Dual Processors Slower than Expected (W2K)

[dys2]

I have a home built PC with the following hardware:
dual Gb P3 processors
1024 PC-133 DRAM
Voodoo 5 5500 AGP
Dual IDE Hard drives (both 7200 RPM)
Windows 2000 Professional

I understand that transferring files from one hard drive to the other is more dependent upon the speed of the hard drives rather than the processors, but should my system lag to the point of barely being able to work while transferring those files? Same thing when burning to CD. The system becomes so dogged that windows appear "stuck" on the screen for a brief time even when closing them. Am I being greedy? I really can't afford going SCSI. I've also defragged and kept my hard drives fairly clean.

I've viewed system performance through the task manager and see my CPU's both working harder than expected. Both sometimes peaking to over 60%.

It seems that my Athlon 900 was just as fast as this machine with all the same hardware. (except the obvious CPU change)

Also, is there anyway that I can dictate which programs get priority from the CPU's? Can I designate CPU usage to specific applications when multitasking?

All I ever hear is that many software apps aren't capable of utilizing dual processors. Now, I'm a hardware guy and like to blame everything on software, should I be giving MS the evil eye or is there something I'm ignorant of within 2k that's keeping me from being a multitasking monster?

Any info or links would greatly be appreciated, and thanks for reading my lengthy post. I know that I should have been a novelist.

[Andy-S]

Did you have the dual processors installed when you installed Windows 2000? Windows 2000 requires the multiprocessor HAL.

Check out the link below to see the steps required to determine what mode you are set up for.

<a target="_blank" href=http://www.eu.microsoft.com/technet/treeview/default.asp?url=/TechNet/prodtechnol/windows2000serv/tips/devman.asp>http://www.eu.microsoft.com/technet/treeview/default.asp?url=/TechNet/prodtechnol/windows2000serv/tips/devman.asp</a>

[dys2]

Yessir, both CPU's were installed prior to installing an OS. I assume that gives me the correct HAL?
I am not familiar with that.
If i go to task manager and view performance, it does recognize and display a graph for each processor.

I'll go over that link again, but I think that is more for upgrading from uni to dual processor.
Regardless, I appreciate your time, thank you.

[pow_bsod]

If those hard drives are master and slave to the same controller, there will be nearly no differance in transfer speed regardless of RAM/CPU amount/speed....you will be riding a very slow data bus taking turns on the controller.