CPU, socket or board?

Curious Pineapple · April 7, 2019

I have a HP Z800 workstation, 2 actually but one is a bit b0rked. Both CPU sockets had damaged pins and the machine was missing a power supply. I also have a couple of Dell Precisions and the dead one that's full of water damage has an LGA1366 Xeon in it. After bending the pins straight I put in the questionable Xeon and the power supply, and it boots, sort of. Gets a few seconds into booting Windows 10 and it locks up. The drive was last used in the working Z800 so it shouldnt be an issue with hardware compatability.

I tried another drive I have about with Windows 8 on it, and that boots up, installs new hardware and works fine, except 4.1 GB of memory is hardware reserved. Out with the CPU, check pins again, back in and this time I use a 2GB memory stick. Boots fine, all memory detected and it's then I realise that Win 8 is the 32 bit version, and both windows 10 64 and an Ubuntu 64 bit install disk lock up within a few seconds of starting to boot.

I'm a bit cautious about putting one of my known good Xeons in the machine. Any ideas on if a damaged CPU would cause problems on a 64-bit OS but be seemingly fine with 32? I'm aware that all x86 processors start up initially in an 8 bit compatability mode and it's down to the OS to put the CPU into the correct operating mode so it's a possibility.