The Motherboard, Processor and RAM

Choosing the make/model of motherboard (mainboard) is the most important choice, because it determines which make/models of processor (AMD or Intel) you can use, many of the features of the PC, such as networking, FireWire, HDMI, and eSATA support, and how upgradable and customisable the PC is. Some BIOS setup programs allow much more customisation than others. Here is an extract from Asrock K10N78FullHD-hSLI (AMD Socket AM2+) motherboard manual. "This motherboard supports ASRock AM2 Boost overclocking technology. If you enable this function in the BIOS setup, the memory performance will improve up to 12.5%, but the effect still depends on the AM2 CPU [processor] you adopt. Enabling this function will overclock the chipset/CPU reference clock. However, we can not guarantee the system stability for all CPU/DRAM configurations. If your system is unstable after AM2 Boost function is enabled, it may not be applicative to your system. You may choose to disable this function for keeping the stability of your system." More information is provided on making the choice further down this page. Every boxed retail motherboard come with a user manual, which must be read and consulted during the building process. If you buy a second-hand motherboard, say, from eBay, and it doesn't come with a manual, you just have to identify the make/model and then download a manual in the PDF format (requires the free Acrobat Reader) fromits manufacturer's website. The image below shows an ATX motherboard installed in an ATX PC tower case standing as it would on a desktop, but with a side panel removed. There is a single hard disk drive installed in the drive bay on the left. The ports panel on the left side of the motherboard will show the ports at the back of the case. There is a single adapter card installed in one of the two PCI slots white. The port(s) of that card will also appear at the back of the case.

Note that Page 6 of this guide provides the order of the installations. I have provided the information on how to install each component or device in pages 1 to 5 of the guide. See the Motherboard pages of this site for detailed information on this most important of components. Note well that if you are upgrading a system with new hardware components, you must make sure that the power supply unit (PSU) is capable of powering the new hardware, because hardware that is only a few years old uses much less power, and is much more tolerant of a slightly erratic supply of power than most of the latest hardware - video cards, RAM, processor, etc. - This article contains more advice on power supply units (aka PSUs/power supplies). You should configure any jumpers or DIP switches, according to the motherboard's manual, and install the processor and the RAM on to the motherboard before you fit the motherboard in the case. Just remember not to place the motherboard on any kind of electricityconducting material when you configure it, or install the processor, its cooling unit, and the RAM modules. Always place it on insulating material such as the plastic or cardboard covering it came in. And always earth yourself by touching earthed metal such as a radiator before you touch electronic components, or wear an antistatic wrist strap that is attached to earthed metal. See further down the article for information on RAM and instructions on how to fit it.

You will then install all of the other components - motherboard in the case, adapter cards into their relevant slots, disk drives, etc. - and then attach the cables coming from the devices (or the front of the case) to the motherboard. The disk drives can usually be installed into their bays in the case before or after the motherboard has been fitted. I prefer to install them first in case I damage the motherboard accidentally by dropping a tool on it. Note that in a new case there will be thin metal blanking plates that seal the openings in the ports panel and the drive bays in the case. The blanking plates that cover the PCI/AGP/PCI Express openings for adapter cards can be removed by unscrewing the screw that holds them in place. In cheaper cases, the ones that cover the drive bays at the front of the case are usually held in place by threads that can easily be punched out manually, or removed with the aid of pair of pliers, but take care when removing them because you can easily cut yourself on the sharp edges. They cannot usually be replaced when removed, but if you have a highquality computer case, you can often remove and replace these blanking plates whenever you like. How to install a motherboard in the case The motherboard's user manual provides full instructions on how to install it in the case. If you don't know the make/model of the motherboard, you can use a free utility, such as CPU-Z, to identify it and then use Google to find the manufacturer's site from where you can download a copy in the PDF format that requires a free PDF reader, such as Adobe Acrobat. Visit the Motherboards, Cases and Power Supplies section of this site for detailed information on motherboards.

Choices of processor
You will have to make a choice between an AMD or an Intel processor, and then purchase a quality motherboard that supports your choice of processor. Preferably a motherboard that is as upgradable, or, at least, as overclockable as possible. Visit the Motherboard, PC Cases, and Power Supplies pages on this site for more information on overclocking a processor. You can do this by visiting a local vendor that sells motherboards, buy one from one of the mail-order suppliers that advertise in PC magazines, such as Computer Shopper, or bid for one at an auction website such as eBay. Note well that you should read all of the support pages on how to sell, how to buy, and how to find out the information on sellers and buyers - the feedback from other users - before using an auction site. There is a great deal of information available about con artists and protection against them.

For instance, on eBay, if you see the image of a pair of dark glasses beside a seller's name, you should check his or her feedback thoroughly. Check the items that the seller has sold. Every time someone provides feedback, the item that was purchased appears under the Items heading. You just have to click on the link to go to that auction. Make sure that the seller has a record of selling exensive items if you are about to purchase one yourself, because it is easy to sell cheap goods and get good feedback and then 'sell' and expensive item that doesn't exist. If a con artist cashes your cheque, you will not be able to find out who the person is from the bank that cashed your cheque, because the bank will not be able to disclose information to third parties about its clients. This is the case even if your money has effectively been stolen. There is an article called Using eBay safely on the Summary page of this site. Annotated images of Socket A and Socket 939 motherboards Click here! to view an annotated images of an ATX AMD Socket A motherboard for the first Athlon socketed processors, and an annotated image of an ATX AMD Socket 939 motherboard for Athlon 64 anf 64 FX processors. - Click your browser's Back button to return here.

Spoiled for choice

These days, you are spoiled for choice when it comes to purchasing a motherboard. And probably thanks to a far more knowledgeable buying public, and the chronic need of computer manufacturers to cut down on support costs, bad or poor motherboards (and other components) have become almost but not completely extinct. You will have to buy a motherboard that supports the processor that you want to use. Intel processors will not run on motherboards designed to run AMD processors, and vice versa. You should choose a dual-core or quad-core Intel or AMD processor instead of a single-core processor, and then choose a motherboard which has the features that you want. A single-core processor has one processor core, a dual-core processor has two processor cores, and a quad-core processor had four processor cores. All of the latest motherboards that run dual-core processors use DDR2 RAM or DDR3 memory, or a combination of both types installed in separate memory slots. You should not consider using less than 1GB of RAM memory if you are going to use the Windows Vista Home Premium or Vista

Ultimate versions. The 32-bit versions of Windows Vista run best on between 2GB and 3.5GB, but cannot use more than that. The 64-bit versions of Windows XP and Windows Vista can use up to 128GB of memory. Only the Vista Home Basic version has 512MB as its recommended minimum amount of memory. A system using Windows XP can run comfortably on 512MB of memory if it isn't used to run memory-hungry applications, as is the case with video-editing, etc. Do your research and make up your mind which make of processor you want - from Intel or AMD. Any PC-orientated magazine contains many suppliers' catalogues that list them. - And then look for a motherboard that supports it and which meets your computing needs and/or your financial means. Visit the Processors pages on this site for more information on them. Visit the Motherboards pages on this site for more information on them. Visit the Using Windows Vista section of this site for more information on the different versions of the new operating system.

How to keep the processor cool

You will need a heatsink and fan unit to cool the processor. Boxed, retail processors made by Intel and AMD come with a recommended cooling unit, but you can also buy more expensive, more effective cooling units. The image below shows a standard Cooler Master heatsink and fan unit.

Note well that some of the heatsink and fan units for modern high-speed processors can have some form of sticky heat transfer material on the underside of the heatsink - usually in the form of a small square - that fits over the processor's central core where the main processing chip is housed. This will help the heat to conduct away from the core to the heatsink so that the fan can dissipate the heat into the case. Since it is sticky, a thin protective plastic cover will have to be removed prior to fitting the cooler to the processor. Failure to do so can cause the processor to overheat rapidly enough to destroy itself.

If the heatsink and fan unit came with a strip of film covering thermal compound, you should not remove the heatsink and fan from the processor after it has been installed and expect the compound to function properly again, because it can only be used once. If the cooling unit doesn't provide any heat transfer material, you can use thermal paste - or a thermal pad can be used. - Read more about this topic further down this page.
CPU Cooler Charts 2008, Part I "Keep cool! That's what CPU coolers are there for. 45% of our candidates fail our test. We uncover weaknesses and expose false promises..." http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/CPU-Coolers-Phenom-Core2,review-30115.html CPU Cooler Charts 2008, Part II - Junk or Jewel? "In the second part of our cooler roundup we review six more products, rating cooling performance, noise and ease of installation..." http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/CPU-Coolers-Phenom-Core2,review-30238.html CPU Cooler Charts 2008, Part III Are Box Coolers any Good? "In this instalment, we will take a look at coolers that ship with CPUs in the retail box the so-called box coolers. In the process, we will meet a few familiar faces, namely Intels selection of bundled coolers, which represent something of a reference point for each CPU class. The question we will attempt to answer is this are box coolers sufficient or are you better off opting for an aftermarket cooler upgrade?" http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/Cooler-Charts-Coolers-Box-Intel,review-30301.html Using a laptop/notebook Pentium M notebook processor in a desktop PC If you want a quiet desktop computer that uses only a minimal amount of power and that runs so cool that it can be fitted with a passive heatsink (one without a fan), ATX desktop PC motherboards are available that use the processors normally only found in laptop/notebook computers. It is also possible to buy an adapter that fits to particular standard motherboards that allows a mobile notebook processor to be used. Click here! to go directly to information on these motherboards, processors, and adapters on Page 3 of this article. Water cooling systems Water-cooled systems have been available for some time, but it is expensive compared to using the usual heatsink and fan coolers. Here is an illustrated article on how to install a water-cooling system: A Beginner's Guide For WaterCooling Your PC http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/...review-2126.html Comparing Water Coolers: We Follow Your Lead "Water cooling in the PC is still pretty far removed from the mainstream, but Swiftech aims to change that with an affordable system for CPUs designed to make water cooling more accessible to the power user who wants to get their feet wet (pun intended) with liquid cooling..." http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/comparing-water-coolers,review-29667.html

Radical CPU Coolers from CoolIT "With its Freezone and Eliminator coolers, CoolIT brings hybrid Peltier/liquid cooling to the masses. How do the two coolers stand up against cooling systems using other methods?" http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/...review-2338.html

Quality cooling units are usually fairly cheap and are easy to install, but they can also be expensive. Make sure that the unit is designed to be used with the make and model of the processor you have, or intend to purchase. The more high-end and power-consuming the components are, and the heavier the duty that the PC is put to, the more will it be necessary for an expensive cooling unit for the processor, and even, if necessary, the video/graphics card.

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Remember, you can purchase additional case fans to cool the case and other high-end components that get hot, such as a HDD. You can also purchase additional fans to fit in the case. The image below of a case fan is not of the same scale as the heatsink and fan unit shown above.

If you want a computer that is a quiet as possible, fans of 120mm (12cm/4.72") are recommended because they spin slowly compared to smaller fans and therefore don't make as much noise. If you buy a case, find out the size of its case fan(s). I have a case which has a transparent side that has a 100mm (10cm/3.93") fan in its middle that has a blue LED light in each of its corners that cast blue light into the case. If I want to see if the processors fan is working, I just have to look into the case. The noise the fan makes is slight. The base unit

(tower case) stands on a computer desk so that the side of the case with the fan in it faces the monitor, so it blows air across the desktop, which I find refreshing, even in winter. If there isn't a ready-made mounting position or opening in the case, you may have to cut an opening in it to fit a case fan, depending on how many fans are already in the case, or where in the case you want it. Just make sure that you attach the plug for the fan to the motherboard connector the right way round. You don't want the fan to spin in reverse and suck air into the computer when the intention is to make it expel air. You should have the fans arranged so that they create a flow of air across the components. Therefore, you can have a fan at the front of the case pulling air into the case and one at the back of the case that expels it. What you don't want is two fans that are both drawing air into the case.

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Different processor/sockets have different ways in which a cooling unit (usually a heatsink and fan unit) is attached to the installed processor. A heatsink and fan unit usually has clips that are fastened to projecting connection points on the processor's socket - or it fits on to a special fitting built into the motherboard - or the cooler has four feet that clip into holes in the motherboard. The image below shows a Socket 478 motherboard (still available, but a socket that is no longer being used by Intel for its latest processors). The processor's socket is surrounded by the fitting to which the heatsink and fan unit is fitted. It is an unusual board because it only has one PCI slot (white, bottom left-hand corner)and an AGP slot for a graphics card.

Intel's Socket LGA775 processors don't have pins Intel's Pentium 4 Socket LGA775 processors and later Socket LGA775 Intel processors don't have pins on the underside of the unit that fit into matching holes in the socket; they have metal contact points called a land grid array (LGA). The flat contacts on the processor's underside make contact with tiny coils on pins inside the socket. The processor

sits on top of them. The coils inside the socket are mounted on pieces of metal (pins), which give them a bit of spring so that they push up and make firm contact with the metal contact points on the processor. When you install or remove the processor, it's possible to bend or move the pins. If one or more of the coils can't make contact with the processor, the computer won't start up. If that hapens after you've installed the processor or removed and reinstalled it, examine the socket from above. The pattern of pinsshould be completely ordered and symmetrical. If any of the pins are out of line, you can use a knife with a sharp point or a pin to ease them back into position, but you must make sure that you don't cause a short circuit by leaving any of them making contact with each other. The idea is to get the vertical part of each of these inner pins into an upright position and equidistant from the surrounding pins. It might not be possible to get them exactly equidistant from one another, but as long as their locations are approximately right, they should be able to make contact with the contact points on the processor. If you replace the processor and its heatsink and starting up the computer fails, you'll have to try adjusting the pins until startup takes place.

If the cooling unit is too cheap or poor quality it is likely to break down and cause overheating problems, which can be many and varied failures with error messages that have nothing to do with the problems that would result if there is no overheating shutdown protection built into the motherboard's circuitry or set in the BIOS. And if there is such shutdown protection, which was built into all motherboards soon after the arrival of processors running at 1GHz, unsaved data can be lost when the system suddenly shuts down. Make sure that you purchase a cooling unit made for the type of processor you are using. As shown in the image above, an Intel Pentium 4 (Socket 478) processor, requires a special cooling unit that is designed to clip over the matching structure of the processor's socket. It cannot be used for any other type of processor. This site provides a good selection of AMD and Intel processor (CPU) coolers: http://www.xoxide.com/. Click here! if you want to go directly to the links on this site to some of the manufacturers that produce quality cooling units (under Overclocking and Cooling Info Sites). Note that many motherboards are able to report the temperature in the BIOS setup program. Some also include interface software for reporting vital statistics in Windows, thereby allowing you to actively monitor the temperature. If your motherboard includes a reading in the BIOS, but no Windows utility, try using the Motherboard Monitor. You might also be able to set an alarm level at which the BIOS issues a warning sound. For instance, you could set the alarm or shutdown levels at 60 degrees Celsius (60C).

In any case, the motherboard's manual will contain the information you need to know about any onboard temperature monitoring if it is available. If possible, if you buy an expensive cooling unit, you should buy one that attaches to a plug from the power supply instead of one that plugs into the motherboard, because the fan might draw more power than the motherboard connection can supply, and short it. A standard ATX motherboard (ordinary size, or micro-ATX) will fit into a standard ATX case. You should know that proprietary makes of computer, such as Dell, Compaq, and Hewlett Packard do not use standard cases or motherboards. They use their own customised ones, which means that you cannot install a standard board in their cases - you have to use their products - if they are available - usually sold at a premium over standard motherboards. If you purchase a new, boxed motherboard, it will come with a full set of cables for the number of hard disk drives and floppy disk drives that it supports, and a user manual that provides all of the installation and configuration information, including the BIOS settings, much of which will be illustrated. If this is not the case, visit the motherboard's website to find out if you can download a manual. Otherwise, unless you can work out how to configure and install the motherboard, don't purchase it. Read the BIOS page of this site for more information on the BIOS setup program, and the go to the first of the Links pages on this site for BIOSrelated websites. Read its manual all the way through before you attempt to install the motherboard. If it doesn't make complete sense to you, ask for help from a computer forum, such as the one at Tom' s Hardware Guide, a newsgroup, such as alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt, or your local computer store. You can also search the Usenet Newsgroups database at Google. It provides all of the backdated postings to these newsgroups. Advanced searches are available.

Installing the processor and its heatsink and fan cooling unit
In order to install a particular make and model of processor in a motherboard, that motherboard and its BIOS setup program must support it. All of the recent and current processors made by Intel and AMD just have to be installed in a motherboard that is properly installed in a PC's case with the RAM memory and the video/graphics card installed in order to be able to boot into the BIOS by pressing its entry key when the startup screen appears.

