- Jan 23, 2003
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I have a few pressing questions i'd like some answers to
Feel free to answer as many or few as you like. All imput is greatly appreciated.
Firstly, my current system specs:
P4 2.0ghz 400mhz fsb
512mb nanya 2100 (266) ddr ram (note: spd says 2300 ?)
Asus P4S533 mobo (lan/audio/ddr333/ata133)
1x Maxtor 80gig ata133 drive
1x Seagate Baracuda 80gig ata100 drive
ATI all-in-wonder 7500
1x (soon to be 2x) Proview 17" LCD monitor
Pionner A05 DVD-RW
LG 8X DVD-Rom
SoundBlaster Live 5.1
Adaptec firewire 1394 card
WinXp Pro w/ Sp1
I have recently upgrade to XP from 2000, and am loving it. I use my system mostly for video editing/graphics work, and only ocasional gaming. I don't really care about 3d quality. I want to do a few upgrades, but am not looking to speed a hell of a lot of money.
Here's my questions:
1) After upgrading to xp, at startup, i get a screen asking me if i'd like to boot either XP or 2000. I have deleted everything 2000ish that i can find, but this screen still comes up. Any way to get rid of it? (2000 won't boot, as it is gone
2)In xp, funky problem. -> every time i restart my toolbars in IE and taskbar seem to reset themselves.. ie. they move to default config. not where i had them last time.
3)I'm about to get myself a second LCD monitor, and would like to setup a dual-monitor system. My current vid card (All-in-wonder 7500) doesn't support 2 displays. I was thinking about getting and older PCI vid card to run the second monitor. Ati's hydravision and Xp should be able to set this up, right? I was thinking of a Radeon 32mb PCI card so that it would 'play nice' with my AIW 7500.. but someone told me that 2x radeon's don't work well, and that i should get an older Xpert or something of the like. Anyone have expereience w/ this? I thought about just getting a dual display capeable card (Radeon VE or Matrox maybe) but i really like my AIW features (watching tv, mostly). What's the best thing to do? Will an older Xpert PCI card give me decent 2d graphics for my second monitor?
4)WinXp installed it's own drivers my for my lan card, sound card and IDE interface. everything seems to work fine! is there any point in installing the drivers that came w/ my hardware?
5)In WinXp, using TweakXp, I have setup my primary paging file on my second 80gig drive, the one that doesn't have the OS. This is good right?
6)I have a 512 stick of Nanya 2100 ddr ram. Will adding more, say another 256 or 512 stick give me much of a perfomance increase? I do alot of multitasking, but looking at my ramidle taskbar thingie, i rarely ever get below 128 of free ram. Should i think about getting some pc2700 ram, as my mobo supports this. It would be running async though, cuz my fsb is only 100mhz, right? (on that note, isn't 266 ddr in a system w/ a 100mhz fsb running async? wouldn't it run at 200mhz? hence: 2x100 for the "Doube Data Rate".
7)I have 2 80 gig hard drives. One is ata100, and the other is ata133. Right now, my OS is on the ata133 drive, and i use the other drive for my video storage. I was thinking about setting up a RAID0 (Stripping) array for better performance. Is this easy to do? I assume the raid array needs fresh, formated drives, so i'd have to start from scratch, right? Also, is this setup reliable? (2x drives prolly means 2x the chance of failure).. and I assume if one drive dies, then the data on the other is useless. Should i think about setting one of these up.. or waiting for a high performance SATA 8mb cache drive? (I heard something about 10,000rpm sata drives). I don't think i'm ready for $ of SCSI, so what's my best bet right now? should i leave it the way it is because the RAID hassle isn't worth the speed gains, or what?
8)What should i upgrade first? my Ram or my hard drives? I think i'm gona hold of on CPU for a little bit. I'd like to get an 800mhz cpu w/ HT when they're available.. and a new mobo too.
9)I'm having problems w/ win xp and my HP scanjet 3400c scanner. I d/l latest drivers from hp, and installed em. Everything looks great, scanner is detected and is 'working fine' according to device manager, how ever, the scanning software says some thing to the effect of 'scanner can not be found'.. anyone have any suggestions?
10) This is a long shot but, i have a mini webcam called a "Qcam210" that i have lost the driver cd for. Can't find drivers anywhere on the net. any thing generic i could try installing to get this thing to work w/ xp?
Thanks for any replies. I know some of this doesn't belong in this forum, so just ignore it, if you like.
