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This is only a preview of the July 2001 issue of Silicon Chip. You can view 31 of the 104 pages in the full issue, including the advertisments. For full access, purchase the issue for $10.00 or subscribe for access to the latest issues. Articles in this series:
Items relevant to "The HeartMate Heart Rate Monitor":
Items relevant to "Do Not Disturb Telephone Timer":
Items relevant to "Pic-Toc - A Simple Digital Alarm Clock":
Items relevant to "A Fast Universal Battery Charger; Pt.2":
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COMPUTERS: Do-it-yourself & learn
A PC TO DIE FOR
Part 2: installing the operating system
& squashing the bugs
By GREG SWAIN
Last month, we showed you how to build a great PC
based on a 1GHz Athlon CPU and an Asus A7V133
motherboard. This month, we’re going to show you
how to partition and format the hard drive and install
Windows Me (WinMe) as the operating system.
14 Silicon Chip
terfere with the CPU fan. If this stalls,
you’ll get a distinct burning money
smell as the CPU “fries”.
Switching on
I
NSTALLING THE OPERATING
system on a new computer is
usually quite straightforward – a
piece of cake, in fact. If you haven’t
been through the process before, here’s
your chance to learn.
We’re going to describe the installation of Windows Me but the procedure
is pretty much the same for other operating systems. Basically, it involves
a 5-step process:
(1) Tweak a few motherboard BIOS
settings;
(2) Partition and format the hard disk
drive;
(3) Install the operating system;
(4) Install specialised device drivers,
as necessary (eg, for graphics and
sound cards); and
(5) Connect to the Internet and down
load any critical updates for the operating system.
OK, we’re about to turn the computer on for the first time but before
doing so, it’s a good idea to remove
the sound card. Yes, we know that
we instructed you to install this card
last month but experience has shown
that it’s best to install the operating
system first, then add the sound card
later. The same applies to any other devices.
Now take a good look at the system
and check that everything is correct.
In particular, make sure that all the
drive cables and power connectors are
plugged in and that nothing can in-
Now for the smoke test – hook up
the mains power leads and switch
on. If everything is OK, the system
will go though its Power-On Self Test
(POST) routine. First, it should show
the type of video card used (at the top
of the screen), along with the amount
of video RAM (32MB for the board
specified). It should then correctly
identify the motherboard BIOS version
and the processor before going through
the memory test procedure.
At this stage, you should press
“DEL” to get into the BIOS Setup Utility. This will take you directly to the
Main menu, as shown in Fig.1. What
we’re going to do now is change a few
of the BIOS settings so that everything
is identified and works correctly.
The BIOS Setup Utility is easy to
navigate – just use the arrow keys
to jump from one setting to the next
(and from one Menu screen to the
next) and press <Enter> to bring up a
sub-menu when you want to change
a setting. The -/+ keys are then used
to change the setting, after which you
hit the <Esc> key to take you back to
the previous menu.
It’s hardly the stuff of rocket sci-
ence and you’ll soon become adept
at finding your way around, even if
you’ve never ventured into a BIOS
setup screen before.
Anyway back to the main chase.
Begin by setting the system time and
date to the correct values, then check
that the floppy disk drive (ie, Legacy
Diskette A) has been correctly identified.
This done, you have to “tell” the
system what drives are hanging off
the primary and secondary IDE ports.
Now this bit is important – these two
IDE ports have nothing to do with the
two Ultra ATA100 IDE ports that are
also on the motherboard. In fact, the
Ultra ATA100 ports are not covered by
the Award BIOS – instead, they have
a separate BIOS chip on the motherboard and are detected later during
the boot process.
In our machine, the only item to
be covered here is the DVD-ROM
drive which is connected as a master
to the primary IDE port. As a result,
we set the Primary Master drive type
to “Auto” (for auto-detect) and this
showed up as “ATAPI DVD-ROM 16X
Maxim” after we hit the <Esc> key to
take us back to the Main menu.
If you have any other drives hanging off the IDE ports, these can be set
to “Auto” (for auto-detect) as well.
Alterna
tively, you can choose the
Fig.1: this is the main BIOS setup screen. You set the system time and date here
and adjust the settings for the primary and secondary IDE ports. In our case, the
DVD-ROM drive was on the “Primary Master” IDE port – see text.
