This has been a tad frustrating but ever since upgrading my computer to a Dell Precision M90 (Dual Core) from a Dell Inspiron 8600 my favorite virtual drive application (DAEMON Tools) has not worked.  This has been a known issue with version 4.03 and well documented in the forums on their website, but on a whim today I decided to check to see if there were any updates.  As it so happens 4.06 was released just today.

I downloaded it and installed it and I'm happy to say the dual-core issue has been fixed - it worked first try!  :)  I'm so happy.

[UPDATE: 09/26/2006]
As it turns out, because I run as a non-administrator there is a bit of an issue running DAEMON Tools 4.06 once I rebooted.  To remedy this, I had to alter the registry to run DAEMON Tools as an administrator rather than my account at startup.  As a side effect, I have to provide admin credentials at boot up, but I'm willing to do this in order to get the software to work.

1. Open the Registry Editor (regedit.exe or regedt32.exe)
2. Open to HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run
3. Edit the string value called DAEMON Tools to have a value that resembles:

runas /user:MACHINENAME\Administrator "\"C:\\Program Files\\DAEMON Tools\\daemon.exe\" -lang 1033"