My first foray into building my own pc, have a few queries

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt (More info?)

I'm planning on building my own pc, figured I'd give it a go. Going
for a SFF case, Asus Pundit-R with built in motherboard(not a gamer so
no real need for the agp slot), Criterion 512mb pc3200 Ram, Either a
Celeron 2.4 or 2.6 gig cpu, a Samsung Spinpoint 80gb hard drive and an
Aopen 52x cd/rw.

Now what i would like to know is if I'll have any compatability
problems with any of the components, or if there are any I should
substitute.

Also, will i be able to format the hard drive, load windows etc onto
it without a floppy disc drive? I read that I'd need to format my
hard disc first before I can use it, how would I do this without the
3.5" drive, or could IO use a floppy via the usb. The same is true of
windows, I have an OEM copy of win 2k, but would I need a boot disc to
enable me to load it, again would a 3.5" drive via usb be suitable?

Any help would be appreciated

cheers

 

[Dee]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt (More info?)

daverutt wrote:

> I'm planning on building my own pc, figured I'd give it a go. Going
> for a SFF case, Asus Pundit-R with built in motherboard(not a gamer so
> no real need for the agp slot), Criterion 512mb pc3200 Ram, Either a
> Celeron 2.4 or 2.6 gig cpu, a Samsung Spinpoint 80gb hard drive and an
> Aopen 52x cd/rw.
>
> Now what i would like to know is if I'll have any compatability
> problems with any of the components, or if there are any I should
> substitute.
>
> Also, will i be able to format the hard drive, load windows etc onto
> it without a floppy disc drive? I read that I'd need to format my
> hard disc first before I can use it, how would I do this without the
> 3.5" drive, or could IO use a floppy via the usb. The same is true of
> windows, I have an OEM copy of win 2k, but would I need a boot disc to
> enable me to load it, again would a 3.5" drive via usb be suitable?
>
> Any help would be appreciated
>
> cheers

You can save some money without sacrificing performance by looking in to
a system with an AMD64 processor!!!

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt (More info?)

On 27 Oct 2004 10:27:03 -0700,
daveNOSPAMREMOVErutt@lycos.co.uk (daverutt) wrote:

>I'm planning on building my own pc, figured I'd give it a go. Going
>for a SFF case, Asus Pundit-R with built in motherboard(not a gamer so
>no real need for the agp slot), Criterion 512mb pc3200 Ram, Either a
>Celeron 2.4 or 2.6 gig cpu, a Samsung Spinpoint 80gb hard drive and an
>Aopen 52x cd/rw.
>
>Now what i would like to know is if I'll have any compatability
>problems with any of the components, or if there are any I should
>substitute.

You've only described a plain vanilla setup, the only
potential problem would be if the "Criterion" memory isn't
so good and won't run stabily in that motherboard... is
something I can't predict.


>Also, will i be able to format the hard drive, load windows etc onto
>it without a floppy disc drive? I read that I'd need to format my
>hard disc first before I can use it, how would I do this without the
>3.5" drive, or could IO use a floppy via the usb. The same is true of
>windows, I have an OEM copy of win 2k, but would I need a boot disc to
>enable me to load it, again would a 3.5" drive via usb be suitable?
>

Since you won't have a floppy drive, the first thing I'd do
is make a generic boot CD, that boots to DOS, loads CDROM
driver, and has any utilities on it that you are accustomed
to using. I suggest something like a Win98SE Startup floppy
for the boot image, and manually adding SMARTDRV.EXE for
reasons below.

From that boot CD you can FDISK, reboot, and format the hard
drive, and since it loaded the CDROM driver you can just
swap in the Windows OS disc(s) and copy the I386 folder to
the hard drive, run SMARTDRV from command line to load it,
and begin installing windows from the HDD folder which will
not only be much faster but then later Windows will know
where those files are and you'll not need insert the Windows
CD anymore.

Still it might be handy to have a floppy drive around, in
emergency situations it can come in handy, especially if
this is to be your only system.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt (More info?)

Anyway, if you are loading the full copy of Windows XP then you will simply
boot off the XP CD and it will begin the installation, and allow you to
partition and format the harddrive from the CD.

--
DaveW



"daverutt" <daveNOSPAMREMOVErutt@lycos.co.uk> wrote in message
news:3396001.0410270927.39719ece@posting.google.com...
> I'm planning on building my own pc, figured I'd give it a go. Going
> for a SFF case, Asus Pundit-R with built in motherboard(not a gamer so
> no real need for the agp slot), Criterion 512mb pc3200 Ram, Either a
> Celeron 2.4 or 2.6 gig cpu, a Samsung Spinpoint 80gb hard drive and an
> Aopen 52x cd/rw.
>
> Now what i would like to know is if I'll have any compatability
> problems with any of the components, or if there are any I should
> substitute.
>
> Also, will i be able to format the hard drive, load windows etc onto
> it without a floppy disc drive? I read that I'd need to format my
> hard disc first before I can use it, how would I do this without the
> 3.5" drive, or could IO use a floppy via the usb. The same is true of
> windows, I have an OEM copy of win 2k, but would I need a boot disc to
> enable me to load it, again would a 3.5" drive via usb be suitable?
>
> Any help would be appreciated
>
> cheers