P4DC6+ and Hyperthreading

I've got hyperthreading enabled in the BIOS on my P4DC6+ (dual Xeon
2.4's) and XP Professional shows 4 processors OK, but I'm not sure
things are working correctly. When I start a CPU-intensive process like
WinRAR, the first CPU in Task Manager pegs out at 100%, but just about
anything else I attempt to run seems to be waiting for CPU, even tho the
processor utilization shows only 25%. Shouldn't a new process be routed
to another CPU by the OS?

Anybody have any light to shed on this? I am thinking about disabling
hyperthreading in the BIOS. Any comments?

Thanks,
Luigi

"Luigi" <> wrote in message
news: th.net...
> I've got hyperthreading enabled in the BIOS on my P4DC6+ (dual Xeon
> 2.4's) and XP Professional shows 4 processors OK, but I'm not sure
> things are working correctly. When I start a CPU-intensive process like
> WinRAR, the first CPU in Task Manager pegs out at 100%, but just about
> anything else I attempt to run seems to be waiting for CPU, even tho the
> processor utilization shows only 25%. Shouldn't a new process be routed
> to another CPU by the OS?

It may well be that the applications usch as WinRAR are not multi-threaded
and only written to run on the first processor they see. The operating
system will not compensate for this.