This blog post is about how I solved the problem when a CPU was being wrongly reported in Windows 10 after I had replaced the CPU on a motherboard.
Introduction
I’ve being upgrading a few old computers and on a HP Compaq dx2420 motherboard, I replaced a Pentium Dual-Core E5300 2.6GHz CPU, with a second-hand Intel Core 2 Duo CPU E8400 3Ghz.
The problem was, that when I opened Task Manager or looked at ‘Device specifications’, it still showed the old CPU, whilst CPU-Z was happy to acknowledge the computer upgrade.
Task Manager CPU E5300 2.60GHz
CPU-Z with E8400 3GHz listed.
When I opened ‘Device Manager’ it was still showing the old processors that had already been removed. Luckily the solution was simply and below I will inform you what I did to solve the problem.
How I solved the problem:
- I logged into an administrator account, right clicked on the Windows icon and selected ‘Device Manager’.
- I double clicked on ‘Processors’ from the list.
- I then right-clicked on a processor and selected ‘Uninstall device’ and after it was removed, did the same to the remaining processor in the list.
- I then rebooted the PC.
When I next looked at Device Manager and elsewhere the processors list had been updated and was showing details for the recent CPU I had installed.
Final thoughts
I’m not sure if correcting the wrongly reported CPU problem makes any difference to system performance. I’ve had to perform the steps above a few times, but at least the solution is simple and I hope this blog post has helped others.