Daysleeper
9th May 2005, 18:17
I've finally admited defeat and acknowledged that PCs are superior games machines to Macs.
I've ordered a bunch of bits which should arrive this week in order to self assemble a new PC.
Has anyone out there done this recently and if so what are the pitfalls to avoid particularly with regard to BIOS settings and installing win xp?
Cheers.
AMD 64 3000+
Abit AX8 (s939) PCI-E
1gb Ram
Ge Force 6600 PCI-E
Box, 400w PSU
SATA HDD, DVD-ROM
2 case fans
spannersatcx
9th May 2005, 19:02
During the initial installation of Windows, you will need to press F6 almost immediately when "Setup is inspecting your hardware..." appears on the screen. You will then be asked to provide any mass storage controller drivers you may have. At this point, use the drivers supplied by your controller manufacturer. After performing the steps above, the drive will be recognized and the install should continue without problems.
If your Serial ATA (SATA) controller is a bootable controller (the vast majority are) you may boot from the SATA drive. You may need to enter Setup and change the boot sequence so that the SATA controller is the first boot device listed. In most cases, if the SATA controller is embedded (not an add-on controller card) on the motherboard, the BIOS Setup utility will have an option to choose the SATA drive as the first boot device. Look for Boot Sequence, Boot Options, Boot Order or a similar setting to make this change. If Setup does not allow this change, your system BIOS may not allow the SATA controller to be designated as a boot device at the BIOS level. In such cases, you still may be able to boot to the SATA drive as long as there is not a bootable EIDE drive installed in the system as well.
Apart from that I wouldn't make any changes to the BIOS until, everything is up and running and working OK. Most MOB's these day auto detect a lot of stuff, mem etc, so there isn't really a lot of adjustments you should need to make.