July 2001 15
cannot change them – at least not when
the “Operating Frequency Setting” is
set to “Standard”.
The “DRAM Frequency” setting
defaults to 100MHz to ensure system
stability. However, provided that
you’ve used 133MHz SDRAM, you
can bump this setting up to match
(ie, to 133MHz) to squeeze a bit more
performance.
Overclocking
Fig.2: the Advanced menu shows the settings for the CPU clock multiplier and
bus frequency. In this case, we are using a 1GHz processor and the settings are
10.0 and 100MHz respectively (10 x 100MHz = 1GHz). Because we are using
PC133 SDRAM, the DRAM frequency has been bumped up to 133MHz.
For those interested in overclocking,
changing the “Operating Frequency
Setting” to “User Define” lets you
tweak both the CPU clock multiplier
and frequency settings. You can manually set the multiplier anywhere in
the range from 5.0x to 12.5x, while
the CPU frequency can be tweaked
in 1MHz steps over the range from
100MHz to 166MHz (note: this was
incorrectly stated as 133MHz last
month). Bus frequency settings of
90MHz and 95MHz are also available.
Our advice here is simple – DON’T
DO IT! If you want to play around
with overclocking, at least wait until
the operating system is installed and
everything is working correctly. Even
then, we don’t recommend over
clocking unless you know exactly
what you are doing.
Actually, we think that the performance gains to be had from overclocking are so small as to not warrant the
increased risk of system instability and
CPU damage. The same goes for the
“CPU Vcore Setting” – leave it on the
default Auto setting unless you know
what you are doing.
Most other settings here can be left
on the defaults. You can refer to the
motherboard manual for more information on these.
Boot sequence
Fig.3: this is the Boot setup menu. Move the CD-ROM to the top of the list if you
have an OEM or full retail version of the operating system. The floppy drive
should come first if you are installing an upgrade version.
drive “type” if devices other than hard
disk drives are involved; eg, CD-ROM,
ZIP-100, etc.
What about the Quantum Fireball
hard disk drive used in our machine?
Well, that’s connected to the primary
Ultra ATA100 IDE port and is automatically detected during boot-up,
so we don’t have to enter any special
settings.
Next, flick across to the Advanced
menu (just press the left arrow key)
16 Silicon Chip
and check the settings shown in
Fig.2. Assuming that you configured
the Asus motherboard in JumperFree
mode as described last month, these
settings should all be automatically
identified and should be correct.
In particular, for a 1GHz CPU the
“CPU Clock Multiplier” will be set
to 10.0x, while the “CPU Frequency”
will be 100MHz – ie, 10 x 100MHz =
1GHz. Actually, these two settings will
be “greyed out”, which means that you
OK, now let’s flick across to the
Boot menu and sort out the boot sequence (Fig.3). This determines which
drive the system boots from and your
choice will depend on whether you’re
installing a full retail version or an
upgrade version of the operating system.
If you have a full retail (or an OEM)
version, you can boot directly off the
CD-ROM. The system will then pretty
much au
tomatically partition and
format the hard disk for you, prior to
installing the operating system.
Conversely, if you are installing
an upgrade version, you have to boot
from a Windows Me (or Windows
98) startup floppy. You then have to
manually partition and format the hard
drive yourself. After that, you need to
reboot from the startup floppy to load
the necessary drivers for the CD-ROM
drive, so that the operating system can
be installed.
It all boils down to this – if you
have a full retail or OEM version of the
operating system, place the DVD-ROM
drive at the top of the boot order. Alternatively, if you are using an upgrade
version, place the floppy disk drive
(Legacy Floppy) at the top.
While you’re at this menu, set the
Plug & Play O/S to “yes” (assuming
you’re using Windows 98/Me/2000)
and disable the boot virus detection
feature. The setup procedure is going
to write to the boot sector of the drive
when installing the operating system,
so we don’t want any false alarms here
(you can re-enable the virus protection
when setup is complete).
Once that’s done, flick to the Exit
menu, save your changes and exit from
the BIOS Setup Utility.
Fixing Up The Video Driver
Fig.4: this is the display that greeted us the first time Windows Me booted.
This occurred because WinMe installed a generic video driver running at
640 x 480 and 16 colours.
Fig.5 (left): the System Properties
dialog box confirms the type of
video card driver installed. It also
shows a problem with the “PCI
Mass Storage Controller”.
