Operating System / Software Installation Guide

[im2good4u]

i have an P4P800-deluxe mobo and currently, i'm only using 1x SATA drive and 2x optical drives on the primary IDE cable. does enabling the RAID option can improve the performance? or is it much better when it is disabled?

do i still need to install th IAAr even when i disable the RAID in my bios?

[CrowdAds]

[JJ3and1]

As I'm understanding it the only purpose for enabling the raid options would be if you're going to use raid. I don't believe there is any benefit otherwise, in fact the puter may not even run right. It may start trying to find the other HD and give an error.

Secondly, (and I would like to read comment from someone who knows more on this subject.) I believe that seperating the optical drives on both primary and secondary IDE channels will improve performance if you are copying from one to the other. It is my understanding that one channel cannot make full use of the cache buffers of the drives cause one channel cant do two things at once. (reads and writes) But lets wait for a more knowledgable response than the one I offered LOL . This is only as I understand it, and I can hardly figure out what I'm doing.


good luck,
joe

[jlmorris]

Well, don't count me in the "more knowledgeable" count, however I've had the best luck chaining the two drives together. I had them on separate channels but always had problems where the disc-to-disc burns were fraught with burn proof continually kicking in so I chained them together. I don't have any issues with copying disc-to-disc on the fly this way, but maybe I've been lucky?

A friend of mine had the same problem with copying on the fly and he had them chained to separate channels, put them both on one and he had the same experience I did (problem went away).

There are probably a number of circumstances that determine which way is more successful than the other for any given setup.

Like your sig-line JJ3...felt that way myself many times.

[AHLnut]

i have also had the best luck having both optical drives on the same channel. It doesnt slow down cd to cd burns at all for me.

[Cole_abx]

Originally posted by reclinemusic
Concerning installing driver and control panel for an ATI Radeon 9700 - this manual recommends not restarting between installing the driver and installing the control panel. I accidentally restarted after installing the driver and then after restart installed the control panel.

Is there any reason why you shouldn't restart between installing the driver and control panel?

I've always restarted between installing driver and control panel.

Just curious about this step, thats all.

Thanks

I think the reason for the instruction being not to restart is so that you save yourself a restart.
When It is done per. Mr.Steveo's instruction only 2 re-starts are needed . 1 after the completion of installation of all the software and another one after the Smartgart trick to help with slow 2D performance. I would think that you have caused no harm and only went through 1 unnecessary re-start but Im pretty sure you achieved the exact same end result that not re-starting gives.


HTH

Cole(Videocard Confused)ski

[im2good4u]

thanks for the answers guys, one more thing tho, how can i find out if i have SP1a installed in my windows XP? coz my borther got this cd and it says Windows XP PRO w/ SP2 (integrated). i installed it and saw in the mycomputer-->properties-->General that i have SP1 installed. how would you know if you have SP1a and SP1 only?

[Ralf Hutter]

Originally posted by im2good4u
thanks for the answers guys, one more thing tho, how can i find out if i have SP1a installed in my windows XP? coz my borther got this cd and it says Windows XP PRO w/ SP2 (integrated). i installed it and saw in the mycomputer-->properties-->General that i have SP1 installed. how would you know if you have SP1a and SP1 only?

IIRC, the only difference between SP1 and SP1a is that MS removed the JAVA VM from SP1a. So if you don't have the MS JVM you have SP1a, if you do have it, you have SP1.

It may well also call it out in the "about Windows" description. Open up any Explorer window (Explorer, not Internet Explorer) and go to "Help>About Windows" and you'll see which version you're running. Mine says "Version 5.1 (Build 260...blah, blah, SP1)", and I'm running SP1. Maybe if you're running SP1a, it will say "SP1a".

[im2good4u]

mine says version 5.1 and SP1,
**but check this out, in the add/remove programs panel there is a program named "Windows XP Hotfix (SP2) q812415". can you guys verify this.

[JoeBar]

Originally posted by im2good4u
mine says version 5.1 and SP1,
**but check this out, in the add/remove programs panel there is a program named "Windows XP Hotfix (SP2) q812415". can you guys verify this.

Have u installed any other xp updates besides SP1?

[JJ3and1]

Hi everyone. Ok, I'm muddling my way through Steveo's wonderful guide for installation.

I have come to the part where I'm going to install Direct X 9. Or at least I thought I was going to install it.

The file name DX90UPDATE_REDIST.EXE was the file I downloaded from the quick step page on Steveos manual.

I copied it to a folder I made on my HD along with all the other advised downloads. I clicked on the filename. It is a selfextracting zip file. Prior to unzipping it showed a default path that it was going to unzip to. I clicked ok and it did it's thing.

