I then created a new project and added an 18 min clip to the timeline (NOT the first clip from the VS 9 project - could usage be related to clip content?) and did a create video file - usage indicated that both cores were being used, although usage never got about 55%. I didn't render any more than about 2 - 3minites of the clip due to time pressures (my wife is getting me to type in her half-yearly school reports
).So you can't really draw any concrete conclusions from this effort in futility
I would like to spend some more time tonight and get more exhaustive information but I am starting to wonder whether it is worth wasting my time over - all I am getting out of this at the moment is a clean baseline for my computer! BTW, I seriously doubt that any Microsoft patches would affect the operability of VS 10 with dual-cores, to the best of my knowledge, the majority of patches (if not all?) deal with pluging security holes in microsoft OS/applications. Certainly Microsoft are not "enhancing" XP at all these days - their focus is on the mythical beast called Vista (due out anytime now - in the next decade at least
).Peter