2000 boot CD or ISO image
  • A Windows 2000 CD Key

And the steps are as follows:

  1. Make sure the VM is shut down cleanly (ie not suspended).
  2. First thing was to copy the VM image (or take a snapshot), in case you break it.
  3. Edit the Virtual Machine configuration to set 2 processors. You can do this by double-clicking on processors in the VmWare Workstation 6.0 GUI, or you can edit the "numvcpus" value in the Virtual Machine definition (.vmx file) manually using a text editor. This change in our 'virtual hardware' should now be detected during the repair installation, resulting in a different HAL being installed.
  4. Boot the VM off the Windows 2000 install CD. As soon as you see the prompt 'Press F6 if you need to install a third party SCSI or RAID driver.', pressed F7. (Yes, that's right, F7, not F6). Note - there is no visual feedback to show that you've pressed F7 - you just have to cross your fingers that it worked!When prompted to select between install or repair, select install (ENTER).
  5. Hit F8 to agree to license.
  6. Select your windows install and select 'R' for repair.
  7. Windows will copy some files, then reboot. Now let your VM boot from the hard-drive (Not the CD-ROM) and an 'Upgrade' install will commence - including completely new hardware detection.
  8. As part of this install, you will need to re-enter your product key!
  9. When the install completes, your VM will reboot. Allow it to boot from the hard-drive again.
  10. After logging in, if you look at Task Manager you should be able to see 2 graphs - one for each CPU. (You might need to select View -> CPU History -> One Graph Per CPU in order for this to work)

Note that enabling dual-cpu support may not give you the performance boost you are expecting! Stay tuned for another post soon where I do some performance comparisons on this!

Note2 - The above process seems to wipe out your HOSTS file - if you have made any changes to this, you'll need to re-add them. Any applications you had installed *should* still work, but ofcourse there are no guarantees - this could vary between different applications.

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