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Weekly Tech Brief Updates For Today! Wed 10-16-02

WinXP Pro Drive Letter Assignments:

George Walker tackles this issue of Drive Letter Assignments with great care and ease. Expect a live Demo which may include the use of Larry Trochesset's favorite Utility, Power Quest Partition Magic! (10/15/2002)

• Drive Letter Assignments in WinXP Pro by George Walker (10/21/2002).

Choosing Correct Memory, GA-7VAXP:

Robert Howard needs help in his RAM Memory selections, as we all do in choosing Speed & Brand for this next Build Session with the GigaByte GA-7VAXP (FireWire) Motherboard!

Joe Whinery - "The last two builds we had we used the GA-7VRXP (RAID) motherboard with the PC2100 memory. So far, no one has reported any problems running them at 2100. Since Robert didn't say which processor he is going to use, I would say this: With a 2700+ processor go with the PC2700 (or the PC3200 which will be over clocking, so make sure you have enough cooling). With the 2600+ and below CPU, only PC2100 and below memory is not over clocking.

Until AMD converts their entire product line to .13 micron technology the FSB will be 266 MHz. The 2700+ is the first AMD CPU to use the .13 micron technology so far. Now that that has been said, I would go with the PC2700 memory and set the FSB to 333." (10/15/2002) 

PC & XP Tweaks!

Bruno had agreed to be our Guinea Pig this week to allow us the opportunity to "Tweak his PC". Unfortunately, due to Car trouble, we'll tackle this issue another day. Below you'll find our method and procedures plan. Enjoy! GB (Tuesday, 10/15/2002)

He has the GigaByte GA-7VRXP with RAID Motherboard plus his Windows XP Pro installation. Since Bruno's last PC which he built @ BuildOrBuy was running Win98SE, we're going to see if he might be interested in making the WinXP Pro GUI a little more User Friendly in terms of where he came from.

We'll have 2 PC's handy - George Walker will have a separate PC running, in case we need anything for comparison. Both will be connected to the Internet, each with an IP Address since they have each have LAN cards installed. And both will be available to see on the Projector for Discussion during the Presentation.

Bruno's Motherboard is the same GA-7VRXP with RAID we've used in the previous Special Build Sessions this year. The only difference in this Build Session is the Motherboard Rev 2.0 as opposed to the previous Rev 1.1 Motherboard.

We've tested this Gigabyte Motherboard Ver 1.1 under Windows 2000 while Bruno's PC Motherboard has Rev 2.0 running Windows XP Pro. Anything noticeable in the hardware area? Yes. The Rev 2.0 Motherboards shipped with Bios F8. Bios F11 is the current offering. With Bruno's permission, this is where we'll start. Our only goal in updating this Bios will be to cure the crackling audio problem in WinXP Pro which can prove to be very annoying.

Our 1-2-3 Plan:

We'll focus on Security, Bios, Drivers + A Familiar Look & Feel.

1. Boot into WinXP Pro.
2. Install ZoneAlarm IF not already present! Protecting assets always comes first!
3. Update Bios from within Windows XP Professional, then reboot and reset the Bios customization tweaks. We'll use Gigabyte's Bios Update Utility on the included Motherboard CD.
4. Boot into WinXP Pro.
5. Go to: Windows Device Manager - On-Board Audio Driver installation - NOT setup.exe on the Motherboard Drive CD! We ONLY want those audio drivers (Creative CT5880 / PCI 128) and NOT Creative's 30 MB's of analogue playback bloat ware & spy ware apps! For our Audio Playback, we're going for a Digital Media Player instead!
6. We'll give WinXP Pro a more familiar look & feel like Win2000.
7. I'm sure Bruno has already Activated WinXP Pro, so we won't mess with that issue.

Next Week... Wed, 10-23, 2002

1. Robert's willingness to test the new GigaByte GA-7VAXP Motherbard!