A hard disk drive has to be installed, and an operating system, which is usually a version of Windows, has to be installed on the hard drive before any application software, such as MS Office, can be installed. The installation of a socketed processor is merely a matter of lifting the lever beside the Zero Insertion Force (ZIF) processor socket, inserting the processor into it the correct way round, and pressing the lever back into place. The socket's lever in the image below is brown, and it is located on the bottom side of the socket - held in place under a protrusion from the socket itself. The two clipped corners of this Socket 370 socket (now a redundant socket type) are clearly seen in the bottom corners of the socket. An Intel Socket 370 processor's pin grid array will match its shape.

The processor can be correctly aligned in the socket by matching the clipped corner(s) of the socket with the clipped corner(s) on the underside of the processor. The clipped corner, seen on the images below of the front and bottom of an AMD Athlon 64 processor, is fitted to the matching corner of the processor socket on the motherboard.

Note that if you bend a pin on the processor so that it doesn't make a connection, you very probably won't be able to start the computer. Note that Intel's latest processors do not have pins on the underside of the processor that fit into matching holes in the processor's socket; they have contact points that match contact points in the socket. There will always be an easy way to align a processor in its socket correctly. Read the instructions that came with a boxed retail processor, or visit the manufacturer's website for instructions if you have bought a bare, OEM product, or a second-hand processor that didn't come with its supporting documentation. You can download the manuals for the latest MSI motherboards free of charge from http://www.msi.com.tw/. The manuals provide illustrated instructions on how to install the processor in its socket. Each type of processor will have its own method of being correctly aligned in its socket. Instructions are also provided in the manual on how to install a heatsink and fan unit over the processor. All of the major motherboard manufacturers provide user manuals for their boards, and copies in the PDF format are also provided from the motherboard manufacturer's website. Those instructions are also provided when you buy a retail, boxed processor. The image below shows a heatsink and fan unit with the lever that is used to fit it to the processor socket.

There are various kinds of lever implementations used to make fitting the cooling unit easy. However, if you have never installed the type of processor and cooling unit, you should always visit the processor's manufacturer's site for illustrated instructions on how to install them, because doing so might require specific knowledge that is more than just common sense. Cooling units are available for Socket LGA775 Intel processors that are fixed over the processor's socket by pressing push pins into their sockets on the motherboard. The push pins have a flat top that makes doing this very easy. The coolers have four feet that clip into holes in the motherboard. On each foot of the cooler there is a slot and an arrow. You insert a flat-head screwdriver into the slot to engage and disengage the lock in order to install

or remove the cooling unit. For example, to remove the cooler, insert the screwdriver into the slot and turn it 90 clockwise towards the arrow. Then, one at a time, grip each foot and pull it up. It should click up and come free. When all of the feet are free, lift the cooling unit straight up from the processor. Reverse this process to install the processor. AMD's Athlon 64 and Athlon 64 FX ranges of 64-bit processors (the retail boxed product) come with a heatsink and fan unit and illustrated instructions on how to fit it. The process is similar to the method used to fit the cooling unit in the image above, except that there is no lever to push the hook over the protrusions on the socket. You hook one side of the unit over a single protrusion, and then pull a springed handle on the other side of the processor's socket over until it locks into position with the top of its handle in a horizontal position. Here is an illustrated example (a PDF file) of the application of thermal compound between the heatsink and an Intel dual-core processor:
How to apply Arctic Silver 5 Intel Dual Core CPU W/Heatspreader http://www.arcticsilver.com/pdf/appinstruct/as5/ins_as5_intel_dual_wcap.pdf

Thermal paste (compound) or a thermal pad?

To increase the thermal conduction efficiency between the processor's die, and the surface of the heatsink, thermal paste (thermal compound) or thermal pads are used. For Pentium 4, Core 2 Duo, and Athlon 64 processors, which have a covered upper surface, spread the paste thinly over the entire surface by squeezing a bit out and then spreading it evenly across the surface with an old credit/store card or similar implement. When using thermal paste, care should be taken not to apply it too thickly. The paste should only expel the air from the interface between the cooler and the die. Using more paste than say an amount equivalent to two or three grains of rice usually reduces thermal conductivity instead of increasing it. Practical tests of the various pastes have shown that the temperature of the processor's die can be reduced by up to three or four degrees Celsius ( 3 to 4 C) by using a high-quality thermal paste. The application of the pre-assembled thermal pads is quite simple - you remove the protective film from the pad, place the pad between the processor and cooling unit, finish fitting the cooler, and then turn the computer on. A thermal pad can only be used once. It leaves sticky residues that are not easy to remove from the contact surfaces. Thermal paste is easier to

remove, therefore, those of you who regularly change the processor are advised to use it instead of a pad. You can use the Google search box at the top of this page (with its Web radio button enabled) to find sites that provide information on how to apply and remove thermal paste and the sticky residue left by thermal pads. The search term clean + "thermal compound" + processor lead me to information on this useful site:

Intel and AMD no longer produce Slot 1 and Slot A processors

Thankfully, Intel and AMD no longer produce slotted processors (Slot 1 and Slot A respectively), because they are more difficult to install than socketed processors. A boxed slotted processor will come with installation instructions, but if you buy a bare processor you will have to know how to install it. Slotted processors come with two support arms, much like the support arms on the DIMM slots, at both ends of the processor's slot to support it in an upright position - and to hold the heatsink and fan in place against the processor. The processor and the cooling unit are usually (but not always) both fitted between the upright supports that are folded down over the slot when the processor is not installed. Slot processors can also make use of a passive heatsink (no fan) that fits to one side of the processor's case. Both kinds of cooling units look like something dangerous. Click the thumbnail image below to see a full-size image of an Intel Slot 1 motherboard with an Intel Pentium 3 processor that has a passive heatsink attached to it.

Visit this article - Understanding CPU Upgrades - for detailed information on installing a processor.

How to install the motherboard (mainboard)

The actual installation of the processor in its motherboard socket and the motherboard itself is easy in both tower (vertical) and desktop (horizontal) cases. No special tools are required to install a processor, a suitable flat-ended screwdriver can be used to fit the cooling unit, and the only tools you need to install a motherboard is a standard Philips screwdriver - and nimble fingers. A pair of tweezers comes in handy to remove and replace jumpers on the motherboard, and to set hard disk drives as master or slave devices. If used, DIP switches can be set with a small screwdriver, or the tip of a ballpoint pen or pencil. Note that most recent motherboards don't make use of jumpers or DIP switches to configure most of the the settings. Most of the configuration is done by settings in the BIOS setup program. The motherboard is usually fixed to a plate that has stand-off (mounting) holes for stand-off screws that match the screw-in holes on the motherboard. The copper or brass stand-off screws come with the case. They keep the motherboard insulated from the case by air, are screwed into the plate, and the motherboard is placed over them and screwed into them. Each case will have its own method of securing the plate containing the motherboard to the inside of the case so that the motherboard's built-in ports fit through the ports panel. You usually have to place the washers over the holes in the motherboard and then screw the board to the stand-off screws on the plate. The plate with the motherboard fixed to it is then fitted and screwed into the case so that the ports fit into the cuttings of the ports panel, which is a removable piece in its own right that fits into its cutting at the back of the case. You may just have to clip the plate containing the motherboard into the case and then secure it to the back of the case with screws in the same way as you would secure the side panels of the case. If the PC case has an unusual way of installing the motherboard or other devices, fitting instructions should have been supplied with the case, or you should be able to obtain the information from a user manual made available as a download from the case manufacture's website. A particular motherboard might have a different set of ports compared to the ports panel provided with a standard ATX case. A mixture of USB/FireWire, modem, network, audio, and video ports might be provided that a standard ports panel won't have cut-outs for. If this is the case, the motherboard manufacturer will provide the ports panel that fits over the ports built into

that motherboard. You will then just have to remove the standard panel, and replace it with the non-standard panel. The image below is of a ports panel that came with an MSI motherboard. The ports on the motherboard fit through the openings when the panel is fitted into the back of the case. The two openings on the far left are for PS/2 keyboard and mouse connections, and the three openings on the far right are for the sound connections, with the LAN networking and USB ports beside them.

You shouldn't have to drill any holes; all of the holes will be where they ought to be. - Both ATX and micro-ATX motherboards are designed to be fitted into ATX cases. The BTX (Intel) and DTX (AMD) form factor for PC cases and motherboards The BTX form factor for cases and motherboards is the latest type that at the time of writing (March, 2007) was not being widely used. If you have purchased a BTX case and motherboard, visit the Motherboards, PC Cases, and Power Supplies section of this site for more information on them. AMD has created the DTX form factor, which also won't replace the ATX form factor.

The requirements of the BIOS

Note well that you might have to reflash the BIOS with the latest BIOS file in order for a motherboard to recognise and/or run a particular processor, and possibly even other hardware such as a hard disk drive. The motherboard's BIOS will have been programmed to be able to recognise and run all of the processors that its manual says that it can run, but this might not be the case if a faster version of a particular processor becomes available that the BIOS programmers knew nothing about. They would not usually provide support for unknown later versions of the same type of processor, because its hardware requirements could be different, thereby making its installation in the motherboard inadvisable. For example, if the faster version of a particular make and type of processor becomes available, it could have power or other hardware requirements that exceed the capabilities of the motherboard, and should therefore not be installed.

Therefore, you should always check the motherboard manufacturer's website for information about a processor if it is not listed as being supported in the motherboard's manual. If you decide to purchase a motherboard with inbuilt video and audio chips, you will not have to purchase separate audio and video (graphics) cards. The inbuilt video and audio chips can usually be disabled in the BIOS if you want to install PCI Express, AGP, or PCI cards instead. Otherwise they will be disabled by setting jumpers on the motherboard. Note that you can also buy motherboards with a built-in network interface card (NIC), an SCSI adapter for SCSI drives, a wireless network adapter, and a modem. Just remember that the more work that the components of the motherboard have to do, the less effectively the system is likely to function, because they will all demand processor time. But add-on components, such as a video and sound card, take much of the work load off the motherboard and processor and allow them to deal more effectively with running the applications, etc. If the video and sound chips are integrated into the motherboard, the monitor and speakers, etc., will be plugged directly to the relevant ports on the motherboard itself instead of to ports on video and sound adapter cards. If you want to upgrade to adapter cards at a later date, make sure that the motherboard has an AGP or x16 PCI Express slot for an AGP or PCI Express video/graphics card - and some free PCI slots. It should have three to six PCI slots. If you have any old ISA adapter cards that you want to reuse, the motherboard will have to have the ISA slots for them. Most new motherboards do not have ISA slots at all, because as a standard it is dead. But you can still find motherboards on auction sites such as eBay that have at least one ISA slot, or buy them from dealers that specialise in older hardware.

The BIOS Battery: Where it is and how to replace it

The image above shows a close-up view of a Sony BIOS (CMOS) battery in its socket on a motherboard. The BIOS chip is next to it. The following article deals with how to replace a BIOS battery.

BIOS (CMOS) battery replacement site - How to replace a BIOS (CMOS) battery http://www.monster-hardware.com/articles/cmosbattery.htm

Connecting the plugged cables that come from the front of the case to the motherboard

How to connect the LED cables, and the Reset Switch and Power Switch cables (that lead from the front of the case and are attached to the motherboard) will be illustrated in the motherboard's manual. A user manual is provided with a new brand-name computer or motherboard, but if you don't have one because you've purchased the computer or motherboard second-hand, or you've lost it, most of the motherboard manufacturers provide manuals in the form of PDF documents from their sites that require a reader such as the free Acrobat Reader. The LED lights are only Light Emitting Diodes that signal that the power is on, or that the IDE drive interface is at work, etc. It is not necessary to connect them in order to have a functioning computer. But you have connect the Power Switch cable to the motherboard, because it turns the power on from the button in the front of the case. If connected, the Reset Switch makes the computer reboot. Below is an illustration from an MSI motherboard manual showing the area of the motherboard where these plugs are attached. You can download the manuals for the latest MSI motherboards free of charge from http://www.msi.com.tw/. The LED plugs in the case will be attached to the pins as shown in the diagram. The case speaker plug is the largest with four pins, the power plug has three pins, and the other plugs have two pins. Attaching the plugs the wrong way round will do no harm other than failing to make the LED or switch work. If this happens, just install the plug the other way around.

The image below shows these plugged cables inserted into the correct connection points on the motherboard.

THE RAM (Random Access Memory)

Updated with information on dual-channel DDR/DDR2/DDR3 RAM

Crucial's UK and US Memory Advisors

Paul Mullen, the highly-respected computer guru of the Helpfile at ComputerShopper.co.uk - "I have recently been buying my memory only from Crucial Technology. I would rather pay the extra cost than waste time trying to track down the obscure program faults that bad memory can cause." The best way to purchase the correct RAM for a particular motherboard is to obtain it from a manufacturer that sells it on a brand-name PC or motherboard basis. You can also purchase memory for brand-name laptop computers. Crucial does this. The US and UK Memory Advisors (below) allow you to find out which types of RAM are available for your laptop/notebook computer, PC, or motherboard - and what the current prices are. UK - Crucial Memory Advisor - UK
The Crucial Memory Advisor

Select your system and press go!

Top of Form

Select a manufacturer

Go!

10402016

1087277

http://w w w .cruc

Bottom of Form

USA - Crucial Memory Advisor - USA

For example, if your computer has an Asus motherboard, open the menu, scroll down to Asus, and click GO. If, say, you have a Dell computer, scroll down to DELL, and do likewise. You will be taken to the relevant information on Crucial's website. Using MSI (Microstar) as an example, because it manufactures all kinds of computer equipment, on Crucial's website, you will have to choose which MSI product you require memory for - a motherboard, a desktop PC, or a laptop computer. It would therefore be a good idea to scroll down to and click the reference that pertains to your requirement to find out if a PC or motherboard manufacturer's product model is listed before you make a purchase - of the product itself, or the RAM it uses.

If a particular manufacturer isn't listed in the UK Memory Advisor, try looking for it in the USA Memory Advisor (and vice versa) to find out what RAM it uses, and then just make a purchase of that type of RAM. If you don't know the make and model of the motherboard installed in your computer, here is a good free utility - Belarc Advisor - that creates an analysis of the hardware and software on a personal computer. Look under FREE DOWNLOAD - http://www.belarc.com/. Another utility that also provides detailed information on the memory itself is CPU-Z. The memory requirements of Windows XP and Windows Vista There are earlier types of RAM memory than DDR SDRAM, such as EDO and plain SDRAM, but you are unlikely to be building a computer using any other type than DDR, DDR2 or DDR3 memory, so I will concentrate on those types. The earlier types can still be purchased from Crucial if you need to upgrade an old PC. When updgrading memory, it is essential that you purchase the right type of memory module, because DDR, DDR2, and DDR3 memory is incompatible with each other. You cannot use a DDR2 module in a DDR DIMM slot, etc. However, some motherboards can have slots for both DDR/DDR2 or DDR2/DDR3 modules. No motherboards support all three types. A DDR3supporting motherboard will not support DDR memory, but it might, but not necessarily, support DDR2 memory. The motherboard's manual or the PC's user guide should provide the information required to be able to tell which type of slots are provided. If you don't have a copy of the manual, you should be able to download one in the PDF format from the manufacturer's website. You can use a free utility called CPU-Z to find out the make/model of the motherboard as well as the type of memory installed, the memory capacity of the module(s), and which modules are installed in which slots. Note that a PDF reader, such as the free Adobe Acrobat Reader is required to read PDF documents. Most DDR/DDR2/DDR3 memory comes in matched pairs of modules to take advantage of dual-channel mode. Modern motherboards have a dual-channel memory bus, which makes it possible for pairs of modules to have a performance advantage compared to using a single module of the same size. In other words, two 1GB modules in dual-channel mode outperform a single 2GB module that can only operate in single-channel mode. Adding additional memory requires making use of free DIMM slots, so, if you are buying a brand-name PC, it is advisable to find out if additional memory can be installed. This is advisable because the amount of memory used by Microsoft's Windows operating system has been increasing with each new version since Windows 95 and Windows 98, which could run comfortably on 32MB and 64MB respectively.

