Increased number of cores from 2 to 4 on VMWare VM; Windows reports “two processors”

vmware-esx

I had a VM with two cores. I powered it down and changed the settings to four cores.

Here's what I see:

  • System (right-click on My Computer > Properties) reports "(2 processors)"
  • Task Manager shows two CPU core graphs
  • Device manager shows four CPUs under Processors
  • VMWare reports four CPUs

It seems strange. Am I missing some step to get Windows to use the remaining two CPUs?

I'm running Windows 7 SP1 x64.

Best Answer

You've give the VM 4 CPU's, Windows 7 will only deal with two physical CPUs, it'll see more but it's a client OS so only handles 2 at a time.

What you need to do is force it to think it's one CPU with four cores, by the way VMWare Workstation lets you define this on a per-VM basis as it's designed to Client OS based VMs, whereas ESXi is more focussed on the Server related OSs which can handle >2 physical CPUs.

Here's a hack/change to do what you need;

http://www.yellow-bricks.com/2009/06/04/per-processor-licenses-for-your-application/

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