Operating system versions
Before going further, let’s clear up a
misconception that many people have
about “full” and “upgrade” versions
of an operating system. An upgrade
version is in no way “inferior” to
a full version. The main difference
between them is that you cannot
boot from an upgrade CD-ROM and it
doesn’t include the partitioning and
formatting tools included in the full
version.
An upgrade version also performs
a “compliance” check during installation, to confirm that you already
have an earlier version of Windows.
Naturally, if you are “clean installing”
an upgrade version onto a new hard
disk, there will be no evidence of the
previous operating system. The way
around this is to “show” the system
the CD-ROM for the earlier version
when prompted to do so during the
compliance check routine (see panel),
after which the installation will proceed normally.
Apart from that, an upgrade version
is identical to a full version and in
stalls exactly the same system onto
the hard disk.
Partitioning and formatting
We’ll assume here that you have an
OEM or full retail version of Windows
Fig.6 (below): the new video driver
is a snack to install – just auto-run
the driver CD & click Install Driver.
Me. Begin by inserting the WinMe
CD-ROM in the drive, then restart the
machine and choose “Boot from CDROM” and “Start Windows Me Setup
from CD-ROM” from the resulting
menus. The setup procedure will now
automatically partition and format the
disk drive.
Be sure to choose “enable large
disk support” when prompted. This
installs the FAT32 file system which
is necessary for the operating system
to recognise large disk partitions. By
contrast, the older FAT16 file system
limited partition sizes to 2.1GB and
that’s hardly enough these days. A
FAT32 file system also reduces cluster
size (down from 32KB to 4KB) and that
means less disk wastage.
Installing Windows
After formatting, the system will
automatically reboot and run Scandisk
before going to the Windows Me Setup
menu to install the operating system.
This basically involves a 5-step process, as follows:
(1) Preparing to run Windows Setup;
(2) Collecting information about the
computer;
July 2001 17
The Gentle Art Of Hard Disk Partitioning
The most common method of partitioning a hard disk drive is to create
one large “Primary DOS Partition”
which occupies all the disk space.
However, many people prefer to “split”
their hard disk drive into two partitions,
so that it looks like two (or more) individual drives (eg, C: and D:).
Why would you want to do this?
Well, there are several reasons. First,
it allows you to keep your work files
completely separate from program
and system files. This makes accidental deletion of vital program and
system files far less likely, makes it
much easier to do routine data backups and allows for faster defragging
of the work “disk”.
Second, splitting a hard disk drive
into multiple partitions is the way to
go if you want to set up a dual-boot
or triple-boot operating system. For
example, you might want a dual-boot
system that lets you to choose between Windows Me and Windows NT,
or between Windows Me and Linux.
By far the best way to set this up is to
install each operating system into its
own partition.
Basically, you can split a hard disk
drive into just two partitions: (1) a
Primary DOS Partition; and (2) an
Extended DOS Partition. The primary
partition becomes the C: drive but you
can create as many logical drives in
the extended partition as you wish.
Fig.7: the fdisk utility is menu driven, so you’ll have
no trouble finding your way around. You can either
create one primary DOS partition, or split the disk into
two separate partitions – primary and extended.
(3) Copying Windows files to the
computer;
(4) Restarting the computer; and
(5) Setting up hardware and finalising
settings.
It might look a tad intimidating but
it’s really all bouncing ball stuff that’s
easy even for a novice to follow. Most
of the procedure is automatic and you
just have to fill in a few details and
make a few choices along the way.
In particular, you have to fill in the
“Product Key” (found on the back of
the CD-ROM case) and choose the type
of system you want installed when
you get to the “Setup Options” menu
– either Typical, Portable, Compact
or Custom. Take my tip and go for
the Custom setup. This lets you add
components that are not installed by
18 Silicon Chip
If you install an OEM (or full) version
of WinMe on a new hard disk, the
setup routine will automatically create
a single “Primary DOS Partition” on
the hard disk. So how do you create
multiple partitions?
The answer is that you have to
manually create the partitions using
the fdisk utility (this is included on the
CD-ROM). To do this, you boot from
the CD-ROM as before but this time
you select “Start Computer With CDROM Support” from the menu (instead
of “Start Windows Me Setup from
CD-ROM”). This boots the computer
to a DOS prompt and creates a “RAM
disk” with the system tools in it.