A computer running Windows XP Home Edition that doesn't run memoryhungry applications, such as video-editing software, should have minimum of 512MB of RAM memory to run comfortably. Such a computer will run ordinary office applications, etc., with 256MB of memory, but slowly. Motherboard user manuals recommend that the 32-bit versions of Windows XP Home and Professional Editions should have no more than 3.5GB of memory installed, because they don't support more than that amount of memory. The 64-bit version of Windows XP Professional (Windows XP Professional x64 Edition) supports up to 128 gigabytes (GB) of RAM and 16 terabytes (TB) of virtual memory (reserved space on the hard disk drive) that Windows or any other operating system uses instead of RAM memory. Most of the versions of Windows Vista require more RAM memory to run optimally (on a computer that doesn't use memory-hungry applications) than Windows XP. A video-editing application is an example of memoryintensive software. Only Windows Vista Home Basic has a recommended minimum amount of memory of 512MB, which is the same minimal amount recommended for Windows XP. Windows Vista Home Premium, the most popular version, and Windows Vista Ultimate require a minimum of 1GB (1024MB) of memory, which is twice the minimal amount of memory recommended to run Windows XP. You should not install more than 3.5GB of memory in a PC running a 32-bit version of Windows Vista. If you want to install 4GB or more of RAM, the computer must have a 64-bit processor, which almost all new computers now have. The 32-bit versions of Windows XP and Windows Vista support up to 4GB of RAM, but can only use about 3.5GB in practice. However, the 64-bit versions of Windows Vista, for example, can support more than 128GB of RAM. You can find out if a particular Intel or AMD processor is 32-bit or 64-bit on the following two pages:
Desktop CPU Comparison Guide - AMD processors http://www.techarp.com/showarticle.aspx?artno=337&pgno=0 Desktop CPU Comparison Guide - Intel processors http://www.techarp.com/showarticle.aspx?artno=337&pgno=4

The computer must also be running a 64-bit operating system, which could be the latest versions of Linux, Apple's OS X, or the 64-bit versions of Windows XP Professional (XP Home Edition only comes as a 32-bit version), or the 64-bit versions of Windows Vista, which are: Windows Vista Enterprise 64-bit edition Windows Vista Home Basic 64-bit edition Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit edition Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit edition Windows Vista Business 64-bit edition
64-bit Editions of Windows Vista http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/windowsvista/editions/64bit.mspx

Vista Workshop Performance Boost with 8GB of RAM "In order to be able to utilize the entire [8GB of] system memory, you will therefore need to use a 64 bit version of Windows Vista. In this article, we will take a look at memory usage under the 32 and 64 bit versions of Windows Vista and analyze how the operating system behaves with different amounts of RAM." http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/Microsoft-Windows-Vista,review-30272.html

Note well that the 32-bit versions of Windows Vista will recognise less than 4GB of memory unless the computer meets certain requirements. "How much memory your Windows OS will recognize depends on which version of Windows you are running. 32-bit versions of Windows will see (and utilize) only 3GB or 3.5GB. To utilize more memory, install a 64-bit version of your OS. More information about OS memory maximums can be found at http://www.crucial.com/kb/answer.aspx?qid=4251." Read this MS Knowledge Base article for more information:
The system memory that is reported in the System Information dialog box in [a 32-bit version of] Windows Vista is less than you expect if 4 GB of RAM is installed http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929605

Copy and enter the title in the Google pcbuyerbeware.co.uk site search box at the top of this page to locate and read this Q&A on this site for more information on Vista's RAM requirements: "The memory requirements of Windows Vista: How much RAM memory does Windows Vista really need to run optimally?"
Kingston Technology - Ultimate Memory Guide Covers Windows Vista, Windows XP, Windows 2000, Windows 98, Linux, and Macintosh OS X. - http://www.kingston.com/tools/umg/umg01b.asp Buying a new PC? 'Windows Vista Capable' barely hits the mark - IBM'er says Vista's RAM sweet spot is 4GB http://www.computerworld.com/action/...articleId=9011523&intsrc=hm_list

Note that the way in which Windows Vista uses virtual memory, which simulates RAM memory by using storage space on a PC's hard drive when actual memory runs low, has been improved. Windows Vista: SuperFetch and External Memory Devices "Windows Vista sports a new memory performance enhancement system called SuperFetch and a new way to extend the virtual memory by way of External Memory Devices (EMD)." http://articles.techrepublic.com.com/5100-10877_11-6039379.html?tag=nl.e132

For more information on this subject, read Windows Vista recommended system requirements.

Note that Microsoft ended the sale of Windows XP Home and Professional Editions on 30 June 2008. Visit the Using Windows Vista section of this site for more information on the different versions of the new operating system. Fortunately upgrading a computer's RAM is a relatively easy matter provided that the computer has one or more spare DIMM memory slots on its motherboard and you obtain the correct kind of DIMM module(s). If a computer's motherboard only has two DIMM slots that each have a 256MB module installed in it, making a total of 512MB of memory, you can still upgrade the system to 1GB of memory if the motherboard supports 512MB modules in each slot (512 x 2 = 1024MB = 1GB of memory). You could then sell the two 256MB modules on an auction site such as eBay. Your PC's motherboard's manual will tell you what the supported memory configurations of the motherboard are. If you don't have a manual and want one, identify the make/model of the motherboard and then visit its manufacturer's site. Manuals are usually under the Support heading. The free CPU-Z utility can be used to identify the motherboard. There are some other issues that you should know about, such as running DDR, DDR2, and DDR3 RAM in single-channel and dual-channel modes, so read the information in this article to make sure that you buy the correct memory for your computer's motherboard or brand-name PC.

How to install DDR/DDR2/DDR3 RAM memory

DIMM modules (EDO RAM, SDRAM, DDR/DDR2/DDR3 RAM) are very easily installed by first opening the clip at the end of each DIMM slot on the motherboard and then pushing the module vertically down into it so that the two end clips close around it on their own. You should make sure that the clips are fixed tight to the module. Installing the DIMM modules is merely a matter of pushing the module directly down into the DIMM slot as shown in the diagram below so that notch or notches on the connector edge of the module match the volt or volts of the slot. The DIMM module shown below has two notches that fit two volts in the slot shown under it. Note that DDR/DDR2/DDR3 modules only have a single notch that is placed at a different point on the module for each type so that only the correct memory can be installed in a particular DIMM slot. The catches on each end of a slot should fit themselves over the module as it is pressed into the slot, but you can check to make sure that they are holding the module in place securely.

Remember to make sure that you earth yourself to discharge any static electricity before touching electronic components such as RAM DIMM modules. This is best done by touching the computer's case with the computer switched off and plugged into the mains supply that is also switched off. You should consult the motherboard's manual to find out if the DIMM slots have to be filled in an order of rank. Some motherboards require that Bank 0 be filled first, followed by Bank 1 and 2, etc., while some motherboards allow any bank to be filled. Dual-channel DDR/DDR2/DDR3 RAM (compared to so called single-channel DDR RAM) is a misleading name that describes a new mode of operation of existing DDR RAM, which allows, say, two ordinary DDR400 RAM modules to be accessed at an effective speed/frequency of 800MHz even though each ordinary DDR400 module has only a maximum effective speed of 400MHz. Any other speed of DDR RAM modules can also be used in this mode, such as DDR333, but the modules should preferably be of the same make, size, and speed, because the memory will all run at the speed of the slowest module. The single-channel mode of operation is nothing more than the standard way that DDR RAM has always been accessed by the memory controller. Note that if the motherboard supports both single-channel and dual-channel modes, which most of the dual-channel DDR motherboards do, the ordinary DDR modules might have to be installed in specific DIMM slots that are usually colour-coded to show which mode of operation they use. This is because the DIMM slots are accessed differently for each mode of operation by the motherboard's chipset. You should consult the motherboard's manual for the information on how to install DDR/DDR2/DDR3 RAM in dual-channel mode. If you want to read the information for a motherboard that supports DDR/DDR2 RAM in dual-channel mode, download a manual for one from MSI's site - http://www.msi.com.tw/. Any other motherboard manufacturer's site will also provide manuals.

Using the search term dual + channel + DDR in the Google search box at the top of this page (with its Web radio button enabled) will bring up plenty of links to sites and pages with information about the dual-channel mode of operation. Instructions on how to install the modules, and set the bus frequencies, etc., for the RAM memory are provided in most motherboard manuals. The BIOS in all motherboards is set to configure the RAM memory automatically, but some BIOSes allow tweaking of the system bus, timings and voltage settings with customised settings. For more detailed information on RAM memory, visit the RAM section of this site.

The Disk Drives Hard Disk Drives

A modern computer cannot function without at least one hard disk drive (HDD) containing copies of the operating system and the applications it runs. Long gone are the days when home computers stored everything they needed on floppy disks or tapes. Solid-state drives (SSD drives) are now a viable alternative to hard disk drives. They use flash memory similar to that used in USB flash drives (memory sticks) to store the data instead of the magnetic platters that hard disk drives use. SSD drives are currently used mainly in ultra-portable laptop PCs because they use less power. Currently, SSD drives cost much more per gigabyte of disk space than hard disk drives and their disk space is much lower. As the price of flash memory falls and the capacities of SSD drives increase, they will probably replace hard disk drives in both desktop and laptop PCs. I personally prefer Maxtor (now owned by Seagate), Western Digital, and Seagate hard disk drives.

Like RAM, the hard disk drive is a system critical device that has to function perfectly. Any manufacturer consistently making drives that failed would go out of business very quickly. That is probably why it is so difficult to buy a bad hard drive.
Note well that hard drives with a high revs-per-minute rating (7200RPM, 10,000RPM) get much hotter than drives with a lower rating (5400RPM). Therefore, be sure to install a drive with a high rev rating in its bay so that it has space around it. Do not cram it in between other drives. If you have odd problems with the system, consider buying and installing a cooling unit for such a drive. Visit Overclockers.co.uk to see an example under Cooling.

The method of configuration and installation depends on the type of hard drive being installed. The methods differ for the three main types - IDE ATA, serial ATA (SATA), and SCSI. IDE ATA hard drives, also known as parallel ATA (PATA) hard drives are still being manufactured, but are in the process of being replaced by SATA hard drives in home PCs. All you have to do is make up your mind which make, type (IDE, SATA, or SCSI), and size of drive is supported by your computer and suits your needs best. You can purchase it from a retail outlet, mail-order company, or from an auction website. Note that some new motherboards might not have an IDE connector for an IDE drive, so you will have to use an SATA drive. Note well that you should erase the content of any hard drive you purchase second-hand properly with a specialised low-level utility such as Eraser, which is free, because, even though the drive is formatted, any illegal content that the previous owner had on the drive, such as illegal pornography, will be recoverable by disk-editing software. It would be a good idea to do likewise with a new hard drive, because it may have been returned to the manufacturer with data on it, repaired, and resold as new. It is not too improbable a set of circumstances that your computer could be stolen and the police recover it and examine the hard drive forensically to find out if the original owner's name can be found, and you then get arrested for having illegal images on it. A hard drive is a crucial and delicate piece of hardware that can sometimes arrive non-functional, so I would pay the extra and buy it from a retail outlet so that it can easily be returned instead of sending it by mail or by using a courier service. I personally always purchase brand new hard drives, because, with a second-hand drive, I won't know how its previous owner treated it or what data was saved on it. If you want to use the system for graphic-intensive work, video editing, or CAD work, you should buy an SCSI hard drive. If the motherboard does not have an inbuilt SCSI Controller, you will have to buy a PCI adapter card such as are provided by Adaptec that provides a controller. The installation of more than a single SCSI drive is more complicated than an IDE drive, because SCSI devices are daisy-chained together and

therefore each SCSI device has to be given an ID number, and the devices on each end of a daisy chain of devices has to be 'terminated' so that the computer knows where the chain begins and ends, so, if you don't know how to do that, make sure that you buy a boxed product that comes with an installation manual. You should also be able to search the web for and find tutorials on SCSI configuration and installation. You can use the Google search box provided at the top of this page (with its Web radio button enabled). A search term such as install + scsi + hard + drive (as is) should bring up plenty of links Most tutorials come in the PDF format, so you should have the free Adobe Acrobat PDF Reader or another PDF reader installed in your PC. A hard disk drive is easy to install whether it is boxed (the product comes with cables, screws, driver software, 3.5 inch caddy for 5.5 inch bays), or bare, OEM (the product is supported by the vendor not the manufacturer and comes with no accessories at all). If you purchased a boxed retail motherboard, it should have come with all of the cables necessary to install all of the hard drives and CD/DVD drives that it supports. Windows XP/Vista will load the IDE device drivers automatically, so all you require is a bare drive with the four screws needed to attach it to one of the 3.5 inch bays in the case. Two IDE ribbon cables (with connection points for four drives) and a floppy disk drive cable are usually provided with the motherboard. Round IDE cables instead of ribbon cables can also be provided. However, most new computers now come with SATA hard drives, the ribbon cables for which are much thinner than IDE ribbon cables. Both IDE ATA and serial ATA (SATA) drives are attached by special cables directly to the motherboard, or to a PCI adapter card. The type of IDE ATA ribbon cable shown in the image below on the left can accommodate two drives each. There is a second connector that connects to a drive in the middle of the cable. Round cables for IDE drives that can accommodate two drives or just a single drive are available. An image of these round cables is shown a little further down this page. The ribbon cable shown in the image on the right is for a floppy disk drive. It has a twist in the conductors that is clearly visible at the end of the connector that must always be fitted to the floppy disk drive itself.

You can also purchase an add-on PCI card for an IDE drive if you want to install more than the usual maximum of four drives - or if you want to use a higher mode of the IDE ATA standard that is not supported by the motherboard. Serial ATA (SATA) drives use thinner ribbon cables that can only accommodate a single drive. The image below shows the two types of cable. The 80-pin IDE cable is on the left.

There is more information on SATA hard disk drives further down this page. Note that you can purchase bay conversion units that allow you to fit 3.5 inch hard drives in 5.5 inch bays that usually only house CD/DVD drives. A serial ATA (SATA) hard drive has its own much thinner cable that can only be used with one drive. Note that information on the differences between the two different types of ribbon IDE cables, and information about serial ATA hard drives is provided further down this page. This is important information, and has to be made use of when installing a hard disk drive.

Hard drives: Heat and cooling

You can connect a mixture of four IDE hard drives or CD/DVD drives to most most ATX motherboards (some allow more), and you can install a PCI IDE card that allows you to install more. Most current motherboards also provide

four SATA connectors for SATA hard drives or CD/DVD drives. (SATA CD/DVD drives are becoming more common.) But before you add more drives make sure that the power supply unit (PSU) won't be overstretched, and make sure that they are installed with overheating in mind. If you install more than one hard drive, you should take great care with how they are installed and kept cool. Most recent 7200RPM (rpm = revs per minute) and 10,000RPM high-speed IDE ATA drives generate a significant amount of heat, which is a major cause of drive failure. You should leave at least a 10mm gap between drives, which can mean drilling mounting holes in new positions on the drive bays. Cooling units for a hard drive are available. Visit Overclockers.co.uk to see an example under Cooling. You can also add extra cooling fans to the case that are installed so that they blow air over the drives. Or, if your computer's motherboard has the correct ports, you can add one or more external USB or FireWire or eSATA hard disk drives. If the motherboard doesn't have the required Hi-Speed USB 2.0 or FireWire ports, you can install a PCI adapter card that provides them.

How to configure and install a hard disk drive (HDD)

Installing disk drives in the drive bay of a computer's case and attaching them to the motherboard and the power supply unit with the correct cables isn't difficult, but it should be done properly and with care. Don't ever use force! All of the connectors are keyed nowadays so that they can only fit into a particular socket the right way around. If you have to force anything into place, you're probably not installing it properly. Remember that (if you are installing an IDE drive instead of an SATA drive) it is now possible to purchase round IDE disk drive cables (HDD and CD/DVD cables) instead of traditional ribbon cables. They can be used with an ATA drive of any specification. They take up less space than ribbon cables and therefore don't inhibit the flow of air inside the case as much. The image below shows the individual cables. As you can see, as with ribbon cables, they can accommodate two drives each. Single-drive cables are also available. For some reason, they come in a wide variety of garish colours, such as red and blue.

Problems with the new round IDE hard drive cables

From the alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt newsgroup "Hi, I recently bought a set of CoolerMaster round IDE cables and I'm wondering if anyone has the same experience of the 45cm ones that I have. Trying to fit them on two drives close together is almost impossible without great force which didn't seem right to me. I spaced the drives apart and then only after cutting back some of the rubber shield would they bend enough to fit on the drives, if I had the drives right next to each other they just won't bend enough. The 60cm [cable] I bought for the DVD and CD burner doesn't have this problem. Also I managed to pull two of the tabs off when I needed to swap drives around. I certainly won't be buying anymore CoolerMaster cables in a hurry. I was going to buy the cheaper ones but decided on these as I thought they would be better. Wish I'd have saved a few quid now."

How to mount a hard disk drive

Note well - use screws of the correct length to secure a hard drive in a bay. If the screws are too long they can easily penetrate the drive and render it useless. Bare OEM hard drives (not the retail, boxed product) usually don't come with screws or cables, so purchase the correct screws from the dealer if you didn't get a packet of screws with your case or motherboard. Below are the kind of instructions that are provided in the manual that is provided with a retail boxed hard drive, or that can be downloaded from the manufacturer's website for OEM drives that are supported by the vendor instead of the manufacturer. These instructions were provided in the manual of a Seagate drive. "You can mount the drive in any orientation [vertically, horizontally, any way up] using four screws in the sidemounting holes or four screws in the bottom-mounting holes... Follow these important mounting precautions when mounting the drive: Allow a minimum clearance of 0.030 inches (0.76 mm) around the entire perimeter of the drive for cooling. Use only 6-32 UNC mounting screws. The screws should be inserted no more than 0.200 inch (5.08 mm) into the bottom mounting holes and no more than 0.14 inch (3.55 mm) into the side mounting holes. Do not over-tighten the mounting screws (maximum torque: 6 inch-lb). Do not use a drive interface cable that is more than 18 inches long."

