Build your Own PC Part Two

STEP 17 : Initial Boot-Up

It is time for the moment of truth. To see if this thing works!!

Let’s get everything connected and prepared to turn it on:

1. Connect your mouse and keyboard

2. Connect your monitor to the video card and connect the power cord to the monitor.

3. Connect the power cord to your power supply on the PC itself.

Okay, now for boot up time!

1. Stick your system disk into the A: drive. You should have prepared or gotten a system disk in the first step of this tutorial. If you are using a bootable CD-ROM (as is the case with Windows XP) then just stand by on this because the CD drive will not be openable until the power is on.

2. Turn your monitor on and let it heat up a few seconds before proceeding. Heating it up for a few seconds ensures you don’t miss any potential error messages because the CRT tube is not ready to display an image.

3. Before hitting the power switch, take note of what to expect. If you notice something awry right away, you may need to quickly turn the PC back off. Here’s what to look for:

a. The power LED should turn on

b. The CPU and PSU fans should start spinning

c. The hard drive should power up.

d. You will see the video BIOS screen first, then you will see the BIOS screen and it will proceed to count the memory.

e. You may hear one beep from the PC speaker. It is possible you will get more than one beep, which indicates an error which we will address.

f. You may also get a “CMOS checksum error” or another error saying the CMOS or time isn’t set.

g. Know what key(s) to hit to enter CMOS setup. This will be shown on the bottom of the screen usually during the memory count. You will want to press the stated key combination to enter setup immediately because CMOS setup is the next step.

h. If you hear any weird sounds such as grinding, scraping, or loud whining, be ready to turn the system off immediately.

i. Keep in mind that if you miss the stated sequence to enter the CMOS setup before the boot sequence moves on, there is nothing wrong with just hitting the reset button and rebooting until you do catch what it is. It will not hurt your PC to reset it immediately or turn it off quickly if you notice a problem.

4. Press the power switch. If it powers up, observe the system closely. As soon as the BIOS screen appears, press the appropriate key(s) and enter CMOS setup. The correct key combination should be visible at the bottom of the screen. Sometimes it pops by too quickly for you to see which keys to press. No problem. Don’t hesitate to just hit reset and try again, as stated above.

5. If everything started up as expected and you successfully got into the CMOS setup screen, just let it sit there while you take out a flash light and inspect the system as it is running. Make sure all the fans are running. Make sure all the fans are operating smoothly and not generating any strange noises. Make sure the case power LED is on. Make sure the floppy drive light is not stuck on. If it is, the ribbon cable is not properly aligned with Pin 1 and you will need to turn the PC back off and flip it around. If any of the fans are not spinning, turn the PC back off immediately and plug the fan in. You do not want to run the PC for long without fans running, especially the CPU fan.

The PC Mechanic Tech Forums

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STEP 18 : Configure The BIOS

Now, your new PC should be up and running and you should be staring at the BIOS setup screen.

Your next step is to make sure your BIOS is using the proper settings. While some users like to use the BIOS to tweak the system into running like greased soap, during an initial build it is best to keep settings conservative, which usually means leaving them at their defaults. Remember at this point we are most interested in getting this PC to work. I will first walk you through the necessary steps, then I will go over some of the other settings you may see that you don’t need to mess with at this point.

When you get into CMOS for the first time, do the following:

1. Go into your Standard CMOS Setup screen. Ensure your video settings are correct (typically EGA/VGA) and that your floppy disk is properly set to the size you are using (usually 1.44M). You will see settings for IDE Primary/Secondary Master/Slave. If these items are not already properly set for the hardware you have, have the BIOS auto-detect your drives for you. Also, set the date and time to the correct settings.

2. Unless your board has jumper-controlled processor and voltage settings, you will need to set these options in your CMOS now. In our Soyo board, the screen to go into is called “Soyo COMBO Feature”. It may be called “SoftMenu” or some other term on your board. Consult the manual to find out if you can’t see it. Once in that screen, you need to set your system bus speed, CPU multiplier, memory timing speeds, CPU voltage, etc. Many of these options have an AUTO setting which is the safest choice if you don’t know otherwise. Some other systems have a list of possible processors, in which case just choose yours from the list. On our testbed Soyo board, this screen was also used for enabling or disabling onboard sound, RAID, and 10/100 LAN and if your board has similar settings, you can set this to your liking. For example, if you will be using a sound card of your own, you would need to disable the built-in sound on your motherboard. If you have onboard SCSI or onboard RAID capability, then set these depending on whether you will be using them or not.