Feel free to answer as many or few as you like. All imput is greatly appreciated.
Firstly, my current system specs:
P4 2.0ghz 400mhz fsb
512mb nanya 2100 (266) ddr ram (note: spd says 2300 ?)
Asus P4S533 mobo (lan/audio/ddr333/ata133)
1x Maxtor 80gig ata133 drive
1x Seagate Baracuda 80gig ata100 drive
ATI all-in-wonder 7500
1x (soon to be 2x) Proview 17" LCD monitor
Pionner A05 DVD-RW
LG 8X DVD-Rom
SoundBlaster Live 5.1
Adaptec firewire 1394 card
WinXp Pro w/ Sp1
I have recently upgrade to XP from 2000, and am loving it. I use my system mostly for video editing/graphics work, and only ocasional gaming. I don't really care about 3d quality. I want to do a few upgrades, but am not looking to speed a hell of a lot of money.
Here's my questions:
1) After upgrading to xp, at startup, i get a screen asking me if i'd like to boot either XP or 2000. I have deleted everything 2000ish that i can find, but this screen still comes up. Any way to get rid of it? (2000 won't boot, as it is gone
2)In xp, funky problem. -> every time i restart my toolbars in IE and taskbar seem to reset themselves.. ie. they move to default config. not where i had them last time.
3)I'm about to get myself a second LCD monitor, and would like to setup a dual-monitor system. My current vid card (All-in-wonder 7500) doesn't support 2 displays. I was thinking about getting and older PCI vid card to run the second monitor. Ati's hydravision and Xp should be able to set this up, right? I was thinking of a Radeon 32mb PCI card so that it would 'play nice' with my AIW 7500.. but someone told me that 2x radeon's don't work well, and that i should get an older Xpert or something of the like. Anyone have expereience w/ this? I thought about just getting a dual display capeable card (Radeon VE or Matrox maybe) but i really like my AIW features (watching tv, mostly). What's the best thing to do? Will an older Xpert PCI card give me decent 2d graphics for my second monitor?
4)WinXp installed it's own drivers my for my lan card, sound card and IDE interface. everything seems to work fine! is there any point in installing the drivers that came w/ my hardware?
5)In WinXp, using TweakXp, I have setup my primary paging file on my second 80gig drive, the one that doesn't have the OS. This is good right?
6)I have a 512 stick of Nanya 2100 ddr ram. Will adding more, say another 256 or 512 stick give me much of a perfomance increase? I do alot of multitasking, but looking at my ramidle taskbar thingie, i rarely ever get below 128 of free ram. Should i think about getting some pc2700 ram, as my mobo supports this. It would be running async though, cuz my fsb is only 100mhz, right? (on that note, isn't 266 ddr in a system w/ a 100mhz fsb running async? wouldn't it run at 200mhz? hence: 2x100 for the "Doube Data Rate".
7)I have 2 80 gig hard drives. One is ata100, and the other is ata133. Right now, my OS is on the ata133 drive, and i use the other drive for my video storage. I was thinking about setting up a RAID0 (Stripping) array for better performance. Is this easy to do? I assume the raid array needs fresh, formated drives, so i'd have to start from scratch, right? Also, is this setup reliable? (2x drives prolly means 2x the chance of failure).. and I assume if one drive dies, then the data on the other is useless. Should i think about setting one of these up.. or waiting for a high performance SATA 8mb cache drive? (I heard something about 10,000rpm sata drives). I don't think i'm ready for $ of SCSI, so what's my best bet right now? should i leave it the way it is because the RAID hassle isn't worth the speed gains, or what?
8)What should i upgrade first? my Ram or my hard drives? I think i'm gona hold of on CPU for a little bit. I'd like to get an 800mhz cpu w/ HT when they're available.. and a new mobo too.
9)I'm having problems w/ win xp and my HP scanjet 3400c scanner. I d/l latest drivers from hp, and installed em. Everything looks great, scanner is detected and is 'working fine' according to device manager, how ever, the scanning software says some thing to the effect of 'scanner can not be found'.. anyone have any suggestions?
10) This is a long shot but, i have a mini webcam called a "Qcam210" that i have lost the driver cd for. Can't find drivers anywhere on the net. any thing generic i could try installing to get this thing to work w/ xp?
Thanks for any replies. I know some of this doesn't belong in this forum, so just ignore it, if you like.