Apparently, if you have a multi-core processor, Windows Vista by default doesn’t recognize this at boot, despite both cores being available. The OS will leverage only a single core until a certain point in the system startup process.
If you’re like to enable the ability to take advantage of all the cores on your multi-core processor during system startup, follow the instructions below.
[WARNING: Doing the following can hose your system if you don’t know what you’re doing and/or make a mistake within the tool. Consider yourself warned.]
- Click START & RUN
- Type MSCONFIG & click OK
- Click on the “Boot” tab
- Click on the “Advanced Options” button
- Ensure that “Number of processors” is checked
- Select the number of cores you have from the drop down below.
This drop down will say “1” by default and can be changed to, say, 2. - Click OK & OK
- Reboot
Don’t expect anything dramatic. Startup’s bottleneck is primarily the hard drive and not CPU utilization. That being said, you’ll find that this can help quicken the process of booting up, logging in, and getting to a usable desktop.
[adapted from content originating at Blorge.com]
Kurt Shintaku's Blog 