3. Confirm your boot order. One of the screens in your CMOS (many times the Advanced Features screen) will have a boot order option. This controls the order in which the PC will look for a copy of something to boot off of, whether it is a full operating system or just a diskette or CD. In a little bit you will be installing your full operating system and will need to boot the system beforehand. If you are using a standard system diskette, make sure A: (or your floppy) is enabled to be first in line. In this case, you might want to also check to be sure that if there is a setting to disable seeking out the floppy altogether, that is set to indeed seek out the floppy drive (some people set this to off so as to make the boot process faster, but you cannot do that while building). If you are going to be booting from a CD (as is probably the case if you will be installing Windows XP) then make sure your CD-ROM is first in line.

Those are the basics of what you will need to set in order to continue with this tutorial and have your PC set properly. Now, I will give a brief rundown of some of the other settings you may see. This is by no means meant to be a complete reference, as all boards are different. Your motherboard’s manual is your best reference to the settings you need to concern yourself with.

Advanced BIOS Features

This section controls some of basic operating settings of your PC. For example, you will enable/disable things such as on-board cache, determine the boot device, etc. Here are some of the common settings:

*Virus Protection/Warning: Will scan your hard drive boot sector on startup for viruses
and alarm you if anything attempts to write to the boot sector. Enable for increased security, but disable to avoid the annoyance. If you are using a third-party antivirus utility (or plan to) then this is useless.

*Cache Settings: These settings control L1 and L2 cache, which in most newer systems resides on the processor itself. In almost all cases, this is enabled and should be. If there is an option to have ECC error checking on the L2 cache, go ahead and have it enabled.

*Quick POST: This will allow the BIOS to skip some tests such as the memory test on boot-up, thus allowing the PC to boot faster. You can disable it for the sake of thoroughness, and this is fine if you leave your PC on most of the time. But, if you turn it on a lot, this is an annoyance and I’d recommend enabling Quick POST.

*Boot Sequence: This controls the order in which the PC looks at the drives for bootable information. Sometimes the BIOS will have one field for this and you scroll through the options. Other versions have separate settings for “First Boot Device”, “Second Boot Device” and so on. This was addressed above.

*Boot Up Floppy Seek: Controls whether the floppy drive will be looked for at all. Set this to enabled, at least until you get your operating system installed

*Swap Floppy Drive: Allows you to control the assigning of the A and B drive letters to your floppy drives by swapping the order that is dictated by the twist in the floppy drive ribbon cable. Most of the time this is disabled.

*Fast A20 Gate: The gate A20 is a device used for addressing memory above the 1 MByte mark (don’t really need to get into that here). This used to be controlled by the keyboard via a pin. Keyboards still play a role in this today, but you control it via the BIOS. Some BIOS have enable/disable, some have Normal/Fast. I would go ahead and leave it at the default.

*Typematic Rate Settings: These options control the rate at which holding down a key on the keyboard will produce characters on screen. Just leave it disabled as it isn’t very important.

*Boot Numlock: Enable to have Numlock on when you start the computer.

*CPU Serial Number: Enables or disables the serial number thing in some older Intel CPUs. Privacy buffs, disable it.

*Security Option: Some systems have an option to require a password every time the system boots up. You’ll probably want this disabled.

*Video BIOS Shadow: – Disable.

*OS Select For DRAM > 64MB: Set to Non-OS2. This is an archaic setting.

*HDD SMART Capability: Set to disabled. It is only useful if you have software running which monitors the status of the hard drives.

*Small Logo Show: Controls whether the little EPA logo is shown on your bootup. Disable. Sometimes there is a small select option, too, for selecting which logo will be shown.

Advanced Chipset Features

This area of the BIOS allows you to control certain aspects of your motherboard which are specific to the chipset on your board. This would include bus speeds and memory issues. Some boards place their controls for processor, bus speed into this screen as well. I address that in more detail above. Most of the time, you don’t need to worry about anything in here for the sake of this tutorial. But, a general outline:

* Chipset Special Features: Disable. Not all BIOS have this.