You can download a manual for any make/model of hard drive from its manufacturer's website. It usually provides installation instructions. Although you can mount hard disk drives in any position you like, I prefer to mount them horizontally with the label on the top and the printed circuit board (PCB) on the bottom. Note that if a drive has been run for a long time in one position and the orientation is changed, there's a slightly increased chance of mechanical trouble because the bearings may have become acclimatised to the original orientation and have worn in a particular way. The new orientation could load the bearings slightly differently and they may cause trouble or suffer from accelerated wear.

How to configure and install a hard disk drive

The method of configuration and installation depends on the type of hard drive being installed. The methods differ for the three main types - IDE ATA, SATA, and SCSI. IDE ATA hard drives are still manufactured, but are in the process of being replaced by SATA hard drives in home PCs. Most motherboards have two IDE ports, each of which supports two IDE drives, one or more of which can be a CD or DVD drive. You can add additional drives by installing a PCI adapter card, such as those made by Promise (look under Legacy Products). The additional drives are attached to the IDE ports on the adapter card, which uses its own BIOS to configure the drives. Click here! to view annotated images of motherboards on this site showing the two IDE ATA channels, and one floppy disk drive channel. Click your browser's Back button to return to this point on this page.

Serial ATA (SATA) drives All new motherboards provide several connectors (six or more) for serial ATA (SATA) hard disk drives, and may or may not provide one or two connectors for IDE ATA (Parallel ATA/PATA) drives. Serial ATA (SATA) uses a single cable per drive. You cannot attach more than one drive to a cable. While you do not configure an SATA drive using jumpers, as is the case with IDE ATA drives, there may be a jumper setting that can reduce the capacity of the drive for motherboards that only support a certain size of drive. The installation is simplicity itself - just attach the keyed serial cable to the drive and the other end to the motherboard, and attach a power connector from the computer's powersupply unit to the drive. The cable is keyed so that one end can only connect to the motherboard and the other end to the drive, so it can't be installed the wrong way round. If the motherboard has a mixture of IDE ATA and SATA drive connectors (ports), and you want to install both types of drive, consult the motherboard's manual to find out how to install a particular type of drive as the primary drive and as secondary drives. If the motherboard only has SATA connectors (ports), its manual will also show you which of them is used for the primary and secondary drives. If you don't possess a motherboard user manual, download a copy from its manufacturer's site. It's also possible to buy a PCI adapter card that allows SATA drives to be connected to the system via the PCI bus. There is more information on SATA drives further down this page.

There is usually a diagram on the hard drive itself (of the kind illustrated below), showing the jumper settings to configure it as a master or slave device. The configuration table is fixed to the top or bottom of the drive.

The Master, Slave, and CS Enabled (Cable Select) jumper settings are clearly shown on the Maxtor drive shown above. Note that due to political correctness that is offended by the words Master and Slave, new drives will probably be using the terms Primary and Secondary instead, but I will continue using the clearer Master and Slave. A PC with four drives would have a primary master, a primary slave, a secondary master, and a secondary slave, but if Primary and Secondary replace the traditional terminology, the four drives will be called a primary

primary, a primary secondary, a secondary primary, and a secondary secondary, which is somewhat absurd. The Cap Limit setting shown in the image above automatically sets the drive to a system's maximum size capacity, because many systems cannot run huge drives. This particular DiamondMax Plus drive (5400RPM, 2MB cache, 12.6ms disk access time), has a capacity of 300GB that unmodified Windows 9x systems, which run the FAT16 or FAT32 file systems, won't be able to run as a single (unpartitioned) volume. Windows XP, running its NTFS file system, can run such a drive unpartitioned if the motherboard's BIOS setup program allows it. Windows XP was released in October 2001. Nevertheless, you need to install Service Pack 1 (SP1) or Service Pack 2 (SP2), which incorporates it, to be able to use drives larger than 137GB. (Note that Windows XP SP3 was made available to home users in May 2008.) All of the versions of Windows Vista provides large drive support for drives larger than 137GB. For more information on what you need to know in order to upgrade a hard disk drive on a particular PC, visit this Upgrade Checklist on this site. If the BIOS setup program doesn't provide large drive support, reflashing it with the latest BIOS file from the PC manufacturer or motherboard manufacturer's site might fix the problem. Otherwise, installing a new PCI IDE adapter card of the kind made by Promise, or a new motherboard that has a BIOS capable to recognising such a large hard drive is the only remedy. I prefer using the sound Master/Slave settings to configure drives, but the easiest way to configure and install an IDE ATA 66/100/133 hard drive, which has to be installed using an 80-conductor ribbon cable (not an oldstyle 40-conductor cable), is to set the drive's jumpers to the Cable Select setting. ATA stands for Advanced Technology Attachment. The technology is dealt with comprehensively on this page:
Advanced Technology Attachment http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Technology_Attachment

The two types of cables are dealt with in the above article and on the following pages:
Standard (40-Conductor) IDE/ATA Cables http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/if/ide/conf_Cable.htm Ultra DMA (80-Conductor) IDE/ATA Cables http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/if/ide/confCable80-c.html

When jumpered for Cable Select, the cable plus the jumpering determines which is the master drive and which is the slave drive. The master drive will go to the black connector on the 80-conductor ribbon cable, and if a slave is used, it will be connected to the ribbon's middle (grey) connector. The ribbon's blue connector fits to the motherboard. Note that as long as two hard drives are themselves jumpered to enable the Cable Select setting, you can swap them from the master to slave positions on the ribbon cable. If the Cable Select setting is not being used, the boot hard drive containing the operating system (Windows), always installed on the Primary IDE Channel on the motherboard, must be set as the master drive. The boot hard drive is the drive (or the partition on a hard drive) on which the operating system is installed. The boot hard drive must always be installed on the Primary IDE Channel. Placing a jumper across two pins on a hard drive activates a particular setting. Sometimes removing a jumper will activate a setting. The two white jumpers, on the port face of the hard disk drive shown below, can be seen clearly next to the power supply port with its four pins on the far right side of the drive.

All current hard drives have a keyed socket that one of the keyed plugs coming from the power supply unit fits. The diagrams below show where a 40-conductor or an 80-conductor ribbon cable and the plug from the power supply unit are connected on a standard IDE hard drive. In the first case, for older drives, the 40-conductor ribbon cable has a red line down one edge that has to be connected to the side of the connection socket where Pin 1 is located, which is usually the side closest to the power connector's socket. In the second case, for current drives, the cable is "keyed" so that it can only fit in the socket one in one way.

In the colour image of a hard drive above, you can see the cutting for the "key" in the IDE connector on the far right. The power plug from the power supply unit fits into the connector on the far left. IDE cables are now usually (but not always) keyed so that they fit only one way into the motherboard or to the drive itself. If this is the case, there is a large ridge in the middle of each connector and a smaller ridge at each end that matches a cutting on the IDE connection points on the motherboard and the drive itself. With the drive fixed in a drive bay in the case, other than plugging it to the power supply, all you have to is attach one end of the connector of an IDE cable to the motherboard's Primary IDE Channel (the boot drive must go on the primary channel as shown in the motherboard's manual), and (if a 40-conductor cable is being used) attach one of the two other connectors along its length to the drive itself. In other words, with this particular cable, as long as the side with the red line along its length is attached to Pin 1 on the motherboard's Primary or Secondary IDE Channel, you can attach a master or a slave drive to either the end or the middle connector. If an 80-conductor cable is being used, the hard drive must be attached to an end connector according to the colour code, which is usually the blue connector connected to the motherboard and the black connector connected to the hard drive. The middle connector is used for slave drives.

Note that a modern IDE ATA drive can be installed in the case in any orientation - it doesn't matter which way up it is as long as there is the required space for cooling purposes between it and the case. However, most technicians install a drive with its printed circuit board facing down. The drive's user manual, supplied with the drive or downloaded from its manufacturer's website, will provide mounting and installation instructions. Also note that most quality ATX PC cases allow you to remove the drive bay and screw a drive in it with two short screws on both sides. But, in a tower case, if the drive bay is fixed in it, there will probably be a gap in the plate to which the motherboard is fixed that will allow you to screw in the screws from that side. This is usually a clumsy business, so you should install the drive in the bay when you have removed the plate to install the motherboard. If you have an OEM drive that came without screws, remember to make sure that you only use short ones. Screws that are too long could penetrate the drive and destroy it. If you purchased a PC case it will have come with a container full of different types of screws and the stand-offs on which the motherboard is mounted. When installing a boot drive that contains the operating system (Windows, Linux, etc.), you get a 40-conductor ribbon cable the correct way round by attaching the side of the ribbon cable that has the red line running down its length to Pin 1 of the Primary IDE Channel, which is illustrated in the motherboard's manual. The side of the cable with the red line along its length is then attached to the drive itself on the side of the drive that is closest to the power supply connection. - See the images above, one of which is a drawing, that illustrate this. 80-conductor ribbon cables are installed according to a colour code. A connector (usually blue) is always attached to the motherboard and the opposite end connector (usually black) is connected to the master hard drive, with the middle connector used for a slave drive. Below is a diagram from an MSI motherboard manual showing the location of the two IDE channels on the motherboard. The figure 1 shows where Pin 1 is located on each channel. This motherboard was designed to support ATA 33 hard drives, and so comes with the 40-conductor ATA 33 ribbon cables. You can download the manuals for the latest MSI motherboards free of charge from http://www.msi.com.tw/.

To read an article on recommended IDE device configurations that discusses which drives should be installed on which IDE channels for the best performance, visit http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/if/ide/confRecommendations-c.html

Reminder - If you are using 40-conductor ATA 33 IDE cables, as long as the correct side with the red line down its length is connected to Pin 1 on the motherboard, and the red line on the cable is the side closest to the power supply plug on the drive, it does not matter which end is connected to the drive, or which end is connected to the motherboard or PCI adapter card. But if you are using 80-conductor IDE cables (for ATA 66 / 100 / 133 hard drives), and you have not enabled the Cable Select option, you must also connect the end with the blue plug to the motherboard, and the master drive must be attached to the other end - which is black - and a slave drive must be attached to the middle connector - which is grey. You cannot attach a master drive to the middle connector. You can use an 80-conductor cable with an ATA 33 hard drive, but you cannot use a 40conductor ATA 33 cable with drives running in ATA 66 and higher modes of operation. As I mentioned earlier, there are two types of IDE ribbon cable. The earlier type of ribbon cable is used on ATA hard drives running ATA (UDMA) 33 and earlier ATA modes. This cable has 40 conductors in the ribbon. But hard drives using the ATA (UDMA) 66/100/133 modes of operation require the new cables that have 80 conductors in the ribbon, 40 of which are used to shield the others from electromagnetic interference.

Note that all computers will have come with the 80-conductor ribbon or round cables, or with an SATA cable if an SATA drive is installed. Cable Select support As long as both of the IDE channels are enabled in the BIOS, and all of the other IDE settings in the BIOS are set to Auto, which they should be, you should not need to configure anything else. The drive will begin operating as soon as the system, which has at the very least RAM module(s) and a video/graphics card installed, is powered up. If you have two drives installed on a cable, one has to be configured as the master (M), and the other has to be configured as the slave (S). If you have two hard drives on the same cable, they will both work in the same ATA data transfer mode as the slowest drive. If you are using the 80-conductor ATA 66 cable that allows the Cable Select (CS) option on the drive to determine its status by its position on the cable, you obviously cannot place any drive on any connector as with the masterslave option, because it is the drive's position on the cable that configures it. It is possible to have a CD or DVD drive set as master on the Secondary IDE Channel, with a hard drive on the same cable set as the slave. If you only have one CD or DVD drive, it is best not to have it on the same cable as the boot hard drive on the obligatory Primary IDE Channel. To read an article on recommended IDE device configurations that discusses which drives should be installed on which IDE channels for the best performance, visit http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/if/ide/confRecommendations-c.html

All 80-conductor IDE cables meet the ATA specifications and hence support the Cable Select feature automatically. Visit this discussion of cable select for more information http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/if/ide/conf_CS.htm

How to install an SATA hard drive Installing an SATA hard drive is the simplest of all of the installations that requires no configuration of the drive itself unless you have to change a jumper on the drive to enable SATA II mode for an SATA II drive. Unless a PCI adapter card is used, it just involves connecting the drive to the motherboard with a single SATA cable (that cannot accommodate another drive), and connecting a power cable from the power supply unit to the drive's power connector. More information on SATA drives is provided a little further down on this page. Note that if your PC has an elderly motherboard that only supports the original SATA I 150 standard, an SATA II 300 drive, which has a theoretical data transfer speed of 300MB/s, will work at the slower SATA

150 150MB/s data transfer speed. However, to do so, some SATA II drives require a jumper on the back of the drive to be set. The jumper, which will be stored on inactive pins at the back of the drive, will have to be placed across two pins that will be indicated by a diagram on the drive. Setting the jumper makes it possible for the drive to operate at the slower speed. You can consult your PC's or its motherboard's user manual to find out if it supports SATA or SATA II. If your PC only supports SATA and you have an SATA II drive, look for a diagram on the drive that shows you how to set its SATA jumper. Drives differ in their approach from manufacturer to manufacturer. The following is an extract from the manual of an MSI K9A2 Platinum (AMD Socket AM2+) motherboard showing the jumper setting to enable SATA II mode on a Western Digital hard drive.

Some hard-disk-drive manufacturers, such as Western Digital, use a proprietary SATA cable that locks to the drive. Western Digital calls its SATA cable SecureConnect. The end of the cable that connects to the drive has a special secure connector. Read this guide to see a drawing of the cable.
Western Digital Serial Hard Drive Installation Guide http://www.wdc.com/en/library/sata/2779-001006.pdf

The download is in the form of a PDF file, which requires the free Adobe Acrobat PDF reader. Here is a useful extract from it:
"Q: Why does Windows recognize the drive as "SCSI" when it is Serial ATA? A: Most third party controller cards and RAID adapters are recognized as a SCSI device under Device Manager. This is normal and will not affect your drive or system performance. Q: How do I verify if my Serial ATA drive is recognized by my system? A: Right-click on the My Computer icon, select Properties, left-click on the Hardware tab, and click on Device Manager in the window. Double-click on Disk Drives. Your new Western Digital Serial ATA drive should be listed as a "SCSI Disk Device" or "Serial ATA Disk Device." If not, make sure that all cables are securely attached and that your system BIOS has been properly configured."

The guide provides infromation on how to get the BIOS to recognise an SATA hard drive, and information on how to diagnose problems, partition and format the drive, and how to transfer data from an old drive to the new SATA drive. Here is a Seagate SATA installation guide: How To Install and Troubleshoot Serial ATA (SATA) Hard Drives. Windows XP: Installing the device drivers for a boot SATA drive SATA hard disk drives have only become available fairly recently, so Windows 98, 2000, and XP won't have the drivers for them. If you are installing an SATA drive on a system that already boots from an IDE ATA hard drive, you can obtain the driver file and point Windows to the file's location when Windows asks for it on the first boot after such a drive has been installed. But if you're installing a bare SATA drive on a new motherboard, then you have to do the following: 1. - Read the motherboard's manual, which can be downloaded from the motherboard's site if you don't have one. There will probably be a jumper that has to be enabled before the SATA controller can be used. The manual will tell you where to find the jumper on the motherboard and how to enable it. 2. - Download the SATA driver file from the motherboard's site. 3. - Copy the driver file to a floppy disk. With the SATA drive mounted in the case, connect the keyed SATA cable to the drive and the motherboard, connect a power cable from the power supply unit (PSU) to the back of the drive, and set the boot order in the BIOS to boot from CD-ROM and then SCSI. Motherboard manufacturers usually use the SCSI option in the boot order for SATA drives. The motherboard's manual will tell you what the boot order setting has to be. Install Windows XP. Windows will detect the new drive. Press the F6 key when Windows asks you to do so, and then allow Windows to install the SATA drivers from the floppy disk. You can now install Windows, which will allow you to partition/format the drive/drive partitions as required. If you have a laptop or desktop PC that does not have a floppy disk drive, read the following article that provides a workaround.
Install Windows XP on SATA without a Floppy (F6) http://news.softpedia.com/news/Install-Windows-XP-On-SATA...