Typing fdisk initially brings up a
Fig.8: if you answer “Y” here, fdisk creates one primary DOS partition that occupies all the available space.
Answering “N” lets you specify the size of the primary
partition and then create an extended partition.
default and delete space-consuming
features that you don’t want.
My advice is to leave out as much
clutter as possible. This includes unnecessary stuff such as Destop Themes
wallpaper, sounds, fancy mouse pointers and other features. After all, why
slow down a PC by loading wallpaper
or other fancy background themes?
Always keep your desktop clean and
simple – you’ll get better performance
if you do.
For the same reason, you should also
later resist the temptation to have lots
of programs automatically start up at
boot time. Everything you load runs
in the background and hogs system
resources, so keep as much stuff out
of the Startup folder as possible.
Other stuff that can usually go are
the Accessibility items and the Online
Services. You can also deselect “Disk
Compression” (found under System
Tools) if you don’t intend running
compressed disks. While you’re here,
it’s usually not a bad idea to select
the following items: Character Map,
Clipboard Viewer, Net Watcher (for
monitoring network connections if
you have a network); System Monitor
and System Resource Meter.
A lot of the items under “Communications” can also be deselected but
be sure to select “Dial-Up Networking”
if you intend connecting to the Internet. You should also select “Internet
Connection Sharing” if you intend
using the machine to share an Internet
connection with other machines on a
network.
dialog box that asks whether you wish
to enable large disk support (ie, the
FAT32 file system). It’s necessary to
answer “Y” (yes) here if you want the
operating system to “see” partitions
greater than 2.1GB. After that, the
screen shown in Fig.7 appears and
you simply follow the menus to partition the drive.
Assuming an unpartitioned drive,
you first select option 1 to create a
DOS partition and then option 1 again
to create a primary DOS partition. If
you allocate all of the disk space to the
primary partition, then that’s the end
of the matter and you finish up with
just one logical drive (ie, C:).
Alternatively, if you allocate only
part of the space to the primary partition, you can then create an extended
partition to cover all or some of the
remaining disk space.
After that, you can create one or
more logical drives in the extended
partition. These logical drives automatically take on the next drive letters
in the sequence (ie, D:, E:, etc).
Typically, you might want to split
a 20GB hard drive so that it has a
6GB primary partition and a 14GB
extended partition with a single logical
drive. This means that your machine
would appear to have two hard disk
drives – a 6GB C: drive and a 14GB
D: drive. Of course, you can make the
partitions any size you want.
By the way, you have to set the C:
partition as the “Active” partition. This
designates which partition contains
the boot sector – ie, it determines
where the boot files are stored.
Once the partitions have been
Fig.9: this screen shows the partition information for
a 1.6GB drive that’s between split into two partitions.
The primary partition occupies 65% of the drive space,
while the extended partition occupies the remainder.
It’s largely a matter of personal
preference as to what you keep and
leave out. And, of course, you can
always add wanted items and delete
any unnecessary features after the
operating system has been installed
(this is done using the Add/Remove
Programs utility in Control Panel).
Along the way, you will be directed
to create a Startup disk so be sure to
set aside a clean floppy disk before
starting the installation. You’ll also be
prompted to choose a keyboard type
– the US 101-key keyboard is the one
to go for in Australia.
At this stage, the system will begin
copying files to the hard disk drive.
This will probably take 20-30 minutes
or more, depending on the speed of
your CD-ROM drive.
created, you need to format each of
the logical drives in turn. You’ll find
the format utility (format.com) in the
\WinMe folder on the CD-ROM, so
you’ll need to change to this folder
before running this command.
For example, let’s say that you
have two logical drives (C: and D:)
and that your CD-ROM is at E:. First,
you’ll need to change to the CD-ROM
drive by typing E: <Enter> at the DOS
prompt and then typing cd \WinMe to
change to the \WinMe folder.
Once there, you can format the
C: drive by typing format c: at the
prompt. When the format is complete,
you can then format any remaining
drives in exactly the same manner. It’s
also a good idea to run the scandisk
utility on each of the drives, to verify
the drive integrity.
Fig.10: if you make a mistake or change your mind,
it’s just a matter of deleted the existing partition(s) and
starting again. Warning: all data on a hard disk drive
is lost when you alter partitions using fdisk.
