Holy flurking schnitt! I can’t believe how fast everything is! I just clicked on the search button and zip! drops right down. Unbelievable.
I do have some more questions though.
I partitioned my hard drive. I have one 10GB and the other is 110Gb. (I meant to have a 20GB partition but I was having problems installing Windows and I thought that trying a different partition size would help. Now I’m stuck with it.) Anyway, I can only see the 10GB partition. I assume that I have to format the other partition to use it. But how does it work after that? If Windows is installed on one partition and everything else is on the other, how does Windows access, say, video clips? I think that I just don’t understand.
Second, for some reason I’m not getting sound. I had sound before, but my computer restarted after installing some drivers and now it’s gone. Any ideas? I haven’t looked around yet, so the solution might be obvious.
I’ll be getting cable internet in a few weeks so any advice you could send my way would be appreciated.
And one last thing. How long does Windows XP Home usually take to install? I disabled a few things in BIOS to help with those Stop errors I kept getting and it took about six hours to install. I turn on those things I disabled and everything is running smoothly now, but I am curious.
Thank you everyone for all your help. There is simply no way I could have done this without you.
What did you disable that let you install Windows?
And, six hours to install XP? Wowsers, there’s something badly amiss here. Last time I installed it, it ran in something closer to 30-40 minutes.
As for partitioning the drive - I’ve also got a 120 GB drive. My C: boot partition is 15 GB, and with a goodly pile of applications installed, is only half full. Another 15 GB partition is D: and it’s what I call installation files. I’ve got stuff like the contents of the Office installation CDs, the latest version of drivers for the wireless router, my font library, etc. It’s all easily replaced if the drive decides to die. The remaining 90 GB or so is my data. I’ve moved “My Documents” there, as well as all of my MP3s, game savefiles, and backups from other PCs here. All partitions are formatted in NTFS.
If it shows up in Windows Explorer with a drive letter, you just need to right-click and format it.
If not, then it’s still free space on the disk rather than a partition. Go to Control Panel - Admin Tools - Computer Management - Disk Management and create the logical drive from there.
For the sound, try uninstalling all the sound drivers, and install updated ones from the sound cards manufacturer’s website. On the other hand, if you’ve been disabling things in the Bios, the sound may have been killed there.
I disabled both CPU caches. I’m not sure if that was what ultimately got me up and running, though. I tried a bunch of things and different problems kept popping up. Something I did worked, and that is good. :)When I saw how sluggish my computer was running right after installation (the original problem that lead me to buy a new computer) I turned them both back on and everything is running smoothly.
I’m far from a computer expert, but I’m 90% that turning off the cache was the problem. I ended up formating and installing Windows on the the free space and it only took half an hour.
I already partitioned the free space, but should I delete it and do it this way instead?
I have Windows installed on both partitions and for for some reason that seems uneccessary to me.
I fixed the sound. I installed the drivers and then clicked on install again by mistake, then clicked cancel. I think that might have been it. I installed the drivers again and everything is fine.
I hope this thread doesn’t stray to far afield, but maybe it can grow beyond its humble beginnings as a “build your own computer” thread and reach its full potential as a “make pulehoopo’s computer be all it can be” thread.
You definitely don’t want Windows installed on both partitions. It should only be on your boot partition, which 99.9999 or so% of the time is C:\
The other partition(s) are merely formatted, and Windows will be able to see and use them.
I’m hoping you’ve not set up all your applications and moved your data to the new machine yet - as you’re discovering, this is a learning experience. Once you get all the kinks worked out, you ought to start all over again from scratch so you can re-partition the drive if desired and have everything “clean” without an odd skeleton of work-arounds. Speaking of clean starts, you probably should reset the BIOS to factory defaults when you re-build, just so you have a known configuration and aren’t wondering if silence is due to disabling onboard audio.
I re-partitioned everything like I wanted and I got all my old files on the new machine. Once I saw all my old bookmarks my computer really started feeling like mine and not one I am playing with in a store. It was almost depressing how slow my old computer is when compared to this one.
I did run into another glitch though. I don’t get any sound at startup. I have to go to the Device Manger and disable then enable the nVidia nForce audio codec interface for it to come back on. Any ideas?
