• We’re currently investigating an issue related to the forum theme and styling that is impacting page layout and visual formatting. The problem has been identified, and we are actively working on a resolution. There is no impact to user data or functionality, this is strictly a front-end display issue. We’ll post an update once the fix has been deployed. Thanks for your patience while we get this sorted.

Newb doing first build - Couple Questions

J

jimfoto

Member
My motherboard finally arrived today and I'll be starting my first build.

Should I leave extra hard drives, video card (I've got an h67 board with graphics), card reader, dvd burner and wireless lan unplugged when I first fire it up to minimize possible errors/problems, or do I just hook it all up and see if it works?

Do I boot for the first time with the win7 disk in or boot first just to see if the bios checks out and recognizes everything?

The mobo (an Intel DH67CL) came with a disk with drivers etc. but it looks like the installer runs in Windows?

As best I can figure, I install the minimum amount of hardware to get up and running, boot using the win7 disk, when windows is installed, use the intel driver disk to install/ update drivers, then reboot with additional hardware.
 
Last edited:
jimfoto said:
As best I can figure, I install the minimum amount of hardware to get up and running, boot using the win7 disk, when windows is installed, use the intel driver disk to install/ update drivers, then reboot with additional hardware.
Click to expand...

Good plan, especially because of the card reader...you don't want it sucking up and reserving a bunch of drive letters, and screwing up the order of other devices. Install the reader only after all other devices are installed and assigned drive letters as you want them to be assigned.

Intel released a bunch of newer drivers and BIOS over the last couple of weeks for your board. You may not need the BIOS, be sure to check the readme for updates that could apply to you.

Anyway, toss the CD in a drawer. Pre-download the chipset drivers, video drivers, LAN drivers, audio drivers and USB3 drivers and store them on your thumb drive...on first Windows boot, cancel any hardware wizard prompts, then install drivers from the thumb drive in the order listed above.

http://www.intel.com/Products/Desktop/Motherboards/db-DH67CL/DH67CL-tools.htm

Don't forget to reboot every time you are prompted by Windows to do so.
 
Do a search for "Build and boot."

It's the best and most reliable way to build a new computer. This way, you know immediately if something's wrong...and what it is.
I prefer to start with the board sitting on cardboard or some other non-conductive surface...OUTSIDE the case for the first couple of steps...then, IF everything works right, install the board into the case.
 
jimfoto said:
Should I leave extra hard drives, video card (I've got an h67 board with graphics), card reader, dvd burner and wireless lan unplugged when I first fire it up to minimize possible errors/problems, or do I just hook it all up and see if it works?
Click to expand...

If you have one in the build, do your initial installation with only the SSD connected, then add your spindle (data) drives afterward.
 
Optical drives are okay -- was referring to actual locations that Windows could potentially install to... should have been more specific (sorry!).
 
stahlhart said:
If you have one in the build, do your initial installation with only the SSD connected, then add your spindle (data) drives afterward.
Click to expand...

:thumbsup: Great advice! If you do a clean install with multiple drives connected, Windows has a bad habit of putting the bootloader in a random place. This can really screw you over when you want to replace a drive. Only having the SSD and DVD drives hooked up for the initial install gets around this problem.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Back
Top