XPS 400 Problems

Question

I just got my first dell computer ever. Its a XPS 400...i like it alot it is a Pentium D 820 , 7900 GS Video Card and 2 gigs of dual channel ram.wish it was 940 but oh well anyway......   When i got it i formatted and tried installing xp pro because i didn't really want media edition But my xp pro disk is damaged so i had to reinstall media edition.   Now i have media edition installed but alot of the hardware wasn't auto detected so i had to download the drivers here on this website.   i have almost all of them installed now but......   Here are my questions   1.) For my Maxtor 250 gig SATA HDD Do i have to install BOTH the floppy AND the hard drive versions of the drivers? Because i don't have a floppy drive. I installed the Harddrive version already.   Here is a direct Link to the page with those drivers   http://support.dell.com/support/downloads/format.aspx?c=us&l=en&s=gen&SystemID=XPS/DIMENSION%20400/9150&os=WW1&osl=en&deviceid=11198&typecnt=1&libid=41&releaseid=R126083&vercnt=1       2.) In my device manager i still have 2 Devices which arent configured correctly and have the yellow exclamation(sp) marks next to them. The devices are labled as...   SM BUS Controller (sounds very important) and Unknown Device   Does anyone know what these are? I want to get this fixed ASAP.   3.) Is there a program where i can monitor how hot my PC gets? I want to measure the temperatures because i heard the Pentium D runs hot and i have tried one but i wasn't sure what motherboard i have and it needed that information.

bob_c_b · Answer

Sounds like you forgot the chipset drivers, and no, you cannot monitor your temps, the sensors are masked in BIOS.

chama98 · Answer

I don't know why you tried to install win XP pro. media edition is win XP pro! its just got media side of it thrown into it. as the saying goes if it aint broke don't fix it!

bob_c_b · Answer

XP Pro uses fewer resources and has a smaller memory foot print, good enough reason for me.

tphillips63 · Answer

No actually it does not. XP media center is a newer build of XP based on the kernal in 2003 server.
It has all the features of XP Home, the meadia extensions, and it does have some features of XP Pro
but you can't join a windows domain.
For home use it is best because someday you might want to add a tuner or what not. MS did not really market it correctly
to all of us so there is a lot of doubt about media center edition.

bob_c_b · Answer

I'm not going to debate what is pretty much a fact, XP Pro has a smaller resource foot print across the board. If you are actually running a media box it is a great OS, but otherwise Media Center has some bloat that many just don't want or need. It's not like you can't add a T.V. tuner to any previous version of Windows and it adds some stuff people don't always want.

chama98 · Answer

@tphillips63 wrote:
No actually it does not. XP media center is a newer build of XP based on the kernal in 2003 server.
It has all the features of XP Home, the meadia extensions, and it does have some features of XP Pro
but you can't join a windows domain.
For home use it is best because someday you might want to add a tuner or what not. MS did not really market it correctly
to all of us so there is a lot of doubt about media center edition.

yes you can! because I am in a domain and I have windows media center addition!

bob_c_b · Answer

Depends what version of MCE, some revisions can't connect to a domain, although I know at one point it had been hacked around.

mk79x · Answer

Ok.............anyway.......what about this SATA HDD? do i have to use both the floppy version and the HDD version of the drivers?

mk79x · Answer

thank you everything is fixed now

bob_c_b · Answer

Unless you set up the RAID during install you don't need the floppy version...

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XPS 400 Problems

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