Windows Vista: Installing the device drivers for a boot SATA drive Unlike with Windows XP, which requires a floppy disk containing the SATA device drivers to be used at system startup, if the BIOS setup program recognises an SATA hard disk drive as the boot drive, Windows Vista should be able to install its device drivers during its setup installation

procedure. If Vista asks for the drivers, it allows the user to search through all of a computer's storage devices for them, including a USB flash drive, not just the floppy disk drive, as is the case with Windows XP. Installing an SATA hard drive when an IDE hard drive is installed If you have one or more IDE hard drives installed, you should have any SATA drive you install as the boot drive, because an SATA drive is faster than an IDE drive, and, having such a thin cable, it doesn't impede the air circulation inside the PC's case. You might not be able to make an SATA drive the boot drive unless you remove the IDE drive(s). You can then install the SATA drive, install Windows or Linux and after that reinstall the IDE drive(s). You can transfer the system from an IDE drive by creating a master image of it with a program such as Norton Ghost, burn the image to a DVD, and restore it to the new SATA hard drive. A dual-boot or multi-boot system consisting of SATA and IDE drives The ability of a system to dual-boot or multi-boot different versions of Windows, or Windows and another operating system such as Linux that are installed on a mixture of IDE and SATA hard drives depends on the motherboard chipset and its drivers. Most recent motherboards allow booting an operating system from both channels, but in older motherboards you have to use either the SATA channel (bus) or the IDE channel, not both. For example, with an Intel 925xe chipset from 2004, it's possible to set the device boot order in the BIOS, or choose from a boot menu which device to boot from. You can choose to boot from IDE, SATA, SATA RAID, or USB hard drives without having to switch or unplug drives. Of course, you have to be very careful when installing programs to different drives because the drive letters change. Windows rearranges the drive letters of the drives because the boot drive is the C: drive, so if one drive was the C: drive and you make another drive the boot drive, it becomes the C: drive and the other drive is given another drive letter.
Looking ahead to Intel's 925XE chipset and FSB1066 http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/looking-ahead-to-intel,review-1006.html

External SATA (eSATA) technology

"eSATA - Initially SATA was designed as an internal or inside-the-box interface technology, bringing improved performance and new features to internal PC or consumer storage. Creative designers quickly realized the innovative interface could reliably be expanded outside the PC, bringing the same performance and features to external storage needs instead of relying on USB or 1394 interfaces. Called external SATA or eSATA, customers can now utilize shielded cable lengths up to 2 meters outside the PC to take advantage of the benefits the SATA interface brings to storage. SATA is now out of the box as an external standard, with specifically defined cables, connectors, and signal requirements released as new standards in mid-2004. eSATA provides more performance than existing solutions and is hot pluggable." -

http://www.sata-io.org/esata.asp

More detailed information on eSATA is provided in the Disk Drives section of this site. To find it, enter eSata in the Google site-search box at the top of this page. Further information on installing hard drives
For more information on IDE cables visit these two sections of the PC Guide site. Standard (40-Conductor) IDE/ATA Cables http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/if/ide/conf_Cable.htm Ultra DMA (80-Conductor) IDE/ATA Cables http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/if/ide/confCable80-c.html And here are pages on other sites with tutorials on how to install IDE ATA hard drives. http://www.informationweek.com/LP/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=181502411 http://www.harddriveupgrade.com/ http://www.thepc.info/harddrive_upgrade.html

Hard drives: Partition and format

Click here! to go directly to information on how to partition and format a hard disk drive on Page 6 of this article. Use your browser's Back button to return to this point on this page.

Serial ATA (SATA) hard disk drives

The connection limitations of IDE ATA (parallel ATA/PATA), with its system of master and slave drives, is not longer applied to serial ATA (SATA) drives. Serial ATA uses a single cable per drive. You cannot attach more than one drive to a cable. While it is no longer necessary to configure the drive using jumpers, there may be a jumper setting that can reduce the capacity of the drive for motherboards that only support a certain size of drive. The image below shows cables used to connect an SATA hard disk drive to the motherboard.

The installation is simplicity itself - just attach the keyed serial cable to the drive and the motherboard, and attach a power connector from the computer's power-supply unit to the drive. The cable is keyed so that one end can only connect to the motherboard and the other end to the drive, so it can't be install the wrong way round. The image below shows the connection points on a motherboard for four SATA hard drives.

New-style Serial ATA (SATA) power supply units The new ATX12V 2.0 power supply units have SATA power cables coming directly from them. These power supply units have new Serial ATA power-line connectors for both hard-disk and optical (CD/DVD) drives. For the time being, hard disk drives capable of using the new power cable will also have the standard four-pin power socket shown on the image of an IDE drive earlier in this article. However, a conversion cable will always be available so that an old-style ATX 1.3 power supply can be used with a new Serial ATA hard drive. See the image of two SATA adapter cables below. The white four-pin connector fits into a power-cable connector from the standard ATX power supply unit and the black plug fits into the SATA hard disk drive (or the optical SATA CD/DVD drives that are also available).

Note that if your PC has an elderly motherboard that only supports the original SATA standard, a SATA II drive, which has a theoretical data transfer speed of 300MB/s, will work at the slower SATA 150MB/s data transfer speed. However, to do so, some SATA II drives require a jumper on the back of the drive to be set. The jumper, which will be stored on inactive pins at the back of the drive, will have to be placed across two pins that will

be indicated by a diagram on the drive. Setting the jumper makes it possible for the drive to operate at the slower speed. You can consult your PC's or its motherboard's user manual to find out if it supports SATA or SATA II. If your PC only supports SATA and you have an SATA II drive, look for a diagram on the drive that shows you how to set its SATA jumper. Note that the kind of SATA adapter shown above does not provide a +3.3V connection, but some new SATA hard disk drives require this voltage. If so, only one of the new ATX12V 2.0 power supply units can provide it. If you have such a drive and an old-style power supply, you will have to buy a new-style power supply. You can download the user manual for any make and model of hard drive from its manufacturer's site. It will provide you with the power requirements of a particular model. ATX12V 2.0 is the new power supply standard that has replaced the ATX 1.3 standard. The 3.3V SATA connector, shown in the image below, is available in straight and angled versions (the plug is straight or angled), and comes directly from the ATX12V 2.0 power supply unit so that a conversion cable of the kind shown above is not used.

SATA data cables SATA I 150, SATA II 300, and SAS all use the same data cables, so if you see a data cable labelled as a SATA II 300 cable, you can use it with an SATA I 150 drive and vice versa. An SATA 300 cable might have a redesigned plug on the end to prevent it from coming off the drive. If you already have the SATA 150 cable, and want to reuse it for a SATA 300 drive, it will work. Remember that the difference between SATA 150 and SATA 300 is the speed of the serial interface, not the speed of the drive. The latest SATA 300 hard drives are barely reaching the limits of the IDE ATA 100 standard, and can't come close to filling the bandwidth available for SATA 150/SATA 300. Therefore, it's a waste of money buying a SATA 300 hard drive, because a similar model SATA 150 drive should be just as fast. SATA II 300 is a marketing ploy. In fact, the SATA-IO board says that there are no SATA II devices and that the term SATA II should never be used to describe a product. It would be a similar situation to building a road where the posted speed limit is 700 MPH, but the existing cars can't go over 275

MPH. Who cares if the SATA 300 bandwidth is 3.0Gbps if the drives can't even use the full IDE ATA 100 bandwidth?
Serial ATA - a site devoted to the new IDE drive standard http://www.serialata.org/ Serial ATA Adapters and Cables - a US site http://www.xoxide.com/seataad.html SATA Cables Internal and External - a US site http://cooldrives.stores.yahoo.net/sata-cables.html

Remember that all of the major hard-drive manufacturer's provide user manuals for their drives from their websites that contain illustrated installation information. For more detailed information on SATA hard disk drives visit the IDE, SATA, SCSI/SAS Hard Disk Drives (HDD) and SSD (Solid State) Drives section of this site. Hard disk drive problems - SATA hard drives There are several Q&As that discuss installation and other problems to do with SATA hard drives on the Hard Disk Drive Problems pages on this site. Look on Page 2 and Page 3. Click here! to go directly to information about the new SATA hard disk drives on the Disk Drives pages of this site.

Motherboard RAID support

If the PC you are building has a motherboard that has a RAID controller, it allows two or more hard disk drives to be configured in a number of RAID arrays, which can use the drives together in a number of ways, such as mirroring the contents of the boot drive to a secondary drive and running several drives as if they were just one drive. More detailed information on RAID is provided on this site. To find it, enter raid in the Google site-search box at the top of this page.

IDE/ATAPI Drives and Direct Memory Access (DMA)

Note that the following information on DMA only applies to IDE ATA hard drives and IDE ATAPI CD/DVD drives. For SATA drives SATA DMA is a setting that can be enabled or disabled in the BIOS setup program, not in Windows. If you have purchased a PC that has SATA drives, it will have been enabled by default, but you will probably have to enabled it for a new

motherboard that supports both IDE ATA and SATA drives. Consult the motherboard's user manual for motherboard-specific information. In a Windows 95/98/Me system, the DMA option is enabled or disabled by clicking the device's name in the Windows Device Manager (under the headings +Disk drives and +CDROM). Click the + sign to reveal the drives. Under the Settings tab you will find a checkbox called DMA. Use your mouse to put a tick in it and reboot to enable the setting. All of the latest drives will support DMA, so make sure that it is enabled, because, as it allows the drives to bypass the processor and have direct access to the RAM, it improves the system performance significantly. From a system performance point of view, it important to make sure that you enable DMA properly, which is not as straightforward as you might think. You can simply enable DMA for a particular drive in the Device Manager, but there is a DMA setting in the registry too. There are several articles on this subject in Microsoft Knowledge Base on this subject. The following article on Microsoft's site explains DMA in Windows XP.
DMA Mode for ATA/ATAPI Devices in Windows XP http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/device/storage/IDE-DMA.mspx

Note that the above article does not apply to SATA drives.
How do I enable DMA mode on CD and DVD burner drives? "DMA (Direct memory access) mode is a high performance mode for transferring data to and from devices, in particular, to CD and DVD burner devices. The burner devices can function in either DMA or PIO modes. DMA mode allows the processor to transfer large pieces of data with very little software overhead - therefore requiring low CPU utilization. In this mode, high speed burning can be performed in background with other programs running. PIO mode requires CPU processing for every few bytes sent to the device, so that CPU utilization becomes very high when trying to burn at high speeds." http://www.onthegosoft.com/dma_setting_nt.htm Windows [Vista] Help and How-to - Turn Direct Memory Access (DMA) on or off "Direct memory access (DMA) is usually turned on by default for devices such as hard disks and CD or DVD drives that support DMA. However, you might need to turn on DMA manually if the device was improperly installed or if a system error occurred." http://windowshelp.microsoft.com/Windows/en-NZ/Help/...mspx

If you have an old hard drive that does not support DMA (Direct Memory Access), you should not enable it for a drive on the same cable - a hard drive or CD drive - that does support it - unless the motherboard's chipset and IDE drivers support independent timing, because you are likely to experience problems that might be very difficult to rectify. For example, if you have an elderly motherboard that only supports the earlier PIO modes of operation instead of the UDMA modes required for the use of DMA, do not enable the DMA option for any hard disk drive - even if the drive itself is a UDMA drive that supports DMA. - If the motherboard

does not support the DMA modes of operation, you cannot use them for any drive - even if the drive itself supports DMA. The modes of operation will be given in the motherboard's user manual. But if you have a UDMA2 (ATA 33) hard disk drive, or higher, which supports DMA, and which is also running on a motherboard that supports DMA, and if the motherboard's chipset supports independent timing, which all relatively new motherboards do, you will be able to install a drive that does not support DMA (only supports the PIO modes of operation) on the same cable, and have DMA enabled for the drive that supports it. But you should not enable DMA for the PIO-mode drive that does not support DMA. You probably won't be able to find out if your motherboard chipset supports independent timing for drives working in different modes on the same cable. However, if you enable DMA for a hard drive that supports it while a hard drive that only supports the earlier PIO modes of operation is sharing the same cable, in a Windows 95/98/Me system, check the System Properties by clicking the System icon in the Control Panel. If you see a message such as this under the Performance tab: - "Drive 1 is using MS DOS compatibility mode file system" - then the DMA option should not have been enabled. Using MS DOS compatibility mode slows the system down. You can usually rectify the situation by clicking on the drive's name in the Device Manager (click the + next to the Disk drives heading), and then removing the tick in the DMA check box. You will have to reboot for the change to take affect. If the system is using its proper Windows mode of operation, the message, "Your system is configured for optimal performance" will show on the Performance tab of System Properties instead of the warning that Windows is using MS DOS compatibility mode. The use of DMA became available with UDMA2 (ATA 33) hard disk drives, which support busmaster IDE drivers. If you have an earlier hard disk drive that supports only the PIO modes of operation up to PIO 4, you should not enable the DMA option for that drive, because it will not be able to use a busmaster IDE driver, and as such will cause problems that will probably involve having to boot in Safe mode to disable the DMA setting, or remove the IDE busmaster drivers in order to reinstall the proper ones. IDE hard disk drives have reached UDMA5 (ATA 133). UDMA2 = ATA 33 UDMA3 = ATA 66 - UDMA4 = ATA 100 - UDMA5 = ATA 133. Any UDMA2 (ATA 33) or higher IDE hard disk drive will support DMA - as long as it is also running on a motherboard that supports the UDMA2 (ATA 33) or higher modes of operation. You can purchase PCI cards that allow extra IDE drives to be fitted over and above the four that can be fitted to most motherboards. Such expansion

cards make use of their own BIOS to configure the extra drives. Promise is the leading manufacturer of such cards.

CD/DVD/Floppy Disk Drives

How to install CD/DVD/Blu-ray optical drives
CD, DVD and Blu-ray drives (disc readers and disc readers/writers) are called optical drives because they use laser technology (lasers use beams of light). First came CD drives, followed by DVD drives, followed by Blu-ray drives, which is the latest standard. It won the high-definition (HD) war with Toshiba's HD DVD standard, which has ceased to exist. Blu-ray is developed by Sony. Like hard disk drives, optical drives use the IDE ATA or the SATA interface to connect to a desktop or laptop PC's motherboard. An IDE (ATAPI) CD or DVD drive is connected (often appropriately configured by a jumper on the drive itself as master or slave drive) to one of the free connectors of the two IDE cables connected to the Primary and Secondary IDE Channels on the motherboard. (Some motherboards now only provide a single IDE connector, because most new hard disk drives now use the SATA interface.) As with a hard drive, a power cable from the power supply unit with the appropriate connector (a standard four-pin power connector for an IDE drive and an SATA connector for an SATA drive) has to be attached to the drive's power socket. Note that adapters are available that convert a standard 4-pin power connector from the power supply unit into an SATA power connector that connects to an SATA drive's power connector. An SATA CD/DVD drive is connected to an SATA connector on the PC's motherboard. IDE and SATA hard disk drives were dealt with above. If you need to know where to connect an IDE or SATA CD/DVD drive, consult the motherboard's user manual. If you don't have a copy of the manual, identify the make/model of the motherboard with a utility such as the free CPU-Z and use Google to search its manufacturer's site for the model involved. You should be able to download a user manual for it in the PDF format, which requires a reader, such as the free Adobe Reader. A CD/DVD or Blu-ray drive has to be placed in a 5.25-inch bay in the front of the case so that its face shows through one of the outlets that are the same size as the drive. In a new PC case, you will probably have to remove a removable metal cover that is punched out and can't put back, and a plastic

cover in the front of the case that can be replaced if the drive is removed. With some cases both of these covers can be replaced. In order to provide sound, CD/DVD and Blu-ray drives are connected to the a PC's sound card or motherboard with an integrated sound chip by a special single-wire connector. If the sound card is built into the motherboard, this connector will be connected to the motherboard as illustrated in its user manual. If you don't have a user manual for the motherboard in your computer you should be able to download a copy from its manufacturer's site, which you can locate by entering the manufacturer's name in a search engine. A Google search box has been provided at the top of this page. Enable its Web radio button if you want to search the web. Note that if you install or replace a CD/DVD/Blu-ray burner, make sure your new one is very solidly mounted. That is, don't use just two screws, use as many as you reasonably can on both sides of the drive, and even get some tiny lock washers at a hardware store and use them to make the drive less prone to vibrations. Vibrations have a significant negative effect on a CD/DVD burner compared to the effect they have on most other PC devices. The levels of vibrations that a hard drive will ignore will eventually cause your CD/DVD/Blu-ray burner's lens to go off axis. And since CD/DVD/Blu-ray burners are more expensive to repair than replace you will probably have to replace your burner before its time if you ignore this aspect of the installation. My installation descriptions should be sufficient, but if you need to see an illustrated guide on installing CD/DVD/Blu-ray drives, visit: Installing An Optical Drive Guide http://static.compusa.com/html/learn-installing-optical-drives.html It is advisable to buy a CD-R/RW or DVD-R/RW drive instead of just a CDROM drive, because you can use it to play ordinary CDs (audio and data), and you can also use it to record ('burn') CD-R/DVD-R or CD-RW/DVD-RW discs. For instance, CD-R and DV-R/DVD+R disks are very cheap these days, especially when bought in bulk. You could use them to make regular back-up copies of your whole system so that it can easily be restored in the event of a wipe out. Currently, CD-RW discs can be rewritten approximately a 1,000 times. A DVD+RW or a DVD-RW disc is very similar to a CD-RW disc with regard to the number of times that it can be rewritten. However, as with CD-RW discs, in practice the number of times will probably be much higher and vary between the brand-name makes of disc. Blu-ray rewritable discs (Blu-ray Disc Rewritable discs) are designated by BD-RE (not BD-RW in the way that CD-RW and DVD-RW/DVD+RW are used for the CD/DVD rewritable standards). The BD-RE specifications require that the discs, at minimum,

