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Fresh XP Reinstall on new 4600
Love my new Dimension 4600/P3.4ghz/2gbRAM/80gbHD but I didn't want AOL, the other doodads and a single C:\ partition. So after a brief initial inspection, I rebooted from the XP CD, deleted all the existing partitions and made 3 new 25-ish gig partitions each, & installed XP on a fresh new C:\.
After rebooting I made D:\ and E:\ in Disk Management. Then I checked the device manager and some Other Devices had question marks, so I loaded up the Resource_CD. I figured out how to install the Chipset, NVidia & Ethernet drivers, but there's 2 question marks under Other Drivers still. Multimedia Audio (I'm going to be installing a 3rd party PCI Audio card so I'm leaving that disabled for now), PCI Modem (going to be removing that & selling on ebay as I have a LAN). I have those two set to 'disable'. So far am I OK?
Ultimately I will have a dual-boot with 2 copies of XP, one for internet development, and the other for multi-track audio recording and midi - a "DAW". So, here's my question. If I recall, you can only have 1 additional 'slave' drive on a UltraATA chain. So unless I add a PCI SATA or SCSI card I can only add one more drive, correct? So would I be better off putting XP on a partition on the 2nd physical drive, or would it be okay to put XP on the 2nd partition D:\ of the 1st physical disk? I was thinking of making C:\WINNT the Audio production computer / storing files on 2nd disk, with D:\WINNT being the web dev boot. Any thoughts? (Maybe a 3rd Linux boot? Can I leave one boot running (Linux/Apache/Mysql/PHP) and then switch over to my running XP web dev boot to develop?)
Next question. With a 2-physical-drive UltraATA limitation (assumption), Any thoughts/links on whether to get a SATA, SCSI, or a 2nd EIDE controller and performance for the same $? Maybe a PCI Firewire 800? PCI card suggestions?
TIA. Thanks Dell, you built me a killer, fast box.
bkrieter
9 Posts
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July 13th, 2004 11:00
I would recommend that before you re-format next time, follow this proceedure:
1. Hook up a printer, or create a "file" printer.
2. Go to Accessories and print out the system information.
3. If you did a "file" printer then copy it to a floppy or another machine if you didn't want to hook up a printer
Otherwise, it will difficult to tell what devices did not detect without opening the case and comparing which cards you have vs which drivers are seen. Alternately, you could look at your system config on the Dell site, see what's "missing", and then load those drivers off of the resource CD.
There is a two drive per port ATA (and UATA) limitation. You can only have one master and one slave per port. However, most motherboards have two ports on them. One is typically used for HDs, one for CDs. If you have two HDs, a CD and a CD-RW, then you are full. If you have only one CD, you could theoretically stick an HD on the CD bus, but you might have speed and timing issues with the HD (I'm not sure if that is still a problem with modern bus-mastering or not).
As far as ATA or SCSI or Firewire. I tend to think you will get the best value with PCI ATA, because it is so mass-produced. There a few ATA and UATA standards/speeds, so check the stats out before ordering However, with rebates and such you might be able to find a cheap SCSI. The SCSI interface has more logic built into it, or at least it used to a few years back. I haven't kept up on UATA and newer standards. SCSI has nice queueing of multiple requests, and you are more likely to find RAID configurations for it. A RAID-5 capable card would be nice if you are developing something critical for a client, but it would be overkill in most configs, and you would need three drives on the SCSI card to get reliability benefits.
I would avoid using a drive through firewire. I have not tried it, but my USB 2.0 one is NOWHERE near as fast as a drive attached to the PCI bus, so I suspect the performance will be disappointing.
I would tend to put the 2nd XP install on the D drive. The benefit is that if one of your drives starts on fire, you could probably still get the system to boot with a little monkeying. I haven't tried multi-boot with XP. I'm not sure how capable XP's boot manager is. You might possibly need a utility to switch active partitions or boot drives, but most likely XP will take care of it.
You cannot leave one boot running and switch to another OS real time, unless you emulate one OS "inside" of the other OS. To the best of my knowledge, there is no way to do this even if you have multiple processors. You could probably find a Linux variant that will run in an XP window, which might be close enough to what you want. If you make the Linux window full screen, then ALT-Tab would seem like an OS switch, which I agree is cool for some unknown reason :)
There are also Linux variants that will boot from CD, but you would not be able to run both at the same time, you would have to choose each time you boot.
Hopefully that answers most of your questions. If anyone else has more current info, feel free to chime in :)
salientdigital_40567e
6 Posts
0
July 14th, 2004 03:00
Thanks for the tip. I will definately make a printout next time. I assumed (somewhat incorrectly) that I would be able to get the 4600 'back the way it was shipped' from a factory restore CD but apparently that isn't the case. The last Notebook I bought had a 'restore' CD. I guess Dell provides the generic 'already installed on your computer/may or may not have on your pc' CDs only... am I missing something? I'm not too worried about it, just curious. I kinda liked the blue Dell wallpaper.
Here's another question. I have C,D, and E drives now, with fresh XP on C. I just went to http://www.windowsupdate.com and downloaded & installed the critical updates. There are now two gobledygook folders on the D drive that have a sp2 directory in them. Can I delete those (installer files) or are they hkey'd in the registry/don't delete them? (I should know this)
Tia
bkrieter
9 Posts
0
July 14th, 2004 19:00
Dell does provide driver disks for the configurations for a series, rather than for each particular configuration.
I prefer it that way because:
1. Manufacturers take this approach have more customizable offerings in my experience. Who cares for low-performance business machines, but I need more for my home machines that are also used for the more demanding multi-player games like "City of Heroes"
2. I want to know exactly what is installed on my machine, some "one button" auto-configurators install a lot of junk (like service providers, diagnostic utils, supplier contact utils, web customizations, and a host of other junk. I would rather have more control and do everything manually, because that's the type of guy I am :)
3. If you decide you don't like the on-board sound, or forgot to get the SoundBlaster from Dell, then there's a good chance your "restore" CD will still have all the files on it if you order it separate and lose the separate driver disk. Having a couple extra drivers is not a burden for me.
The one-button is nice if you are willing to give up control of your configuration in the interest of saving time and avoiding research before a re-image, but I avoid those CD's even for manufacturers like HP that provide them.
As far as the Dell background, I would imagine they either have it somewhere on the web, on the CD, or someone could provide it :)
bkrieter
9 Posts
0
July 14th, 2004 19:00
This is a bit of a guess, but I suspect those two gobbledegook folders also store the "previous" versions of various files before update. This allows you to "uninstall" some of your major patches. If you delete them, then you will lose the ability to undo your patch, and you will have a couple of "worthless" lines in your Add/Remove software listing that can no longer really uninstall.
If everything works fine after the patch, then the files are no longer needed, but I would try running Disk Cleanup, and see if you have the option to remove these backup files the "legal" way, so you don't confuse uninstall.
You should also check with someone in support to make sure my guess is right, just to be safe. However, in the past I have typically just taken the risk and then also removed the files from the "uninstall" part of the registry so they don't show up in add remove. That's because I like to live dangerously, and I figure a re-image once in a while is good practice :)
Bob