I'm installing the "Dragon2" system below in my sig. on Thursday night and beyond except now I'm using an Asus P4P800-Deluxe MB instead because the Dragon2 won't post. I have a bunch of questions for anyone that can answer. Please indicate question # in your answers. Thank you.
System Connections
1. Since I eventually want to move both my HDs to IDE 3/4, should I start with one HD on IDE1 and one CD/DVD device on IDE2 (as masters without slaves of course) to install XP?
Bios and Startup
2. I have 2-3-3-6 RAM, but DRAM Burst Length is not part of this. Should I set it to 4 clocks (default) or 8 clocks? I'm not overclocking anything for now.
3. I'm pretty sure I'm going to set the AGP aperture to 128MB, but a system install guide I was reading says to set it to match your VRAM and my VRAM is 256MB. I'll probably only bump it up to 256 for Doom3 and beyond. Good plan?
4. Here's some questions I'm sure everyone asks. PnP OS or not? ACPI or not? APM or not? Actually, I'm going to try to disable PnP OS and enable ACPI and APM. I was going to try setting HAL to Standard PC and then disable ACPI, but this may cause more problems than it is worth. What do you guys think?
5. What about ACPI 2.0 Support, ACPI APIC Support, and Bios > AML ACPI Table? Should all these be enabled?
6. What's Add On ROM Display Mode? The default is Force Bios, other choice is Keep Current.
7. Any advantages to enabling Wait For 'F1' If Error?
Hard Drive Partitioning
8. I have a 200GB HD, should my primary partition be 20GB or is this too large? I was originally thinking more like 15GB. That same system install guide I mentioned earlier says at least 20GB for a 120GB HD.
9. Should I create a partition for a swapfile (at beginning) on 2nd 200GB HD being used for backup of first (not RAID)? If so, how big should it be with 1GB or RAM? 2GB of RAM? I was thinking maybe a 4GB partition.
WindowsXP Install
10. After setting all bios settings, do I need a startup disk or do I just use the XP CD?
11. Does Drive Image come with XP or do I have to buy this to backup partitions? Or will DriveCopy 3.0 work in XP?
12. Should I copy the entire I386 installation directory to a partition and point to this instead of WinXP CD during installation?
Drivers and Apps
13. Will I need to update the ASPI layer for my CD/DVD devices or is the XP one fine?
14. Should I install DirectX before the video drivers?
15. Now that I'm using a different MB, I'm going to have to come up with a new name for my new system. Any suggestions?
Thanks for any help on any of these questions!
System Connections
1. Since I eventually want to move both my HDs to IDE 3/4, should I start with one HD on IDE1 and one CD/DVD device on IDE2 (as masters without slaves of course) to install XP?
Bios and Startup
2. I have 2-3-3-6 RAM, but DRAM Burst Length is not part of this. Should I set it to 4 clocks (default) or 8 clocks? I'm not overclocking anything for now.
3. I'm pretty sure I'm going to set the AGP aperture to 128MB, but a system install guide I was reading says to set it to match your VRAM and my VRAM is 256MB. I'll probably only bump it up to 256 for Doom3 and beyond. Good plan?
4. Here's some questions I'm sure everyone asks. PnP OS or not? ACPI or not? APM or not? Actually, I'm going to try to disable PnP OS and enable ACPI and APM. I was going to try setting HAL to Standard PC and then disable ACPI, but this may cause more problems than it is worth. What do you guys think?
5. What about ACPI 2.0 Support, ACPI APIC Support, and Bios > AML ACPI Table? Should all these be enabled?
6. What's Add On ROM Display Mode? The default is Force Bios, other choice is Keep Current.
7. Any advantages to enabling Wait For 'F1' If Error?
Hard Drive Partitioning
8. I have a 200GB HD, should my primary partition be 20GB or is this too large? I was originally thinking more like 15GB. That same system install guide I mentioned earlier says at least 20GB for a 120GB HD.
9. Should I create a partition for a swapfile (at beginning) on 2nd 200GB HD being used for backup of first (not RAID)? If so, how big should it be with 1GB or RAM? 2GB of RAM? I was thinking maybe a 4GB partition.
WindowsXP Install
10. After setting all bios settings, do I need a startup disk or do I just use the XP CD?
11. Does Drive Image come with XP or do I have to buy this to backup partitions? Or will DriveCopy 3.0 work in XP?
12. Should I copy the entire I386 installation directory to a partition and point to this instead of WinXP CD during installation?
Drivers and Apps
13. Will I need to update the ASPI layer for my CD/DVD devices or is the XP one fine?
14. Should I install DirectX before the video drivers?
15. Now that I'm using a different MB, I'm going to have to come up with a new name for my new system. Any suggestions?
Thanks for any help on any of these questions!
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