should be rewritable at least 1,000 times. However, different materials, designs, and fabrications may allow a greater number of rewrites. Some, but not all of the BD-RE disc manufacturers, specify that their discs are capable of 10,000 or more rewrites. BD-R (write-once) and BD-RE (multiple write) discs can store a huge 25GB of data on a single-layer disc and 50GB on a dual-layer disc, but they are much more expensive than the equivalent recordable CD/DVD discs. Click here! to find out what the latest prices are on amazon.co.uk. Installing CD/DVD/Blu-ray drive device drivers and disc-burning software Windows XP/Vista will probably install the device drivers itself for a CD/DVD/Blu-ray burner/drive, but if it hasn't got the drivers, it will ask you to supply them from a disc or from a download in a folder. If Windows installs the drivers itself, you should visit the drive maufacturer's website for the latest drivers, because those in the Windows driver library will be old drivers. You might also be able to find an update for the drive's firmware. Just make sure that the firmware update is for the exact make/model of drive, because you can render a drive unusable by installing the wrong firmware. Enter a suitable search term in the Google search box at the top of this page (with its Web radio button enabled) to find more information on optical-drive firmware. For a dvd drive, you could try: dvd drive firmware. New PCs and boxed CD/DVD/Blu-ray writers purchased from a retail store usually come with the disc-burning software required to use them, or you can download free alternatives from the Internet from sites such as: http://www.majorgeeks.com/ http://www.filehippo.com/ http://www.tucows.com/ http://www.zdnet.com/ Visit the Disk Drives section of this site for detailed information on these optical drives. Visit http://www.buildyourown.org.uk/ if you want access to another good site with build-your-own-pc information. Each such site has its own method of treating the subject and none of them provides all of the available information on it, so it is worthwhile finding out what is available on several of them. You can find others by entering build your own pc in the Google search box at the top of this page (with its Web radio button enabled).

How to install CD/DVD/Blu-ray optical drives

CD, DVD and Blu-ray drives (disc readers and disc readers/writers) are called optical drives because they use laser technology (lasers use beams of light). First came CD drives, followed by DVD drives, followed by Blu-ray drives, which is the latest standard. It won the high-definition (HD) war with Toshiba's HD DVD standard, which has ceased to exist. Blu-ray is developed by Sony. Like hard disk drives, optical drives use the IDE ATA or the SATA interface to connect to a desktop or laptop PC's motherboard. An IDE (ATAPI) CD or DVD drive is connected (often appropriately configured by a jumper on the drive itself as master or slave drive) to one of the free connectors of the two IDE cables connected to the Primary and Secondary IDE Channels on the motherboard. (Some motherboards now only provide a single IDE connector, because most new hard disk drives now use the SATA interface.) As with a hard drive, a power cable from the power supply unit with the appropriate connector (a standard four-pin power connector for an IDE drive and an SATA connector for an SATA drive) has to be attached to the drive's power socket. Note that adapters are available that convert a standard 4-pin power connector from the power supply unit into an SATA power connector that connects to an SATA drive's power connector. An SATA CD/DVD drive is connected to an SATA connector on the PC's motherboard. IDE and SATA hard disk drives were dealt with above. If you need to know where to connect an IDE or SATA CD/DVD drive, consult the motherboard's user manual. If you don't have a copy of the manual, identify the make/model of the motherboard with a utility such as the free CPU-Z and use Google to search its manufacturer's site for the model involved. You should be able to download a user manual for it in the PDF format, which requires a reader, such as the free Adobe Reader. A CD/DVD or Blu-ray drive has to be placed in a 5.25-inch bay in the front of the case so that its face shows through one of the outlets that are the same size as the drive. In a new PC case, you will probably have to remove a removable metal cover that is punched out and can't put back, and a plastic cover in the front of the case that can be replaced if the drive is removed. With some cases both of these covers can be replaced. In order to provide sound, CD/DVD and Blu-ray drives are connected to the a PC's sound card or motherboard with an integrated sound chip by a special single-wire connector. If the sound card is built into the motherboard, this connector will be connected to the motherboard as illustrated in its user manual. If you don't have a user manual for the motherboard in your computer you should be able to download a copy from its manufacturer's site, which you can locate by entering the manufacturer's name in a search

engine. A Google search box has been provided at the top of this page. Enable its Web radio button if you want to search the web. Note that if you install or replace a CD/DVD/Blu-ray burner, make sure your new one is very solidly mounted. That is, don't use just two screws, use as many as you reasonably can on both sides of the drive, and even get some tiny lock washers at a hardware store and use them to make the drive less prone to vibrations. Vibrations have a significant negative effect on a CD/DVD burner compared to the effect they have on most other PC devices. The levels of vibrations that a hard drive will ignore will eventually cause your CD/DVD/Blu-ray burner's lens to go off axis. And since CD/DVD/Blu-ray burners are more expensive to repair than replace you will probably have to replace your burner before its time if you ignore this aspect of the installation. My installation descriptions should be sufficient, but if you need to see an illustrated guide on installing CD/DVD/Blu-ray drives, visit:
Installing An Optical Drive Guide http://static.compusa.com/html/learn-installing-optical-drives.html

It is advisable to buy a CD-R/RW or DVD-R/RW drive instead of just a CDROM drive, because you can use it to play ordinary CDs (audio and data), and you can also use it to record ('burn') CD-R/DVD-R or CD-RW/DVD-RW discs. For instance, CD-R and DV-R/DVD+R disks are very cheap these days, especially when bought in bulk. You could use them to make regular back-up copies of your whole system so that it can easily be restored in the event of a wipe out. Currently, CD-RW discs can be rewritten approximately a 1,000 times. A DVD+RW or a DVD-RW disc is very similar to a CD-RW disc with regard to the number of times that it can be rewritten. However, as with CD-RW discs, in practice the number of times will probably be much higher and vary between the brand-name makes of disc. Blu-ray rewritable discs (Blu-ray Disc Rewritable discs) are designated by BD-RE (not BD-RW in the way that CD-RW and DVD-RW/DVD+RW are used for the CD/DVD rewritable standards). The BD-RE specifications require that the discs, at minimum, should be rewritable at least 1,000 times. However, different materials, designs, and fabrications may allow a greater number of rewrites. Some, but not all of the BD-RE disc manufacturers, specify that their discs are capable of 10,000 or more rewrites. BD-R (write-once) and BD-RE (multiple write) discs can store a huge 25GB of data on a single-layer disc and 50GB on a dual-layer disc, but they are much more expensive than the equivalent recordable CD/DVD discs. Click here! to find out what the latest prices are on amazon.co.uk.

Installing CD/DVD/Blu-ray drive device drivers and disc-burning software Windows XP/Vista will probably install the device drivers itself for a CD/DVD/Blu-ray burner/drive, but if it hasn't got the drivers, it will ask you to supply them from a disc or from a download in a folder. If Windows installs the drivers itself, you should visit the drive maufacturer's website for the latest drivers, because those in the Windows driver library will be old drivers. You might also be able to find an update for the drive's firmware. Just make sure that the firmware update is for the exact make/model of drive, because you can render a drive unusable by installing the wrong firmware. Enter a suitable search term in the Google search box at the top of this page (with its Web radio button enabled) to find more information on optical-drive firmware. For a dvd drive, you could try: dvd drive firmware. New PCs and boxed CD/DVD/Blu-ray writers purchased from a retail store usually come with the disc-burning software required to use them, or you can download free alternatives from the Internet from sites such as:
http://www.majorgeeks.com/ http://www.filehippo.com/ http://www.tucows.com/ http://www.zdnet.com/

Visit the Disk Drives section of this site for detailed information on these optical drives. Visit http://www.buildyourown.org.uk/ if you want access to another good site with build-your-own-pc information. Each such site has its own method of treating the subject and none of them provides all of the available information on it, so it is worthwhile finding out what is available on several of them. You can find others by entering build your own pc in the Google search box at the top of this page (with its Web radio button enabled).

How to install a floppy disk drive (FDD)

The image above shows the most common type of internal floppy disk drive installed in a desktop PC. It uses standard 1.44MB floppy disks. A floppy disk drive (FDD) is installed in much the same way as a hard disk drive, except that it uses one of the small 3.5-inch outlets available in the front of the case instead of an outlet for 5.25-inch bay. The image below shows the front view of an Antec SLK1650 ATX case. You can see the power-on and reset buttons and the two 3.5-inch drive bays for devices such as a floppy disk drive. Above them are three 5.25-inch bays for optical drives (CD/DVD/Blu-ray).

Now that the floppy disk drive is well on the way to becoming extinct, some new cases only have a single 3.5-inch bay, because devices such as an internal memory card reader are installed in one. (How to install a memory card reader is dealt with in the next item.) If the PC case is new, you will have to remove one of the plastic covers in the front of the case, which is about a quarter of the size of one the covers placed over the CD/DVD bays. You may also have to remove a punch-out metal cover. The drive is inserted into the bay so that its face shows at the front of the case. It is screwed into the 3.5-inch bay with four screws. Most cases come with all the screws required to install the drives. To do that you will probably have to remove both sides of the case if the bay itself is not removable. The FDD has a special ribbon cable that can be identified by the twist in a couple of its strands in the middle of the cable near one end. - See the images of one below.

The end that has this twist closest to it is attached to the drive, and the other end is attached to the FDD Channel on the motherboard. The side of the ribbon cable with the red line down its length is connected to Pin 1 on the motherboard, which should be indicated as such on the board itself or in the motherboard's user manual. You can clearly see the red line along the top of the cable in the close-up image of the cable. Connecting a floppy-drive cable causes more probems than any other cable. This is mainly because not many floppy cables have a notch on the connector that fits into the gap in the socket on drive, providing a key-type installation, so there is nothing to prevent plugging the cable in the wrong way round. Moreover, there is also no consistency in the arrangement of the two connectors at the back of the drive. With an IDE ATA hard disk drive, Pin 1 on the hard drive is on the side of the socket nearest the power socket, but that is not necessarily the case with a floppy drive. If there is no indication on the motherboard or on the floppy drive where Pin 1 is, the socket on the drive has a missing pin - Pin 5 - which is two positions away from Pin 1. The power supply provides a special small plug that can only connect to a floppy disk drive. Note that if a hard drive's LED light on the front of the case, or the LED light on the FDD remain lit when the PC is first switched on, this usually means that the FDD cable is the wrong way round - that the side of the cable without the red line along its length is connected to Pin 1 on the motherboard. Having the cables the wrong way round in that way will do no harm, but having the hard-drive and floppy-drive cables not properly attached to the drive or to the motherboard has been known to render the drive permanently useless. So make sure that the plugs are pushed all the way into their sockets on the motherboard and the drive. They can easily be left half connected. The pins in the data-cable connector can easily be bent if the connector isn't fitted precisely over them so that the holes in it match the pins. If one or more pins are bent, the drive won't work, so if that is the case check the pins. If one or more are bent, use a pair of tweezers to make them staight.

Because it is difficult to see if you are connecting the floppy drive correctly when the drive is installed in the case, I attach the ribbon cable to the drive first and then feed the cable through the floppy drive's opening and then connect the cable to the motherboard. The power cable is easy to connect. If Windows XP/Vista is already installed it will detect and install the floppy drive's device driver. If you install the floppy drive during the building process and the install Windows, it will install the driver automatically. Floppy disk drives use a standard Windows driver. It is not necessary to install and connect the parallel, serial, and game ports with an ATX motherboard (as is the case with an older AT motherboard that does not have these ports built into it, so they are installed as brackets that connect to the motherboard), because these ports are built into an ATX motherboard. If you are installing an ancient AT motherboard, its manual will illustrate where to connect these ports on the board. Note that you should not leave unused CD/DVD/FDD drive bays in the front of the case - or the expansion card outlets at the back of the case uncovered, because the gaps weaken the extraction of hot air by the PSU and case fan. If you have an external USB floppy disk drive of the kind shown in the image below, it will be connected to a USB port on the motherboard's ports panel at the back of the case. The drive obtains its power via the USB cable.

The following link downloads a PDF file that provides information on how to install the device drivers for a Western Digital external floppy disk drive.
http://support.wdc.com/techinfo/floppy/2079-001067.pdf

The following MS Knowledge Base article deals with the problem of installing SATA drive device drivers, which require installation from a FDD after pressing the F8 key during the Windows XP installation process. This problem does not occur with Windows Vista, because Vista installs SATA drivers during the installation process.
A connected USB floppy disk drive does not work when you press F6 to install mass storage drivers during the Windows XP installation process http://support.microsoft.com/kb/916196

The Expansion Cards and Peripheral Devices

This set of pages is devoted to the following adapter cards and peripheral devices. Click the relevant heading to go to information on that subject.
THIS PAGE - VIDEO AND SOUND CARDS THE MOUSE THE KEYBOARD PRINTERS

Video/Graphics and Sound Cards

Visit the Video & Graphics section of this site for more detailed information on video/graphics cards than is provided on this page. You have to take care to make sure that the video/graphics card of your choice is fully compatible with your PC's motherboard and operating system, otherwise it might not function, might only work as an old-style PCI video card, or might only function in 2D mode, and crash when working in 3D mode. Sound cards are less problematic because most of them just need to be installed in a PCI 2.1 compliant slot, which all ATX motherboards have. If you need to find out what the required system specifications are for a particular make or model of video or sound card its manufacturer's website will provide the information. You can find out in the motherboard's user manual if your PC's motherboard supports the required specification. For example, the Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeGamer sound card has the following requirements: Windows XP:

Genuine Intel Pentium III 1 GHz, AMD 1 GHz processor or faster Intel, AMD or 100% compatible motherboard chipset Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2) or Window XP Pro x64 256MB RAM 600MB of free hard disk space

Available PCI 2.1 slot for the audio card CD-ROM/CD-RW or CD/DVD-ROM required for software installation Graphics card with DirectX 9 and OpenGL compliant 3D graphics accelerator Internet connection is required to obtain free PowerDVD players with Dolby Digital and DTS decoding Genuine Intel Pentium III 1 GHz, AMD 1 GHz processor or faster Intel, AMD or 100% compatible motherboard chipset Microsoft Windows Vista 32-bit or 64-bit 512 MB RAM 600 MB of free hard disk space Available PCI 2.1 compliant slot (PCI 2.2 and 2.3 also supported) Headphones or amplified speakers (available separately) CD-ROM drive installed Internet connection is required to obtain free PowerDVD players with Dolby Digital and DTS decoding

Windows Vista:

To install an expansion card into a motherboard that has already been installed in the PC's case, all you have to do is use a Philips screwdriver to remove the single screw or clip that screws/clips the metal cover (blanking plate) over the outlet at the back of the case of the PCI or AGP or PCI Express (PCI-E) slot that you want to use, and insert the card in the relevant slot so that it fills the space left by the cover - always taking care not to use too much force. Note that some PC cases use both a screw and a clip to secure the blanking plate in place. You must fit an expansion card in its correct slot. Installing an expansion card in the wrong slot could make the expansion card or even the computer itself unusable unless the card or motherboard is replaced. The image below shows the slot arrangement on a typical motherboard.

Note that new motherboards do not have any ISA slots, because ISA adapter cards are no longer being manufactured. The vast majority of new motherboards now no longer have an AGP graphics-card slot; they have PCI Express slots of various sizes instead, which can be used for graphics cards

and other adapter/expansion cards. The next item deals with the PCI Express x16 slot that is used for graphics cards. Motherboards: The new x16 PCI Express slots The latest video/graphics standard called PCI Express has almost replaced its forerunner, the AGP standard. At the time of writing this (July 2008), new AGP graphics cards were still available. The AGP standard was purely a graphics standard, so the AGP slot can only be used by a graphics card. To accommodate the new PCI Express standard, the AGP slot's position on the motherboard, shown in the diagram above, is replaced by a PCI Express x16 slot.