* L2 Cache size: If this option exists, set it to match the size of your external cache.

* DRAM Parity Checking: Enable only if using parity memory

* Dram parity/ECC mode: “Parity” if using parity memory, “ECC” if using ECC memory

* Memory Timings: This area allows you to control the speed of the memory. On Via chipsets, it will usually also display the processor bus speed and the DRAM bus speed, allowing you to set the memory to operate on the Host Clock or BY SPEED. You can set the memory speed manually or have it run at the same speed as the system bus. If you are using SDRAM, you can also control the CAS latency, which is usually best left at default unless you’re a real tweaker.

* AGP Mode: Controls the AGP Mode, such as 1X, 2X, 4X or 8x. Set to Auto if available, or whatever it is set to already.

* AGP Frequency: Set to 66MHz.

* AGP Aperture: Controls how much of the PCI memory address range will be dedicated to graphics memory space. Usually, 64MB is fine, but you can set it to whatever you want.

* DRAM Frequency: Set to the speed of your memory

* System BIOS Cacheable: Only valid when the system BIOS is shadowed. It can speed up access to the BIOS, but because the OS rarely needs to look at the BIOS, enabling this does not cause much benefit. Disable.

Power Management

This section should be fairly straight-forward to even the novice user, and you should be able to use your manual to best describe the settings. I usually leave everything in here default and you should for now, too. You’re just trying to get the PC working at this point, not fine-tuning every little aspect of the BIOS.

Integrated Peripherals

* IDE HDD Block Mode: Speeds up hard disk access by transferring data from multiple sectors at once instead of using the old single sector transfer mode. When you enable it, the BIOS will automatically detect if your hard disk supports block transfers and configure the proper block transfer settings for it. Up to 64KB of data can be transferred per interrupt with IDE HDD Block Mode enabled. Since virtually all hard disks now support block transfers, there is normally no reason why IDE HDD Block Mode should not be enabled.

* Master/Slave PIO Mode: This function allows IDE drive to transfer several sectors at a time. Several modes are possible. Mode 0 means one sector at a time. Mode 1 is no interrupts. Mode 2 means sectors are transferred in a single burst. Mode 3 means 32-bit instructions at up to 11.1 MB per sec. Mode 4 is 16.7 MB/sec. and Mode 5 is up to 20 MB/sec. Standard for most drives today is PIO Mode 4. But, many BIOS’s offer an AUTO setting that will automatically make the best call for your drive. These modes must be set for each drive, including primary master, slave, secondary master, slave.

* Master/Slave UltraDMA: Set to Auto. Enable if your drives are UDMA capable. Keep in mind that to use this feature also requires it to be set up via the operating system.

* On-Chip PCI IDE, or IDE Controller: Used to either enable or disable either of your on-board IDE controllers. You can disable one of these if you do not need it, freeing up resources. For example, if IDE-2 is unused, you can disable it, thus freeing up IRQ 15 so something else can use it.

* USB Controller: Enable or disable your motherboard’s on-board USB controller.

* USB Keyboard Support: Many boards have a separate setting for USB keyboards, so you will need to enable this if you use one.

* USB Mouse Support: Same as keyboard, but sometimes you see one for mice, too.

* Onboard 1394: Enable or disable your onboard Firewire capability

* FDD Controller: Enable or disable your motherboard’s on-board floppy disk controller. You probably want this enabled.

* OnBoard Serial Port: Used to enable or disable the serial ports. Setting to AUTO will usually default to IRQ 4, and 3F8 (COM 1) or IRQ 3 and 2F8 for COM 2. Disabling will, of course, free up the IRQ’s.

* Onboard IR Function: If you have an infrared device connected to the motherboard, you can enable IR here. IrDA (HPSIR) mode, ASK IR (Amplitude Shift Keyed IR) mode, and disabled are the available options. Sometimes you might see an SCR mode, for smart card readers. Choose the mode used by your IR device. This setting is usually linked to Serial port 2, so if that is disabled, this option may not show up. Sometimes this option is called UART Mode.