The thing unzipped into a TEMP folder about six layers down. And for whatever reason, even though I enabled show all folders, show system files, unhide blah blah .. ya know the whole thing. In my view set up. Initially this TEMP folder wasn't even showing up. In one of those "computer moments" it just became available to see after a dozen trys in Windows Explorer.

Anyway..... I've gotta go way down a zillion sub-directories just to get to this thing. and yes .. finally I found a file called DXSETUP.EXE but being the paranoid installer, I said to myself .. naaa ...this can't be. The average person would never find this thing. I must have missed something .. somewhere. Some kind of directions .. something...

So I went back to the link from Steveo's quick steps. I read the instructions on how to install this Direct X. and there were NO instructions on how to install it. Only instructions on how to download it. HOWEVER.... I did see this, I copied and pasted it below for you to see.....

DirectX 9.0b has a silent install (no UI, and no reboot) which is available to Microsoft Volume License Customers (VLC) on the following Microsoft Volume License Site (MVLS). This is a Multi-lingual package which does not require an internet connection during installation.

Now am I to assume that the mere self extraction of this program also made an install? I mean it unzipped itself in maybe 3 or 4 seconds. It couldn't have installed that fast. Even though I came withing inches of clicking on that DXSETUP.EXE file I rethought it, and said, Joe... you know what happens when you assume! LOL

I'm completely lost again, and wonder if someone could beat some sense into me. I mean, in Steveo's Guide, it says to follow the instructions for install, I hadda miss something, no?

thanks,
joe

[VSEKH]

I also downloaded the big file for dx90b. It does not start the installation automatically. What I did to make things easy was create a directx90b folder on my desktop, extracted the dx90b files to this folder, then ran the installation.

[JJ3and1]

Thanks VSEKH. Actually I did consider making a folder on my desktop just like you said. But here's how paranoid I am I figured, with my luck, this install will put some of its needed files into the folder it downloaded to. Now If I make a folder on my desktop, do an install, and then delete the folder, I'm gonna end up deleting part of the program.

You see how bad I got it? LOL Murphy is lurking about! I'm a neurotic computer builder. Shoot, Steveo mentioned a part in his guide right after the Intel Inf. file install that asks you to look in device manager for the 4 usbs and one usb2 etc. .... then he wrote, if its not like this, stop and post on the forum. I'm STILL trying to figure out why mine was OK! LOL

Well, I'm going back to that thing and I'm clicking on DXSETUP.EXE! They'll never get me.... I have 3 desktops and a laptop going now .. hahaha ... they'll never get me! Sorry, I went away, but I'm back now!

thanks,
joe

[JJ3and1]

Hi all. Ok ... I'm on line and typing from the new computer. Ha, I ran another wire from my router down to my basement where I am putting this thing together. I may never go back upstairs again.

I'm at step 30 in Steveo's guide, I went to download the "non drivers" updates. Is there supposed to be a heading for that specifically? There were quite a few updates scanned for this puter. I think 29. I hate to just click OK for the lot of em.

Also, if anyone should know. I'd like to ask two more set up questions. The first one is, how do you change the default address in Windows Explorer from "My Documents" to just "C:\" ? I tried in folder options but it just went back to My Docs.

And, I remember in Win98 I was able to set my drive letter for my CDs and DVDs so they were fixed. I used to call one "R" and the other "W" (for read and write) But the main reason I did this is so that if I plugged in anything down the road it wouldn't move my DVD and CD. Some programs that require the CD to be in get lost when that happens so I wanted to change them if I could.

Guess I make a good forum insurance policy. With a dope like me around, ya never gotta worry about running out of questions.


thanks very much again!
joe

[JJ3and1]

More trouble sorry. I'm at the point of installing the ATI file wxp-w2k-catalyst-7-991-040224m-013831c.exe

I have an ATI Radeon 9600xt card.

the install halted with an error message asking if I wanted to send a report to microsoft .. I said no

the window that came up and showed as follows was

ATI CIM Application Launcher Module
error signature
appname: aticim.bin appvcr 6.1.4.10.3009
modver: 5.1.2600.1134 offset: 00021697
modname: user32.dll

Any Ideas anyone?

the only thing I didn't follow .. cause I was unsure of all the windows updates in the previous step, I didnt download non driver updates before doing this. I can't imagine that most folks would do that before using video drivers. Should I try the version of the drivers that came with the Video Card on the CD?

thanks,
joe

[AHLnut]

JJ, did you d/l and install ATI or any other drivers through windows update? If you did, that very well could be the cause of your problem.