During this process, the Setup
Wizard automatically re
s tarts the
computer several times and there’s a
great deal of disk activity as the system
identifies the hardware configuration
and copies the relevant files across.
Towards the end, you will be prompt
ed for a password. If you don’t want
a password, leave the password field
blank.
Final setup
Once the installation is complete,
the system should automatically boot
into Windows but there may be a few
problems to solve. In our case, the
system booted with a grey desktop
as shown in Fig.4 – nothing like the
default dark-blue desktop normally
expected with WinMe.
What’s happened here is that the
system has installed a generic driver for the video card. That’s easily
checked out in the Device Manager
and this will also highlight any other
problems that may be lurking.
In fact, once the system is running,
the Device Manager should be your
first port of call. You can start it by
double-clicking the System icon in
Control Panel and then clicking the
Device Manager tab on the resulting
System Properties dialog box. This
lists all the items that are currently
installed on your system and allows
you to check that all devices are working correctly.
A yellow exclamation mark or a
red cross next to any item indicates
a problem.
July 2001 19
Installing The Driver
For The Promise
Ultra ATA100 Controller
Fig.12: the wizard automatically searches the
CD-ROM for the best driver or you can specify
the path to the driver yourself.
Fig.11: the VIA 4-In-1 drivers and the Promise Ultra 100 IDE
Controller driver are installed from the CD-ROM supplied
with the motherboard. The CD-ROM auto-starts when placed
in the drive.
In our case, the Device Manager
revealed two problems – see Fig.5.
First, it showed that a “Standard PCI
Graphics Adapter (VGA)” had been
installed for the video card (something
that we already expected). Second,
it showed that we needed to install
a driver for something called a “PCI
Mass Storage Controller”.
These two problems were easily
solved. First, the video driver – this
is supplied on a CD-ROM which auto
starts to bring up the dialog box shown
in Fig.6. Clicking the “Install Driver”
button then did the trick. This automatically installed the correct driver,
after which the machine booted to a
nice blue desktop.
The “PCI Mass Storage Controller”
that WinMe found during setup is
actually the Promise Ultra ATA100
IDE controller. Getting this working
correctly is just a matter of installing
the drivers from the CD-ROM supplied
with the motherboard.
This CD autostarts to the dialog box
shown in Fig.11. Install the “Via 4-in-1
Drivers” update first, then install the
driver for the Promise Ultra ATA100
controller. Actually, clicking the but20 Silicon Chip
Fig.13: this list shows the drivers found by the
automatic search routine. Choose the one that
matches the installed operating system.
ton here doesn’t automatically install
the driver. Instead, it brings up a small
text file which instructs you how to do
this manually.
The procedure is straightforward –
select the “PCI Mass Storage Controller” entry in Device Manager, click the
Properties button and select the Driver
tab to update the driver. You can then
either do an automatic search for the
driver or manually specify the driver’s
location (Fig.12).
An automatic search eventually
brings up the dialog box shown in
Fig.13 and it’s then just a matter of
selecting the driver that matches the
operating system (WinMe in this case).
Manually specifying the location of
the driver is quicker though – you just
browse to the folder that has the driver.
In our case, the required driver is in
D:\Promise\ATA100\WINME (D: is
the drive letter for the CD-ROM drive).
Once we’d done all that, the driver
entries for the video card and the
Promise Ultra ATA100 Controller appeared as shown in Fig.14. Note that
the Promise driver is listed under SCSI
controllers, even though it’s not a true
SCSI device. This is perfectly normal.
Fig.14 also shows the driver entries
that appeared after we installed the
sound card.
Fig.14: this is what the System properties dialog box looks like after the
correct drivers have been installed for
the video card and the Promise Ultra
100 IDE Controller.
Installing other drivers
If any other devices are causing
problems, you can update the driver
in exactly the same manner. Usually,
it’s just a matter of clicking the Update
Driver button in Device Manager and
then letting the system automatically
search for a driver on the CD-ROM or
floppy disk supplied with the device.
If it finds more than one driver, it’s
then simply a matter of choosing the
correct one for your operating system
from the list.
Alternatively, you can manually
specify the location of the driver by
browsing to the correct folder on the
CD-ROM or floppy disk yourself. Be
sure to check out any readme files
on the driver disk for installation
instructions.