* Duplex Mode: This will determine full duplex or half duplex transfer modes for your IR port, if enabled.

* Parallel Port: There are four options. The default value is Normal (SPP) which will work with all parallel port devices but is very slow. Two faster bidirectional modes are available, namely the ECP (Extended Capabilities Port), used for devices with large data transfers, and EPP (Enhanced Parallel Port), for devices that switch directions a lot. ECP uses the DMA protocol to achieve data transfer rates of up to 2.5Mbits/s and provides symmetric bidirectional communication. On the other hand, EPP uses existing parallel port signals to provide asymmetric bidirectional communication. There is usually an EPP+ECP mode for users who don’t know which mode to choose, but this can also take up an extra IRQ.

* ECP Mode use DMA: Controls the DMA channel used for ECP transfers. DMA 3 is default. You can set to 1 if there are conflicts.

* Init Display First: Used to control whether to initialize an AGP or a PCI video card first on start-up. Only relevant to users who use both types of video cards with one monitor.

* Power On Function: Some motherboards allow you to turn on the system via a variety of alternative ways other than the normal power switch. Examples include mouse buttons, button only (normal), or by keyboard. Select whichever option you want.

PnP/PCI Configuration

This section controls some of the various aspects of plug and play and the PCI bus. Much of it will not need to be touched at this point, but a couple items bear mentioning:

* PNP OS Installed: If all your operating systems support Plug & Play (PnP), select Yes so that they can take over the management of device resources. If you are using a non-PnP-aware OS or not all of the operating systems you are using support PnP, select No to let the BIOS handle it instead. Some say that it is best to leave this option set to No regardless of whether your OS is PNP-capable or not. The reason is that when it is set to No, the BIOS will attempt to resolve any resource conflicts. If it is set to Yes, even if a conflict is detected, the BIOS will ignore it. So, setting it to Yes provides a bit of a safety net, and it will not affect the ability of the OS to perform PNP on its own.

* Reset Configuration Data (Force Update ESCD): ESCD (Extended System Configuration Data) is a feature of the Plug & Play BIOS that stores the IRQ, DMA, I/O and memory configurations of all the ISA, PCI and AGP cards in the system (PnP or otherwise). Normally, you should leave the setting as Disabled. If you encounter serious problems with the installation of a new PCI card, these settings can help bail you out. Such a conflict could be serious enough that the OS may not start. If this happens, you can go into the BIOS and enable this option. Next time the PC boots, the BIOS will go and re-configure the settings for all PNP cards. The BIOS will automatically reset this setting to DISABLED next time you boot.

* Resources Controlled By: Normally, the BIOS controls the IRQ and DMA assignments of all of the boot and PNP devices in the system. When this option is set to AUTO, this is what happens, and the ESCD is the mechanism for doing it. If you set this option to Manual, you will be able to manually assign all IRQ and DMA information, usually via a sub-screen of the BIOS that will enable if you set this option to Manual.

* PCI/VGA Palette Snoop: This option is only useful if you use an MPEG card or an add-on card that makes use of the graphics card’s Feature Connector. It corrects incorrect color reproduction by “snooping” into the graphics card’s framebuffer memory and modifying (synchronizing) the information delivered from the graphics card’s Feature Connector to the MPEG or add-on card. It will also solve the problem of display inversion to a black screen after using the MPEG card.

* Assign IRQ for VGA: Many high-end graphics accelerator cards now require an IRQ to function properly. Disabling this feature with such cards will cause improper operation and/or poor performance. Thus, it’s best to make sure you enable this feature if you are having problems with your graphics accelerator card.

* Assign IRQ for USB: Assigns an IRQ to the USB controller. It enables or disables IRQ allocation for the USB (Universal Serial Bus). If you are using AGP, this should be enabled. If you are not, you can disable this to free up an IRQ.

PC Health

This might be called by a bunch of different names, but it is the section of the BIOS (if it has it) that monitors things like fan speed, CPU temperature, voltage levels, etc. You may also be able to set a shut down temperature, so if the CPU gets way too hot, the system would shut itself down for safety.

Defaults

Many BIOS versions have pre-set sets of default values which you can pre-load. Some have “fail-safe” defaults and “optimized” defaults. If you don’t wish to mess with any of the above, you can use these options to set the BIOS info up to certain sets of settings in one or two button clicks.

