building a computer question...

[rubberman]

my old DELL desktop kicked the bucket and i was thinking about building my own computer. I would buy a case/motherboard combo. it already has the power supply, built in USB, Video and ethernet port. But it only has 2 PCI slots. I would add my LCD screen, dvd burner. keyboard/mouse and speakers from my old computer. But is there anything special to do with the BIOS when installing an OS? I installed XP on a handful of computers and did the boot from CD way. would that be that same method when i build one from scratch or is there more to it?

[SingSing]

Have you consider buying a $499 laptop ?

[gadgetguy]

I don't see where you've listed a CPU or memory. Don't forget those...

As for your question, it's no different loading the OS. I've seen some motherboards with a BIOS setting for whether the OS is Plug and Play, but the default is usually Yes, so it shouldn't be an issue. You may have to get additional drivers for some devices to work, but it shouldn't hamper loading the OS.

[rubberman]

I don't see where you've listed a CPU or memory. Don't forget those...

As for your question, it's no different loading the OS. I've seen some motherboards with a BIOS setting for whether the OS is Plug and Play, but the default is usually Yes, so it shouldn't be an issue. You may have to get additional drivers for some devices to work, but it shouldn't hamper loading the OS.

i have an HP pavilion which is a POS. so many things have gone downhill that i am parting it out of ebay. i was gonna use that money towards a new laptop until this happened.

yes i need to add an processor and ram

[rubberman]

Xion ATX case midtower-$45
AMD motherboard-$50
-AM2 slot
-has ethernet port
-audio
-video
-uses 240pin DDr2 800 ram
-needs athlon 62 X2/athlon 64FX

power supply-$50
AMD 64 X2 4000+ processor-$66
1gig ram,DDR2 800-$50

$261 total

[Gritz]

You didn't mention if you are using your old hard drive but the new mobo bios should recognize it correctly on boot. Most current hardware is PNP and be recognized by the new mobo. You'll probably have to get new/different memory. You won't have an AGP slot so plan accordingly for any future graphic upgrades. But you should be able to get by pretty inexpensively using much of your old unit.

[rubberman]

i wont be able to use my old HD with XP as master HD will i?

the MBoard has:
NVIDIA GeForce 6100 as the onboard video
Realtek ALC883 -8channels as onboard audio

[SingSing]

Xion ATX case midtower-$45
AMD motherboard-$50
-AM2 slot
-has ethernet port
-audio
-video
-uses 240pin DDr2 800 ram
-needs athlon 62 X2/athlon 64FX

power supply-$50
AMD 64 X2 4000+ processor-$66
1gig ram,DDR2 800-$50

$261 total

After adding harddrive, dvd burner, LCD monitor, speaker, mouse, keyboard.. = almost $499.00 - $99 battery.

[rubberman]

But i go another way and buy a case/motherboard/power supply combo ($80) and then get ram 1gig(DDR2 667) for $35 and AMD athlon64 3500+ for $55. $168 total.

the case/motherboard has:
Via Chrome9 video
real tek ACC883 audio
300w power supply
memory for up to 4gig
lan 10/100 port

[rubberman]

i dont need to buy a dvd burner, LCD monitor, keyboard etc. im taking that from the dead computer as i mentioned in the 1st post

[redwudz]

You should be able to use your existing hard drives and optical drives. But most newer motherboards, especially micro ATX MBs with on-board video, only have two PATA channels for optical drives or PATA hard drives. If your hard drive is SATA, that makes it easier, as there should be at least two SATA connections.

If you just have the one hard drive, this would be the time to add a second. Probably SATA.

You set up the BIOS to boot from the XP OS CD. Then I would delete the existing partition and re-format the old hard drive for a clean install of the OS. I'm assuming you've got your file data off the hard drive already. I also assume you have a full version of the XP OS, as restore discs from Dell won't be of any use. I doubt the new motherboard will boot to the old hard drive setup for the Dell, though you could try that first,

[rubberman]

i dont have the info off the HD yet. the computer just went out at once. i think i might get a new HD and use the old HD as a slave cause i got important info on there. i got the above prices from newegg but geeks.com has some good prices too

[budz]

i dont have the info off the HD yet. the computer just went out at once. i think i might get a new HD and use the old HD as a slave cause i got important info on there. i got the above prices from newegg but geeks.com has some good prices too

Newegg.com is the best online retailer to get your computer components. I'm not knocking geeks.com since I do purchase stuff from there as well but Newegg has the best customer service when it comes to returning a defective item.

[redwudz]

i dont have the info off the HD yet.

I suspected that. I'll also assume it's a smaller hard drive than the new one you are adding. A bit of a PITA, but you would be better off with the OS on the smaller drive and use your new (Probably larger) drive for your video use. So you might have to juggle things around a bit.

One method is to first see if the new MB and setup will boot from the old OS drive. That's a maybe. Or you can use a Linux CD distro and boot from the CD, move the wanted files to the new hard drive, then repartition and reformat the old drive as your OS drive. A Bart PE disc will also work for that. You will have to format the new drive before all this.

The hard way would be to install your OS on the new drive, move the wanted files to it, then repartition the old drive, reformat and install the OS again. Then go back to the new drive and delete the Windows files. It takes a bit of juggling and you will need to set the Boot selection in the BIOS a couple of times.

[rubberman]

Yeah the existing HD is only 20gigs. Basically i have another computer on my home network that i use as a 'fileserver' to store video/mp3/files

[redwudz]

Something like this is handy if you want to pull data off a IDE drive and you have another computer available to plug it into with a USB 2.0 port: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812156101



It's saved me the work of opening up a computer and temporarily wiring in a hard drive. It comes with a power supply also.

For a SATA drive, you don't need a adapter. You just need a available SATA socket in the computer, a long enough SATA IDE cable, and possibly a 5 pin SATA power to 4 pin Molex (Most other hard and optical drives) power adapter and you can use the power adapter from the above device. Or there are SATA versions of the above adapter if you want to use a SATA to USB interface.

[SingSing]

I got one of these, the only problem is I can boot windows off the Harddrive.
Any advice ?

[redwudz]

I've never tried that, but I think your motherboard would have to be capable of booting from a USB device. I have a couple of MBs that seem to have that capability.

I'll attempt to give it a try. Hopefully I have a spare hard drive around that has the OS on it. Or I could unplug the IDE cable from the boot drive on one of the computers and route that through the unit to USB. That would at least give me the MB drivers and a known working drive. Give me a couple of hours and I'll try it.

EDIT: I used my Vista computer as it can boot from a USB hard drive. This from the manual for boot options:



The only functional hard drive with a OS on it was one with Ubuntu. But it booted with no problems. The installed Linux drivers were wrong for the motherboard, but otherwise it would have worked fine. I also booted from a Windows PE disc on a CD drive plugged into the computer with no problems.

The one Windows boot drive I had gave me the 'ntldr missing' error. I probably could have fixed that by copying a similar one from another computer or just sticking in the XP CD, but I didn't want to mess up my Vista install. So the answer seems to be a qualified 'yes'.