The image shown above is of an MSI K8N Diamond Plus Socket 939 motherboard with two x16 SLI PCI Express graphics slots for dual graphics cards and AMD Athlon 64 and 64 FX processors. There are two standard PCI slots - the orange slot and the white slot of the same length next to it on the far top left side of the board. The PCI Express slots are two long x16 slots (the longest slots on the board) for two graphics cards in SLI mode, one yellow x4 slot and two short white x1 slots for other PCI Express devices, such as a sound card, joystick, dial-up modem, etc. The Asus Xonar D2X PCI Express sound card is an example of a sound card that uses a PCI Express x1 slot. If the motherboard doesn't have the PCI slots that you require for adapter cards, you'll have to look for PCI Express cards. The following diagram shows the PCI Express x16 and x1 slots, and the two standard PCI slots on a Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H motherboard.

Click here! to go directly to the information about the new PCI Express standard on the Video and Graphics section of this site. Use your browser's Back button to return to this point on this page.
How To Avoid Getting The Wrong Graphics Card If you're building your own computer or upgrading the motherboard and video/graphics card of an existing computer, you could easily buy an AGP card when the motherboard you have requires a PCI Express card, or vice versa. The computer's motherboard's manual will tell you all the information you need to know about the adapter card slots on the motherboard. If you don't have one, you should be able to download a copy from the manufacturer's website. To read it, you'll need the free Adobe Acrobat PDF reader, or some other PDF-file reader. Note that you should always match the video/graphics card to the rest of the system. If you have a computer running on 128MB of RAM (far too little) and a Pentium 3 processor (not powerful enough), using it with an nVidia GeForce 6800Ultra (8x, AGP) video card is a waste of money. In a PC game, the video/graphics card creates the scene and makes the action take place, but it is the main processor that instructs the video card what to do. The processor can be likened to the conductor and the video card to the orchestra, so if you have a slow conductor the orchestra is going to play the game slow even if it can play it at its full speed. Click here! to go to information about the new PCI Express standard on this site. Use your browser's Back button to return to this point on this page.

The User Installation Manual

If you purchase a retail boxed graphics card or sound card it will come with an user installation manual that shows how all of the features of the card are used. If you purchased an Original Equipment Manufacturer - OEM video or sound card that is supported by the vendor instead of the manufacturer, you will probably have to download the manual, and perhaps even the device-driver executable file from the manufacturer's website.

How to install a video/graphics card or sound card

Note well that you should touch the case to remove any static electricity from your body before you handle electronic components. The computer should be plugged into the wall socket with its power turned off so that the case is earthed. Installing a PCI (redundant technology), AGP (outgoing technology), or PCI Express video/graphics card (current technology) is merely a matter of opening the case and removing the screw/clip that screws/clips the metal cover (blanking plate over the slot's outlet at the back of the case, and then inserting the card in its slot so that its face plate replaces the metal cover and shows at the back of the case. Note that some PC cases use both a screw and a clip to secure the blanking plate in place. Just make sure that the card is inserted all the way into the slot and that it is not touching the motherboard. Note that there are occasions when screwing the card in too tightly raises its end out of the slot and causes an error that can render the computer unbootable. If you installed an AGP graphics card, even if you were sure that it was properly seated in its slot, it still may not be properly seated. Remove the AGP card and reinstall it, making sure that it completely seated. If the motherboard has an AGP retention mechanism on its AGP slot, which most motherboard's don't have, it keeps the card in place, so make sure that the notch on the AGP card fully engages the mechanism. One of the most common reasons for a loose AGP card is that the screw used to secure it to the case may lift the card partially out of its slot. This problem is rare with high-quality cases and AGP cards, but quite common with cheap components. There are different types of retention mechanism. To remove the card means having to disengage the mechanism, which can sometimes be difficult to do. The motherboard's user manual, a copy of which should be available as a PDF document from its manufacturer's site, should provide illustrated information on how to install a graphics card if a retention mechanism is employed. A source of well illustrated motherboard manuals is the MSI website. Just pick a motherboard and download its user manual. Most motherboard manuals provide drawings or images showing how to install cards and RAM memory in the motherboard. There are also hundreds or thousands of websites that provide that information. If you need to see what is on offer just enter a phrase like "How to install a video card", or "Installing a video card", or "Install a video card", or "Video card installation", in the Google search box at the top of this page (with its Web radio button enabled).

When installing components, be patient at all costs, and never force any component into place. Always use your common sense to determine the spacing of the components. For example, if you are installing a graphics card that has its own cooling unit fitted to the main chip, if possible, don't smother it by installing it near or in between other adapter cards. Give it space to expel the heat it generates. The build up of heat is one of the most common causes of system failures. Note that many motherboards have the AGP slot positioned so closely to the DIMM memory slots that the RAM modules have to be removed before the video card can be installed, and the video card has to be removed in order to remove or add RAM modules. It is not unusual to hear that someone has tried to install an nVidia GeForce graphics card and the installed RAM modules have knocked off some of the card's protruding capacitors, thereby rendering it useless. This situation would not have been a problem if the obvious and necessary installation procedures were taken. Furthermore, very often the first PCI slot on the motherboard is positioned too close to the AGP/PCI Express slot. If an adapter card is installed in that PCI slot, it would deprive the AGP/PCI Express graphics card of air, and might cause it to function abnormally, or to be damaged by overheating. Some motherboard reviews provide useful information of that kind. Personally, I would not purchase a motherboard until I had read all of the reviews of it on the Internet or in computer magazines. If you want to see a graphics PCI Express card installed, watch this video:
How to install a graphics card [video] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=femSBniUF-k

The images that are provided to illustrate the manual installation of a graphics card's drivers are Windows XP screenshots, but the procedure is much the same for Windows Vista and Windows 95/98/Me systems. You shouldn't need to install the drivers manually in Windows 95/98/Me/XP, or in Windows Vista. If PnP OS (plug-and-play operating system) is enabled in the BIOS setup program, those versions of Windows will automatically detect the card, and you will have the option to allow it to install the driver it has in its database, or select to do so from a CD/DVD, or from a download folder containing the latest downloaded driver file. Note well that most new motherboards now only provide the device drivers for the versions of Windows that Microsoft still supports, which are Windows XP and Windows Vista). If you install a graphics or sound card in computers running a version of Windows, such as Windows 98, that the manufacturer does not provide drivers for, it will use its standard VGA driver that only supports a screen resolution of 640x480 pixels.

****
Dual video card technology It has recently become possible install two PCI Express video cards on a single motherboard. nVidia calls its dual-card technology SLI, which stands for Scalable Link Interface. ATI calls its dual-card technology CrossFire. The two cards can have a configuration of 2, 3, or 4 GPUs (graphics processing units). The following link shows two ATI Radeon HD 3870 X2 (dual-GPU) graphics cards installed on an MSI K9A2 Platinum motherboard, which gives four GPUs in AMD/ATI's new CrossFireX platform.
AMD's CrossFireX: Tri & Quad GPU Preview http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3232

Some PCI Express video cards require to be connected to the power supply unit (PSU) via a special PCI Express power connector. If you use two such cards, you need a power supply unit (PSU) with two such power connectors one for each card. An excellent example is the Akasa Power80+ 500W unit. (Akasa also make excellent cases). It has "Two CPU 12V connectors" that combine to make an 8-pin connector (required by some motheboards) or spit in two to make a 4-pin connector (required by some motherboards) and "PCI-E connectors for multiple dual GPU". You can visit the company's website at http://www.akasa.com.tw/. The power supplies are categorised as Ultra Quiet, Efficiency, and Performance. You can enter the make and model in the Google search box at the top of this page (with it Web radio button enabled) to locate reviews and vendors. The user manual for an nVidia-based or ATI-based graphics card will provide installation instructions. At first, a dual-card configuration required that the two cards were physically linked by a bridge, but now the link is created by the the device drivers. Click here! to go to information on this site on PCI Express and dual-card technology.

A problem installing adapter cards in a Windows XP system

Problem I have purchased a new motherboard and installed it in my Windows XP system; successfully for the most part, but whenever I try to install a sound card or network card, and then boot the system I get the message, "An error has occurred during the installation of this device. The data is invalid." For some reason, I have not been able to install an AGP video card, but I have been able to install an old PCI video card. I have also tried unsuccessfully to install two different makes of network and sound card. The other measures I have taken to rectify the problem are: - reflashed the BIOS with the latest

update, and tried replacing Windows XP with its forerunner, Windows 2000. Because the same error occurs with both versions of Windows, I suspect that the problem has to be hardware-related. A possible solution The usual cause of this problem in Windows 2000 / XP systems is Registry keys that are set as read-only. From the Start menu, click Run and enter regedit to run the Registry Editor. Open the following - Keys => HKey_Local_machine => System => CurrentControlSet => Enum => PCI. You will see several keys in this form - Ven_xxxx - where xxxx represents a string such as - 1102&Dev_004&Subsys_00011103&Rev_04. In each of these folders there is another folder that has a long numerical name. Open each of these folders, and look for the DeviceDesc entry that matches the type of hardware that you are trying unsuccessfully to install. Use the right mouse button to click on the Ven_xxxx entry for that device, and click Permissions. If it is set to read-only, then that is the cause of the problem. To rectify it, change it to Allow Full Control.

More installation information...

Often the power plugs are a devil to remove from drives, and adapter cards (especially old ISA cards) can be a devil to install. Sometimes the card will slip into the slot, most PCI cards do, but sometimes you will have to apply quite a bit of pressure. If the card won't go in, be patient and keep trying, but never get angry and try too much force, because you could crack the motherboard or damage the edge connector on the card. If you feel the motherboard bending, hold the edge with one hand while doing the inserting with the other hand. If the motherboard is cracked it will render the computer useless until it is replaced. An ISA card (redundant technology) will fit in a long black ISA slot, which most new motherboards no longer have. A PCI card fits into one of the shorter slots that are usually white. Try not to use the PCI slot next to the x16 PCI Express slot, or the even shorter brown AGP slot, which is used for AGP video cards only. (Note that most motherboards only have PCI Express slots or an AGP slot, not both.) Remember that these slots can now be of any colour on recent motherboards. If the motherboard you have chosen or purchased does not have a video/graphics card (graphics accelerator) and sound card, you will have to choose which cards to buy and then decide where to buy them. You could ask the advice of the staff at large or small retail computer vendors, or select from a catalogue in a PC magazine, or use an online store and buy by mail order. Or you could find out which cards are being used in wellreviewed PCs of the kind that you want to build. You could also ask the advice of the members of online computer forums such as http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/.

When most ISPs provided only dial-up connections, you would also have had to choose an internal or external modem. However, now that broadband connections are available to most of the country, you usually only have to decide on an Internet Service Provider (ISP), such as O2, Virgin Media, etc. The ISP you choose will then provide you with an external broadband modem or a router. A wireless router allows you to share a broadband connection with as many computers with wireless adapters installed as you want. However, no more than ten other workstations can connect to your computer at one time if you are using Windows XP Professional. The limit is five workstations for Windows XP Home Edition. For more details, see the following MS Knowledge Base Article.
Inbound Connections Limit in Windows XP http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;314882

That situation is unlikely to be different in a wireless Windows Vista network. At the time of writing (July 2008), I could not find any information on this on the web. Dial-up connections are still available. If you want to make use of one, you will have to install an internal 56K modem or use an external 56K modem. The V.92 standard is the latest, so you require a V.92 dial-up modem. Visit this site for more information on dial-up modems: http://www.modemsite.com/. If your sound and video requirements only extend to using applications and accessing the Internet, buying an ATX case and motherboard (that can run your choice of processor) with inbuilt video and sound chips makes good sense. You will save money, and when you want to upgrade the system all you have to do is buy another motherboard with inbuilt sound and video, add a new processor and RAM, and you will have a new system. In my experience, the staff at most computer stores are not very knowledgeable or helpful. Working on a commission basis, they will usually try to sell you the most expensive components. Or they will sell you exactly what you ask for, even if you could make a better or more economical purchase. If you want to install a sound card to play audio CDs, to accompany DVD movies, or MPEG/AVI video files, or to listen to websites with sound content, etc., almost any new sound card, even ones costing between 15 and 20 will suffice. But if you want to use the sound card for recording and editing MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) files, etc., and you want full surround sound for heavy-duty PC gaming, etc., you should purchase an expensive sound card that will do what you require of it.

The video and sound cards, or motherboard (if the sound and video chips are built into it) will come with the CDs containing the software device drivers, and the installation instructions. If your PC's operating system (usually a version of Windows) has the correct drivers in its library, it will load them automatically. You can of course download driver updates from the web and install them (usually just by clicking on an .exe file) any time you like. Click Monitors to read the information on LCD/CRT monitors on this site. You will of course have to purchase a set of speakers in order to be able to hear the sound. The price of these can vary from 15 for a basic set of speakers that come with an external power supply, to hundreds of pounds for a full surround-sound speaker system. On a basic sound card that is connected to two speakers, they are usually plugged into the sound card's Speakers Out or Line Out socket, as shown in the motherboard's manual if the sound chip is built into the motherboard, or as in the sound card's manual for a PCI or PCI Express sound card. A PCI Express card, such as the Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Audio sound card, uses a x1 PCI Express slot on a motherboard that provides one or more of them. The Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Audio sound card can turn downloaded music into a personal concert, allows you to watch DVDs or downloaded videos with full cinematic surround sound, and provides 3D audio and EAX effects in PC games. But if you have a fancy sound card card that is capable of being connected to many speakers to produce a surround-sound effect, you will have to read its manual to find out how to connect the different speakers. You don't have to use all of the speaker ports. If you have purchased a set of two speakers, you can plug them in using the Front Speakers or Back Speakers port. But if you only want to use two speakers, you should purchase a basic sound card that has only a Line Out port for them. Most speakers will have their own power supply unit, but they should produce sound at a low volume if they are left to draw power from being attached to the sound card. Most speaker systems require their own power supply unit to be plugged into the wall for optimal performance, and most of them have to be turned on by pushing a switch somewhere on one of the speakers. I can remember helping someone with a sound problem. He had everything connected properly. The sound card was installed properly, the Windows Device Manager showed that the drivers had been installed properly under the Sound, video and game controllers menu item, the sound cable to the CD-ROM drive was properly connected, the two speakers were plugged

into the Line Out socket on the sound card, but the sound that issued from the speakers was barely audible with the volume control in the system tray (in the bottom right hand corner of the screen) set at the maximum. He was threatening to take the system back to the dealer when I said, "But you haven't switched the speakers on." I pushed the On button on one of the speakers, and the sound came out full ball, loud and clear. He had assumed the speakers were like the ones he had on his stereo music centre that only required to be plugged in. For more information on setting up a sound system, try using a search phrase such as: computer + "sound system" + setup + guide (as is) in the Google search box provided at the top of this page (with its Web radio button enabled).

The Expansion Cards and Peripheral Devices

This set of pages is devoted to the following adapter cards and peripheral devices. Click the relevant heading to go to information on that subject.
VIDEO AND SOUND CARDS THE MOUSE THIS PAGE - THE KEYBOARD PRINTERS

The Keyboard

Touch screens or speech-recognition will eventually replace computer keyboards, but for now you can buy a wireless or wired USB keyboard, or a standard PS/2 keyboard that has a plug that fits into the PS/2 keyboard port of an ATX motherboard. Most recent laptop PCs allow the use an external keyboard, which cannot usually be a PS/2 keyboard, because most laptops don't provide a PS/2 port. You will have to use a wireless or a USB keyboard.

A wireless keyboard could have a radio transmitter that connects to the PS/2 keyboard port itself, or to a USB port, or it can obtain a signal from an infrared (IR) transmitter connected to an IR port on the motherboard. A Bluetooth radio transmitter is usually connected to a USB port. Note well that if you have two or more computers in a building or house that use wireless keyboards, the signals from one downstairs (or anywhere within the range of another computer) can be picked up by one upstairs so that all kinds of different windows and dialog boxes open, programs run, folders open - even entire folders with dozens of sub-folders and several thousand files might be copied to another folder on a different drive, depending on what was being done on the other computer(s). The prime suspect is usually a virus or some kind of spyware or malware, but few people ever come to the conclusion that signals from wireless keyboards are to blame. Although it is very difficult to find AT keyboards, or AT motherboards, or AT cases, which are no longer manufactured, you should be aware that they exist in case someone tries to sell you an AT component, or you buy them from an Internet auction site. All motherboards are currently of the ATX or, to a much lesser extent, the BTX form factors. The BTX form factor has not yet taken over from the ATX form factor, and perhaps it never will. See the first Motherboards page on this site for information on motherboard form factors. An AT keyboard has a larger plug that cannot be fitted to an ATX motherboard unless you buy an AT to ATX conversion plug. See the USB pages of this site for information on that subject. Note that USB keyboards and mice tend to be far more problematic than the PS/2 alternatives. The PS/2 standard for mice and keyboards has been in existence since 1987 and is still supported by Windows Vista, which is the latest incarnation of Windows that comes as several different versions. Apple has got rid of PS/2 ports in all of its desktop and laptop PCs but, at the time of writing this (July 2008), most desktop PC motherboard manufacturers still provide PS/2 ports for a mouse and keyboard on their motherboards. That can be useful, because the other main standard used for mice and keyboards - USB - still has some flaws in its design that make it temperamental. Indeed, it is not uncommon to find that a USB keyboard and mouse don't work, and the only solution is to use a PS/2 alternative, provided that the PC's motherboard has a PS/2 mouse or keyboard port. Unless the BIOS setup program provides a device driver for a USB keyboard and mouse, you won't be able to use them to navigate the BIOS setup program, because Windows installs the USB device drivers when it starts up, and the BIOS is entered before Windows starts up.