Another technique for dealing with
problem devices (ie, those with yellow
exclamation marks or red crosses
beside them) is to remove them from
the Device Manager and reboot. The
system will then rediscover the new
device as it boots and prompt you for
the driver disk. Again, you can do
an automatic search for the driver or
specify the location yourself.
Setting the display resolution
Once you have the correct driver
installed for the graphics card, you’ll
want to set the display resolution to
something better than the 640 x 480
default. To do this, right-click on the
desktop and choose Properties to bring
up the Display Properties dialog box
Adjusting The Display Properties
Fig.15: this screen grab shows the
default display settings that were
installed by Windows Me. It installed
a generic video driver at 640 x 480
pixels and just 16 colours.
Fig.16: once the correct video driver
has been installed, you can adjust the
display settings as shown here. Clicking the advanced button gives you lots
of other settings to play with.
(Fig.15). Now click the Settings tab and
drag the slider to the right to increase
the display resolution.
A resolution of 1152 x 864 is about
right for a 17-inch monitor but you
can vary this to suit yourself – see
Fig.16.
While you’re here, you will also
want to change the number of displayed colours from the drop-down
list to the left of the slider. Depending
on your graphics card, choose either
“High Color (16-bit)” or “True Color
(32-bit)”, then click the Apply button.
Windows will then resize the desktop
for 15-seconds, after which you can
Clean Installing The Windows Me Upgrade Version
If you are clean installing an upgrade
version of WinMe onto a hard disk, you
won’t be able to boot from the CD-ROM.
This means that you’ll need a WinMe or
Win98 startup floppy in order to start
your system. These startup floppies also
include the necessary utilities to allow
you to partition and format the disk drive,
and include drivers for CD-ROM support.
If you’re upgrading from an old computer, you’ll need to make a startup floppy
before trashing the system. It’s easy
enough to do – just insert a floppy disk in
the drive, open “Add/Remove Programs”
in Control Panel, click the Startup Disk
tab and then click the Create Disk button.
If you’ve already trashed the system,
you’ll have to beg, borrow or steal a startup disk from somewhere. But be careful
– you don’t want your new machine to
start life with a virus on board.
Note that you will have to change the
system BIOS, so that the floppy disk drive
is first in the boot order. If you don’t do
that, the system will try to boot from one
of the other drives first and you’ll get a
“Non-system disk” error message.
When you boot from the startup disk,
a menu appears giving you the option to
start the computer with or without CDROM support. The startup floppy first
loads the CD-ROM driver (if this option
is selected), then loads a 2MB RAM drive.
This RAM drive includes format.com plus
several diagnostic tools.
Note that the RAM drive will push your
CD-ROM drive back one letter. This means
that if your CD-ROM is usually drive D:,
it will now become drive E:. In any case,
an on-screen message tells you what
the drive letters are, so you don’t have
to figure it out.
After that, you can partition and format
the drive(s) in the usual manner. You then
boot the machine with CD-ROM support,
switch to the CD-ROM drive and type
Setup at the command prompt to run the
Windows Me installation wizard.
During installation, the system will perform a “compliance” check to make sure
that you’re entitled to use the lower-cost
product. Typically, it does this by checking
the hard disk drive for an earlier version
of the operating system but you can also
install an upgrade version onto a freshly
formatted drive. How? – easy; just insert
the CD-ROM for your earlier version when
prompted to do so.
If you are upgrading from Win98 to
WinMe, for example, all you have to do is
“show” the system your Win98 CD-ROM
for compliance checking. In fact, you can
even show a Win98 upgrade CD-ROM (eg,
if you’ve previously used this to upgrade
from Win95) and the system will be happy
with this.
Once compliance checking is complete,
you re-insert the upgrade CD-ROM and
the installation proceeds as normal.
July 2001 21
Fig.17: the Folder Options dialog lets
you set Windows up to satisfy your
personal preferences.
Fig.18: clicking the “View” tab gives
you other options to choose from.
Choose the options that suit you best.
choose to either accept or discard the
new settings.
Clicking the Advanced button will
allow you to change the monitor driver
and to adjust other parameters specific
to the graphics card. In our case, the
Philips 107S monitor (which is Plug
’n Play) was correctly identified and
its driver installed during the WinMe
setup, so we didn’t have to bother
with this.