Passwords

Most BIOS versions have security options to allow for user or supervisor passwords. Most people do not use them. But, if you do, just make sure you record the password. If you lose it, you’ll have to reset your whole BIOS to get your system back.

Save and Exit the BIOS setup program. This will reboot the machine. Make sure your system disk is still in Drive A:.

STEP 19 : Test The System

At the end of the previous step, you saved your CMOS settings and the system rebooted. You should have had a system disk or CD in the boot drive so that the PC booted itself properly. If you got an error to the effect of “Missing Operating System”, then you likely did not remember to put the system disk into the drive or the system disk is not valid and bootable. If it is not a bootable system disk, you will need to get one before pressing forward. More modern operating systems like Windows XP come with CDs which themselves are bootable, in which case just make sure the CD is in the CD-ROM. If you are still having problems, verify your boot order was set correctly in CMOS in the previous step. Remember, if you are trying to boot from a diskette, your floppy drive must be set as the first boot device. If you want to boot from CD, your CD-ROM must be set as the first boot device.

Assuming you handled that properly, the PC should be up and running and you are either sitting at a command prompt or some other screen dictated by your bootable CD or diskette. Now that the PC is just sitting there running, it is a good time to test a few things before proceeding further. Check the following:

1. Check the LED’s on the front of the case. During boot-up, the HDD LED should light. If it does, it is connected properly to the motherboard. If not, try reversing the leads on the LED plug, or just turning it around. You can also check that the power LED lights and that the turbo LED lights, if it is connected.

2. Check the hard drive. Make sure it is spinning.

3. Check the fans. Make sure the CPU fan, power supply fan, and case fan(if you have one) are all spinning without any wires in the way. If your video card happens to have a fan, make sure it spins freely as well.

4. Make sure the CD-ROM has power by hitting the eject button and seeing if it opens.

5. Hit the reset button to be sure it works. While it reboots, check to be sure all the data on the BIOS splash screen is correct to your system.

6. Let the system run for 10-15 minutes. While it is running, go into your CMOS setup again and go to the PC Health screen so that you can monitor the CPU temperatures while it is running. The purpose in doing this is to ensure that the processor is being adequately cooled and will not lead to instability. If you choose, you can also – CAREFULLY – ground yourself and then reach in and gently touch the sides of the CPU and heat sink as it is running. If the heat sink is lukewarm to the touch (not too hot to touch) then it is doing its job properly. During this testing period, you can just let the PC run for a bit. If, after several minutes, the heat sink gets too hot or the temperature readouts become abnormally high, or if the PC Health screen freezes and you cannot do anything with the keyboard, then you likely have a cooling issue with your processor. You are either running a cooling fan which is not adequate for your processor or there is an issue with inadequate heat transfer between the processor and the heat sink, which means you might need to re-install the processor and do a better job of using heat sink compound this time.

7. Okay, now that we are pretty sure the hardware portion of this tutorial is a done deal, let’s move into setting your hard disks up.

STEP 20 : Prepare the Hard Drive(s)

Before we can install your operating system to your hard drive, that drive must be prepared for use. In order to use your hard drive, it must be partitioned and formatted. If you are building a system and putting a previously used hard drive into it, you may not need to perform this step. But, on any new hard drive or one you are just trying to start over with, you will need to do this. If you are installing Windows XP, all formatting, partitioning and installation work from the XP CD. You should have your first boot device be the CDROM already. Insert the disk and reboot the system. Windows Setup will begin. Then, skip down to the step on Windows XP Installation. If you are installing a legacy OS, then proceed.

Many retail hard drives come with their own utilities for setting up their hard drives. For example, Maxtor hard drives are packaged with a utility called MaxBlast. MaxBlast itself serves as a bootable disk for your system, and after booting the system up it will move directly into the first step of its wizard to set up your drive. These kinds of setup are very convenient and will walk you right through both partitioning and formatting the drives. If your hard drive came with such software, then I recommend you use that software and follow the manual that came with your drive. And, in that case, simply follow the manufacturers steps and you can proceed to the next step in this tutorial after doing so.

