Perfect install wanted!

[Jimmy Little]

Just wondered if any of you guys have an install guide to get the best results out of my new system I’m building…

Shuttle SN45G
512 Kingston (got it free so can’t complain!)
Sapphire ATI RADEON 9600 128mb
AMD ATHLON XP 2500+ 333FSB
80GB Caviar, WD800JB, 7200rpm, 8mb

any tips would be great, I will be using windows xp

[directhex]

put them all in, push the power button 8D

--jo

[Trickle]

After pressing the power button:

...press delete and fiddle with your bios settings, then save and reboot. [making sure to have it set to boot from CD]

Pop cd in and follow XP install instructions.

Once windows is installed you wil need to do the following:

De teletubbify
[Turn off winUpdate/IE update if running XPcorp]
[May want to Defrag HD: and set up your swapfile preference at this point]
If its picked up your NIC and your on Cable/DSL router then you may want to get the net working for M$ updates etc. Otherwise...

Run the 100+ meg XP SP1 update (the network install file) that you've burnt to CD, then install mobo drivers off cd.

After installing mobo drivers you can do what you want. I.e you may want to get out of 800x600 - so install GFX drivers after installing DX9.

After that comes:
Installing Firewall
Getting net connection up.
Running XP antispy.
Turning off unnecessary winNT service fluff
[may want to start overclocking and getting a benchmark or 2 on a near vanilla system at this point - also useful to make sure mobo drivers have taken hold and everything is working at 100% expected speed for your spec]

Install further XP patches if you plan to install these separately - Blaster worm fix being essential etc.

Update your preferred browser with your exported favourites. Update your mail program with exported settings etc.
Install essential utilities - AVG, SpybotSD/Ad-aware, bittorent, wcpuid, AnalogX (for testing network card speed if this is a gateway machine), Riva tuner (or other preferred gfx tweak util), Mpeg4 codecs, samurize scripts etc etc
Install essential programs - Word, Photoshop etc
[uninstall MSN/OE]


**Assumptions**
1. You arnt running your boot HD: off SATA.
2. This is an NF2 board? If you havent turned of USB2, you will want to install SP1 prior to running mobo driver install - which is a pain, as installing mobo drivers is best done asap - you cant safely install USB DSL modems without it etc - so cant do win update to get SP1 = chicken and egg etc.

[this post could have been huge, I'm just not going to get everything covered so I'm giving upi here. I should have left it at DX's post ]

[Trickle]

Bangs head against desk.

For some reason I thought you were asking how to go about setting up your new machine from scratch

[Gubs]

Originally posted by Trickle
2. This is an NF2 board? If you havent turned of USB2, you will want to install SP1 prior to running mobo driver install - which is a pain, as installing mobo drivers is best done asap - you cant safely install USB DSL modems without it etc - so cant do win update to get SP1 = chicken and egg etc.

Couldn't this be circumvented by installing SP1 together with Windows, using one of them there slipstreamed CDs I seem to keep reading about? eg. www.theeldergeek.com/slipstreamed_xpsp1_cd.htm

Also (and forgive me if it's a n00b question) why would you want to turn off Windows Update?

[Trickle]

Just not the thing to do when your running corp.

Naturally your only running corp in place of your licensed version for the hassle factor

[Private Pyle]

Are you going too do the last step that I found a blessing, after installing XP, service pack, direct x and drivers patches etc....

get hold of a copy of norton ghost and either burn an image of the drive onto cds or simply direct it to save on another drive/partition.

Put ur lovely clean setup in an image file then reinstallation takes only a few mins.