If you have a different monitor, then
it may be necessary to install the driver
yourself from the supplied CD.
Windows Me directly supports
DVD-ROM drives, so there is no need
to install additional drivers for this
device. You might, however, want to
install the software that’s supplied
with the DVD-ROM drive (this will
install a DVD player (Fig.23).
Installing the sound card
Now let’s get that sound card going.
Power off, plug the card into a vacant
PCI slot (don’t forget to connect the
audio cable from the DVD-ROM drive)
and switch on. The system will find
the new hardware as it boots and
prompt you to install the driver. It’s
then just a matter of placing the Sound
Blaster Live CD-ROM in the drive, and
specifying the location for the driver
on the CD-ROM by browsing to D:\
AUDIO\ENGLISH\WIN9XDRV.
Alternatively, you can allow the
Fig.19: clicking the “Performance”
tab in the System properties dialog
box should show the message “Your
system is configured for optimal
performance”.
system to automatically search for
the driver and then select the correct
driver from the resulting list.
The system will then complete the
reboot, after which your sound card
should be fully functioning.
By the way, there are lots of other
goodies on the Sound Blaster CD-ROM
for you to install. Just re-insert the CDROM to auto-run the install dialog box
and go from there. You’ll probably also
want to install Acrobat Reader so that
you can read the Sound Blaster manual
that’s on the CD-ROM.
Other hardware items (eg, ZIP
drives, CD-ROM burners, network
cards, etc), can now be added to your
new PC. It’s always best to install these
Asus Probe: Watching Over Your System’s Health
Fig.20: the Asus Probe summary screen let's you check
the system “health” at a glance.
22 Silicon Chip
Fig.21: this screen lets you set the alarm thresholds for
the CPU and motherboard temperature.
There’s lots of “goodies”
with the sound card
Fig.22: the SoundBlaster sound card comes with a
bewildering array of software, including “Rythmania”
(above), “Media Ring Talk” for Internet phone calls
(top, right) and a Surround Mixer, Recorder, Play
Center and Application Launcher (right). There’s lots
more, as well.
Fig.23: the DVD-player software installs this dedicated DVD-player utility.
one at a time and get each new device
working before installing the next.
tab on the System Properties dialog
box – see Fig.19.
Personal preferences
Asus Probe
There are a few adjustments that
you might like to make to the appearance of the desktop, to satisfy your
personal preferences. For example, if
you want a Windows classic desktop
rather than web-enabled content, just
click Tools -> Options in Explorer to
bring up the Folder Options dialog
box shown in Fig.17 and make your
selections.
It really is a matter of personal preference here.
Clicking the View tab brings up the
dialog box shown in Fig.18. Personally, I always like to select the “Show
hidden files and folders” options and
choose not to “Hide file extensions of
known file types” (ie, I want to see the
file extensions).
You should also check that your
system is configured for optimal performance by clicking the Performance
It’s a good idea to install the Asus
Probe utility from the motherboard
CD-ROM. This handy utility runs in
the background and continuously
monitors the system “health”, in-
cluding the CPU fan speed, the CPU
and motherboard temperatures and
various voltage levels. It can be set to
launch automatically at system startup
and could save you big bucks if there’s
a simple hardware failure.
That’s it – don’t forget to visit the
Windows Update site when you’ve finished. You should also download and
install any updated device drivers; e.g,
SC
for the video card.ZIP-100, etc.
RAID 0 vs RAID 1: Disk Striping & Disk Mirroring
As stated in Pt.1 in the June issue, the
Promise controller on the Asus A7V133
motherboard supports a feature called
“RAID 0”. The article then went on to
describe RAID 0 as disk mirroring but
this is incorrect.
RAID 0 (also known as “data striping”)
is actually a technique that “stripes” the
data across two identical disk drives.
It allows you to combine the two drives
into one logical partition and splits the
data evenly between them.
This effectively doubles the data
transfer rate because only half the data
is written to each drive and the drives
operate in parallel. The setup procedure
is fully described in the manual.
The downside is that RAID 0 offers no
data protection at all. In fact, it actually
increases the risk of failure because if
one drive fails, all the data on the RAID
array is lost.
The disk mirroring technique referred
to in Pt.1 is actually known as RAID 1
and is not directly supported by the Asus
A7V133 motherboard.
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