If you are using an OEM hard drive or one you happened to have around already, you may not have any software for it. So you will need to set your drive up the old-fashioned way. Here’s how:

HARD DRIVE PREP – THE OLD FASHION WAY

Partitioning is done using the FDISK command. FDISK is a plain-jane, text-only utility that comes on most Windows/DOS setups. FDISK should be included on your system disk and when you use it, it will actually be run off of the floppy drive. If, for some reason, your system disk does not have FDISK.EXE on it, get one that does.

Take a little time to plan your partitions. Do you want one large partition for the entire drive? Or do you want to separate it into different drive volumes? If you have FAT32, it is very popular to create one partition for the entire drive. Otherwise, if you are using a drive larger than 2G, you will have to separate it into more than one partition. Also, keep in mind that smaller partitions lead to smaller clusters, thus less slack or wasted disk space. With almost any modern operating system (I’m thinking Windows here) you will want to use the FAT32 file system. When you go into FDISK, it will ask if you want to enable “Large Disk Support”, and you do if you’re using any OS Windows 98 or newer.

So, start.

1. Type “fdisk” at the command prompt. If it does not work, it is because your hard drive is not attached properly or you may be missing FDISK.EXE on your system disk.

2. It will ask if you wish to enable Large Disk Support, and in most cases, you will. Type “Y” and proceed.

3. Next, you will see 4 menu options. If you already have partitions on this hard drive, you can choose option 4 to view the current partition setup and decide if you want to change it. For a brand new drive (which I’m assuming for the purpose of this tutorial), you’ll need to start from scratch.

4. Some information: The first partition is your primary DOS partition. This is your C: drive and can’t be divided. This is also called the active partition. You can only have one active partition. The second partition is optional. It is called an extended partition. This is the space left over after the primary partition. Then, logical DOS drives are created within the extended partition, each having a letter by which you will refer to it.

5. First you have to setup a primary DOS partition. Choose Option 1 (Create DOS partition or Logical DOS drive).

6. Choose Option 1 in the next menu.

7. Now you can make your entire hard drive the primary partition or only a part of it. Many people just make the entire drive one partition just to stay simple. If you want to break from this norm, specify the amount of drive you want to partition in either megabytes or percentage of total drive. If you are using a percentage, be sure to follow the number by a “%” or the computer will think you’re talking MB’s. As a tip, I generally like to have my operating system(s) stay on their own partition, so I like to assign 2 GIG or so to the primary DOS partition, allowing ample room for a few versions of Windows. That’s just me.

8. Next, you’ll need to make this partition active. Return to the main FDISK menu and choose Option 2 (Set Active Partition). Follow the prompts.

9. If you’re going to create an extended partition (and you probably will unless you’re only going to use C), choose Option 1 again, but this time choose Option 2 in the next menu (Create Extended DOS partition).

10. Plug in the percentage of drive to partition for this one. You can use the remaining amount for simplicity. Do not make this partition active. Only one can be active.

11. After you create an extended partition, you will be given the Create Logical Drives option in the extended partition menu. Follow the on-screen instructions to assign drive letters to your partitions D: through Z:.

12. After all this is done, you can choose Option 4 (Display Partition Information) and check your work.

13. After the drive has been partitioned and all looks fine to you, press to exit FDISK. You’ll be told you need to restart the machine and that’s what you’re about to do.

14. Reboot the machine with the system disk in Drive A:. If you try to do anything on the C: drive, you may get an error about Invalid Media Type. Don’t worry about it. It’s because you haven’t formatted it yet.

Here’s how to format your newly created disk partition(s):

1. At the A> prompt, type format c: /s. The “/s” tells it to make the disk bootable by copying some elementary system files to the C drive. If you booted from a CD and intend to install the OS right away, you do not need to copy system files, in which case you can leave the “/s” off.

2. You will get a warning saying that this action will erase all data on the drive. This is normal, and since there is no data on the drive, just press “Y” and move on.

3. It will show the status as it happens.

4. If you created additional partitions on this drive, format those volumes now. Type “format d:” or “format e:”, where the letter corresponds to the volume you wish to format. Do not type the “/s” since you only want the C: drive bootable. Do this for all remaining partitions you created during the partitioning process.

5. 5. When you are complete, you should be able to do a directory listing to be sure it is formatted by typing “DIR C:” at the command prompt. You’ll likely get a FILE NOT FOUND message, but that’s normal. At least the drive is set up.

When you have done both procedures above, reboot the system. If you copied the system files over you can do so without the system disk in the diskette drives. If not, you’ll need to leave the system disk in Drive A. If using the C drive, it is supposed to boot normally and go to the C: prompt. If you get an error like “No boot device found” or “No ROM Basic”, you probably forgot to make the primary partition active. Run FDISK again and fix that. If you get an error like “No Operating System”, you probably forgot to make the disk bootable. Make sure you typed “/s” at the format command.

STEP 21 : Install The CD-ROM Driver

NOTE: This Step is here only for those users who must manually get their CD-ROM recognized before installing their operating system. You may not need to do anything. See below:

Most operating systems come on CD, which requires you to have your CD-ROM working in order to install the operating system. This is usually a pretty easy thing to do. In fact, sometimes it is totally unnecessary for you to actually DO anything, because it is taken care of. If you are installing Windows 98 and have a real Windows 98 boot disk, it has the option of booting with CD-ROM support automatically. If your operating system CD is bootable (and in many cases they are) then as long as you have your CDROM set as your boot device in CMOS, it will automatically go to the CD-ROM and begin the process of installing your operating system. In this case, this step is not necessary.

Otherwise, read on…

Your CD-ROM comes with an install disk that, if properly programmed, will install your CD-ROM drivers very quickly. Unfortunately, many manufacturers make lame installation disks, requiring you to do some of the work manually. For this reason, I recommend you have a copy of EDIT.COM on your hard drive or system disk in case you have to manually edit the CONFIG.SYS or AUTOEXEC.BAT. Also have a copy of MSCDEX.EXE on your disk in case your CD-ROM installation does not include it. If necessary, use the command “copy mscdexe.exe c:” to copy the file from your system disk to your hard drive.

Some installation programs are very particular as to what they expect. Some will stop unless MSCDEX.EXE is not already installed on the drive C: Some go so far as to expect this file in C:DOS, and it might not tell you this. You can just put the file in a directory called C:DOS and try again. Other installations cannot properly configure CONFIG.SYS or AUTOEXEC.BAT. Some will halt if these files aren’t already present on the hard drive. If you run into problem, keep this in mind.

Below, I will outline a general procedure for installing DOS-mode CD-ROM drivers. This obviously changes on a per-drive basis:

1. Make sure EDIT.COM is on your hard drive. It may be found on your system disk, your installation disk, or you may need to get it from another system. Copy this file to the new computer’s C: drive.

2. Install the CD-ROM Installation disk in Drive A:

3. To be safe, you might want to create a AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS if they are not already there. You can do this by typing “EDIT CONFIG.SYS” then saving it empty. This will create the file, although it will be empty. Do the same for AUTOEXEC.BAT.

4. Run the Install program. Usually you type either “a:install” or “a:setup”. It will copy necessary files, and modify your CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT. Just follow the prompts. All install programs are different. When this is done, reboot.

5. Check the system files. You can EDIT them or type “type config.sys”. The line will look something like “DEVICE=C:CDPROVIDE-CDD.SYS /D:MSCD001″. In the AUTOEXEC.BAT file, it may look like “C:WINDOWSCOMMANDMSCDEX /D:MSCD001 /V”. The parameter after “/D” should be the same in both files. These lines will vary depending on your CD-ROM and files locations.

6. If you want to change the drive letter of the CD drive, add “/L:F” at the end of the line referencing the CD-ROM in the AUTOEXEC.BAT file. Change “F” to the drive letter you wish the CD-ROM to be.

7. Test your work. Reboot. The CD-ROM should activate. Then stick a CD in the drive and try to read it by switching to the appropriate drive just as you would to read a floppy diskette. If it didn’t work, then first check your AUTOEXEC.BAT and make sure it is leading to the correct location for the file MSCDEX.EXE. This file is necessary on all systems to make a CD-ROM operate in DOS.

STEP 22 : Install The Operating System

Okay, it is time to install your operating system. This is the final step necessary to make your new PC a fully workable PC.

There are many operating systems on the market today, but for the sake of this tutorial, we are assuming you will be using Microsoft Windows. There are, of course, other OSes out there including many varieties of Linux, and you are certainly welcome to try those other operating systems if you wish. As things stand now, though, simple statistics will show that an overwhelming majority of PC users make use of some version of Windows. For that reason, we are focusing on the Windows operating system
in this step.

Your first step is to buy your Windows operating system. The first thing you will notice is that Microsoft distinguishes between “full versions” and “upgrades”. The upgrade is cheaper, but it will ask for and check to make sure you have a previous version of Windows installed before proceeding. Often you do not need to have a prior version installed physically to get it to work, but you must have a prior version available on floppy diskette or CD-ROM, because whether it checks your hard drive or a removable medium, it will check for a prior version. A full version, of course, is designed to be installed when no other version is there or when you have no valid license to a prior version.

TIP: Instead of installing Windows from a CD, some people prefer installing directly from the hard drive itself. The basic reason is speed. Hard drives are many times faster than a CD drive, and since the Windows install procedure will be moving a lot of data from the CD to the hard drive anyway, many people prefer to simply skip the bottleneck and do everything from the hard drive. Basically, this is done by copying the entire Windows setup from the CD to the hard drive before installing anything and then running Setup directly from the hard drive. Just copy the whole CD over to a directory on your hard drive, and then run Setup from that directory. This is also helpful later down the road if you need to install a Windows component and cannot find your Windows CD.

STEP 23 : Tidy Up

Now you have a PC which you built and it is now running with a newly installed operating system. Great job!

You are now ready to get the PC set up as you want it. With Windows set up as a virgin installation, there are a few things you need to do right at the start. Windows XP will seek to get you to activate your copy of Windows, but it is recommended you hold off on this until you get your drivers finalized.

1. Enable Windows XP’s built-in firewall (if you are using XP). The firewall is not perfect and you can easily replace it later with a better option. However, you need to connect to the internet now to download the latest drivers for your PC. The Windows firewall will suffice for now. To enable the firewall, go to the Control Panel and click Network and Internet Connections, then click Network connections. Right-click on your network connection and choose Properties. Go to the Advanced tab and check “Protect my computer and network by limiting or preventing access to the computer from the internet”.

2. Next, connect to Windows Update by visiting www.windowsupdate.com using Internet Explorer. Scan for Updates and then go directly to the critical updates and service packs section. If there are any major service packs listed, install them now and reboot.

3. Install your motherboard’s chipset drivers. Most likely, your motherboard came with a CD which contained drivers for the chipset as well as any integrated hardware. You can install this software and drivers now from the CD. You should also check the motherboard manufacturer’s website and see if there is any updated driver software since the CD was created. After installing these drivers, reboot again.

4. Re-visit Windows Update and install any other key updates, including DirectX.

5. Now, visit the website of your video card manufacturer and download the latest drivers for your video card. Install them. You will likely need to reboot again.

6. Lastly, you should install any remaining hardware and drivers for your new computer. Install the sound card drivers as well as the drivers for any remaining hardware. Visit the manufacturer’s website to see if there are more recent versions of each. You may need to reboot after each installation. Simply go through each until each component in your PC has the required drivers installed.

7. 7. Now, active Windows. If you installed Windows XP, there is an activation process which you must go through. This is Microsoft’s way of curbing pirated copies of Windows. Windows will give you a grace period of 30 days after installation to activate it. If you do not activate it within this timeframe, Windows will stop operating. Windows will remind you when you log in as well as at a regular internal until you do activate. To activate, you simply follow the wizard. It is easiest to activate via the internet. Doing it this way is very automatic and is done using a secure server. If your PC is not internet connected, you can activate it via telephone. Call the toll-free number on the screen, read off to the operator the number displayed on the screen and type in the confirmation number they give you.

For future reference, if you make a major hardware change to your new computer at a later date, Windows may require you to re-activate. Simply follow the same procedure.

Windows will also ask you to register your copy. This is totally optional. If you skip it, it will not ask you again.

At this point, your new PC is now ready to go! Next, you can begin installing your software and customizing your new computer to suit your needs.