Many new PCs, particularly from Gateway and Dell, only provide USB ports. However, there are currently (July 2008) still many new computers, including most new PCs from HP, that also provide PS/2 ports. Most of the keyboard and mouse manufacturers provide devices that can operate with both PS/2 and USB ports. Adapters are available or come with new mice and keyboards that enable a PS/2 device to plug into a USB port and a USB device to plug into a PS/2 port. Note that these adapters won't work with just any keyboard or mouse. The device has to be designed to work with both types of port. Installation instructions for these peripherals will be found in the motherboard's user manual, which either came with the computer, was packaged with the motherboard, or can usually be downloaded from the motherboard manufacturer's website. In a Windows 95/98/Me system, the settings for the keyboard and mouse are found in the Start => Settings => Control Panel under the headings Keyboard and Mouse. In a Windows XP system, they are also in the Control Panel, which can be accessed directly from the Start button. For Windows Vista, look under the Hardware and Sound category in the Control Panel. Look for Keyboards and Mice and other pointing devices. You can experiment with the settings to set the repeat rates that suit you best. To find out what is in the Control Panel in Windows Vista, read:
Using the Windows Vista Control Panel http://tech.yahoo.com/gd/using-the-windows-vista-control-panel/200429

Below is an illustration of the location of the PS/2 keyboard port on an ATX motherboard from an MSI motherboard manual. All of the ports appear at the back of the PC's case when the motherboard is installed in a tower (vertical) or desktop (horizontal) case. Visit the Motherboards, PC Cases, and Power Supply Units section of this site for information on them. Two USB ports are shown next to the two PS/2 ports. Most motherboards now provide at least four USB ports on the motherboard's ports panel and provide USB headers on the motherboard itself that can be attached to the cables of a USB brackets that contains USB ports. The bracket itself fits into a free slot at the back of the case in the same way as an adapter card. Additional USB 2. 0 ports can be added by attaching an inexpensive USB hub containing them to one of the USB ports on the motherboard. If the PC's motherboard only provides USB 1.1 ports, you can buy a USB adapter card that adds USB 2.0 ports.

You can download the manuals for the latest MSI motherboards free of charge from http://www.msi.com.tw/.

The port above it is for a PS/2 mouse. A particular PS/2 port has to be used for a keyboard or a mouse, never for both. When connecting the keyboard and mouse make sure that you connect them to the correct ports. Most computers have color-coded PS/2 ports. If the computer has coloured ports the mouse usually connects to the green or teal connection, and the keyboard to the blue or purple connection. The three large ports beside the two USB ports are legacy ports for oldtechnology devices. The large port on the top of the two smaller ports is a parallel port for parallel devices such as a parallel printer and external disk drive. The two smaller ports below it are for serial devices, such as a serial mouse, keyboard or joystick. Serial mice and keyboards are no longer sold new. Click here to view annotated images of two ATX motherboards showing where the parallel port and the PS/2 mouse and keyboard ports are located. Click your browser's Back button to return here

How to install PS/2, USB, and wireless keyboards and mice

Installing a PS/2 and USB keyboard is merely a matter of plugging the plug into the correct PS/2 port or into a USB port, respectively - with the computer switched off in the case of a PS/2 keyboard. You can plug a USB keyboard or mouse into a USB port while the computer is running, because the USB standard allows such hotplugging. You can damage the motherboard is you install a PS/2 device while the PC is running. If the device came with special software, then you install that according to its installation instructions. A wireless USB keyboard and mouse package set usually contains the following:
Wireless keyboard

Wireless mouse Wireless receiver(s) Batteries (if not, you will have to supply them)

Set up the keyboard and mouse where you want them in front of the PC, position the wireless receiver that connects to the PC and which provides the radio signal, and install the software that came in the package. Connect the wireless receiver to a USB port on the PC (USB ports can be at the front or back of the PC), with the PC switched on. If there are no free USB ports, you can purchase a USB hub from a computer shop or online store that provides them. You plug the hub into a single USB port. With the wireless receiver plugged in, Windows XP or Windows Vista will detect new hardware and install the device drivers. When that is done Windows will produce this message: "Your new hardware is now ready to use." Now you can test the keyboard and mouse. If they don't work properly, experiment with where the receiver is placed. It shouldn't be placed to close to the case or monitor. Visit the USB section of this site for information on that subject. Keyboard device drivers (software) All computer devices require device-driver software that is supported by the make/version of the operating system in order to be able to function. If Windows XP/Vista cannot detect the make and model of keyboard and install the device driver from its driver library, when it detects new hardware it will ask you to insert the disc containing the driver. If you don't install a driver, Windows will install its standard device driver for the keyboard. If Windows installs the driver for the make/model of keyboard automatically, or you install the driver when asked to do so, or it installs its standard keyboard driver, you should visit the manufacturer's site for the latest driver (software) for that make/model of keyboard, because the software is continually being updated. The drivers are available for the different versions of Windows. The driver support depends on the manufacturer. For example, some manufacturers still provide drivers for Windows 98/Me, but others do not. Some manufacturers provide drivers for the Linux operating system; others don't. The drivers are available for the different versions of Windows. Microsoft now only provides the keyboard drivers for Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Windows Vista. The drivers are available for the 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows. If you have a 32-bit or 64-bit version of Windows XP/Vista, you have to use the matching driver.

How to determine whether your computer is running a 32-bit version or a 64-bit version of the Windows operating system http://support.microsoft.com/kb/827218

Visit Microsoft's Keyboard and Mouse Products page to gain access to installation guides and software downloads for its keyboards and mice. http://www.microsoft.com/hardware/mouseandkeyboard/default.mspx

The device driver information is available in the Device Manager under the heading Keyboards. If the manufacturer's driver is installed, the make and model of keyboard will be shown there.

The On-Screen Keyboard in Windows XP and Windows Vista If your keyboard gives up the ghost all of a sudden, you can use the screen keyboard that is part of Windows XP. To access it, enter osk in the Start => Run box, and the screen keyboard that can be operated with the mouse will appear. In Windows Vista, enter osk in the Start => Start Search box. Alternatively, click Start (button) => Control Panel, click the Ease of Access Center twice and select Start OnScreen Keyboard. Shortcut keys in Windows XP and Windows Vista List of the keyboard shortcuts that are available in Windows XP http://support.microsoft.com/kb/301583 Windows [Vista] Help and How-to: Keyboard shortcuts - Applies to all editions of Windows Vista.- http://windowshelp.microsoft.com/Windows/en-US/help/...mspx You can enter a search term such as windows 98 keyboard shortcuts in the Google search box at the top of this page (with its Web radio button enabled) to find shortcut keys for Windows 98 and Windows Me. How to change the keyboard to work as/like a foreign keyboard From Windows XP SP2 Microsoft introduced a new United Kingdom Extended keyboard layout (all of the later versions - Windows XP SP3 and Windows Vista have it). This layout works almost like a standard UK keyboard until you hold down the Alt Gr key. Doing that gives the vowels (a, e, i, o, u) an acute accent. The c is given a cedilla (a squiggle underneath it). The ^, ', and - keys become dead keys where the next letter typed is given the corresponding accent. To change the keyboard layout In Windows XP/Vista, click Start => Control Panel and open Regional and Language Options. Click on the Languages tab in the window that comes up and click on the Details button. You can also set up several different keyboard layouts there and then switch between them. The following link provides access to information on Windows keyboard layouts. Windows Keyboard Layouts http://www.microsoft.com/globaldev/reference/keyboards.mspx My Windows XP Pro computer with a USB keyboard won't boot into Safe Mode Problem After I was infected by spyware pop-ups, such as ErrorSafe and DriveCleaner, I was advised in a computer forum to update all of the anti-spyware tools I use and to boot into Safe Mode by pressing the F8 key after the memory count, because the scanners work more effectively in that mode. But, no matter how many times I press the F8 key at startup, my computer just continues to load Windows XP Professional. My computer has a USB Logitech iTouch keyboard. Is there any other way to force Windows to boot into Safe Mode? Answer The problem is no doubt caused by the fact that the device driver for the USB Logitech keyboard isn't being installed until after Windows XP has started to load, which is normal for USB device drivers, so you can't use it to enter Safe Mode by pressing the F8 key before Windows starts to load. You probably won't be able to enter the BIOS setup program for the same reason. You have to press the BIOS entry key(s) before Windows starts to install. That means that you won't be able to enter the BIOS in order to enable Legacy system support for a USB keyboard and USB mouse, which would install USB keyboard

Additional information on keyboards

Keyboards range in price from as low as 6 to 50 for a standard PS/2 keyboard to 50 and more for keyboards with fancy ergonomic designs that have all kinds of keys for working the system that an ordinary keyboard does not provide. But a standard 101/102 key keyboard will give you all of the functionality needed to work the system. Remember that wireless keyboards are powered by batteries, which can be a nuisance to replace or recharge. The Optical Desktop with Fingerprint Reader is a keyboard and mouse set. The keyboard is wired and the mouse is wireless. The fingerprint reader can be used so that only users that have fingerprint profiles can gain access to the computer.You should be aware that if your fingerprint is not recognised for any reason, you won't be able to gain access to the computer. This can happen for no apparent reason, so think twice before you use fingerprint-recognition devices. Note that unless they have an alternative mains power connector and adapter, all wireless devices are powered by batteries. When the keyboard driver has been installed, and the keyboard is attached to the computer, it will be listed as successfully installed in the Windows Device Manager under the heading Keyboard in Windows 95/98/Me and under Keyboards in Windows XP/Windows Vista. Only USB and FireWire keyboards can be hotplugged, hot docked (hot docking), which means that the device can be connected to the computer while it is running. If your version of Windows supports USB, the USB driver will be loaded automatically. See the USB page on this site for more information on the standard. Other (non-serial, non-USB/FireWire) devices should never be hotplugged, since doing so could damage or destroy the motherboard. Note that a serial ATA (SATA) drive is a serial device and therefore it can be hot docked to a computer.

How parallel ports and keyboards work

If you want to find out how parallel ports and keyboards work, read these articles.
How Keyboards Work http://computer.howstuffworks.com/keyboard.htm How Parallel Ports Work http://computer.howstuffworks.com/parallel-port.htm

If you want to learn what all of the keys on a keyboard do, click the following link to a keyboard tutorial page that shows an image of a

keyboard. You click on a key to bring up information on the purpose of that key. http://www.seoconsultants.com/windows/keyboard/

Wireless Bluetooth technology

Bluetooth wireless technology has been in development for some time. Microsoft uses Bluetooth for its wireless mouse and keyboard products.
Microsoft Mouse and Keyboard Products This page provides information on Bluetooth. http://www.microsoft.com/hardware/mouseandkeyboard/features/bluetooth.mspx

A small USB Bluetooth transceiver is bundled with the wireless keyboard and mouse. Simply plug it into a USB port. Windows will detect new hardware and install the drivers, or, if it doesn't have the drivers in its library, will ask for the driver CD to be inserted, and then you'll be able to use both of the devices.
How Bluetooth Works - http://computer.howstuffworks.com/bluetooth.htm

KVM switches
How to use two or more computers with one keyboard, monitor, and mouse If you want to access more than one computer but don't need to network them, there is a little-known device called a KVM switch that allows the operation of two or more computers from one set of keyboard - monitor and mouse. The letters KVM stand for keyboard video and mouse, I suppose because KVM sounds better than KMM. Some of these switches can allow thousands of computers to be accessed in this way, and some of them even allow the use of one sound card and one set of speakers. The computers and the one set of keyboard, monitor and mouse are linked to the KVM switch, and key toggles are used to switch from one computer to another. All of the computers are tricked into thinking that they have sole use of the keyboard, monitor, and mouse. This is an invaluable aid if you need to use more than one computer but you don't need to have them networked. You can purchase KVM switches from all of the larger online electronics and computer businesses. A four-computer model is typically priced from 36/$60 to 75/$125, and a two-computer unit is about half that price. Note that the more expensive units usually have superior cables and shielding from electronic interference than the less expensive units.
KVM Switches that do DVI from Aten "Using a KVM switch to work on two or more computers with a single keyboard, mouse and monitor can certainly make life easier. However, we had to wait a long time for KVM

switchboxes to catch up with modern technology, such as the all-digital visual interface (DVI) connectors for flat panel displays. Until recently, users had no choice but to use only D-15 analog VGA connectors with KVMs - a relic of the bygone CRT era. But such devices now not only enable switching among multiple sound and USB sources, they can even switch between systems with two monitors attached." http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/...review-1370.html Clutter Rescue: 2 Port KVM Switches http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/clutter-rescue,review-935.html

Belkin - http://www.belkin.co.uk/ - make a good line of KVM Switches that make use of the PS/2 or USB computer ports.

Articles on keyboards
Keyboards with Backlit Keys http://www.tomsguide.com/us/keyboard-backlight-backlit,review-1042.html Why Buy a Gaming Keyboard? "When it comes to video game input devices, the keyboard is probably the furthest from ideal. Lets face it, keyboards were not designed to serve as game peripherals. However, PC gamers have bent their gaming habits to fit the restrictions of the standard keyboard for so many years that most prefer keyboard controls to a gamepad." http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/why-buy-a-gaming-keyboard,review-29601.html Exclusive First Look: Logitech Cordless Desktop Wave "We rarely get excited about a keyboard, particularly if it is an ergonomic one, but Logitech's Cordless Desktop Wave is something a little different. Rather than rattle out a standard ergonomic model with an odd shape that you have to retrain yourself to use, Logitech has gone back to the drawing board and started from scratch..." http://www.pcpro.co.uk/shopper/news/121112/... A Few Office Keyboards Reviewed "...most desktop PC's come with a generic keyboard attached, but sometimes these keyboards don't suit ones particular needs or sensibilities of style. Some people require a keyboard that will give them an edge in a videogame, others a keyboard that won't hog up the entirety of their limited desk space..." http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/...review-1724.html The Keyboard of the Future? "While tuning into 'CSI' one day I saw this neat little projection keyboard, which supposedly worked with lasers. Alright, I thought, being gadget prone, Ill bite and see if this thing is useable. So it looks neat, but how does it perform?..." http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/laser-keyboard,review-2369.html

The Expansion Cards and Peripheral Devices

This set of pages is devoted to the following adapter cards and peripheral devices. Click the relevant heading to go to information on that subject.
VIDEO AND SOUND CARDS THIS PAGE - THE MOUSE THE KEYBOARD PRINTERS

The Wired and Wireless PC Mouse/Mice

Everyone, even the most technologically illiterate of people, must know by now that the mouse (plural mice) is the essential device that is used with a PC to move the mouse pointer across the computer's screen to point and click on menu items, links, and icons in order to make them reveal and open or run their contents (menu items and programs). So essential is it to the use of a PC that you wouldn't even be reading this article if you didn't know how to use a mouse to access webpages. The image above is of a wired, optical, USB Microsoft Intellimouse. It draws its power via its USB cable that is usually connected to a USB port on the computer's motherboard at the front or back of the case, and uses a light sensor on its bottom surface to monitor its movements and translate them on to the computer's screen. A standard mouse uses a roller ball on its bottom surface to monitor its movements and translate them on to the screen. If you move an optical mouse (light-driven) or a standard mouse (ball-driven) in circles or up and down, the mouse pointer on the screen moves in circles or up and down, etc. A laser mouse is just an optical mouse that uses an infrared laser diode instead of an LED (light-emitting diode) as its light source. A laser diode is more precise than an LED diode, so if precision is required, you should use a laser mouse. The standard mouse has a left and a right button, and usually has a scroll wheel between them that makes scrolling up or down a page possible when it is rolled one way or the other.

Most point-and-click operations are done by positioning the mouse pointer over a menu item, link, or icon and then clicking or double clicking the left mouse button, thereby activating the menu item, link, or icon to open a window or run a program. For example, clicking on any of the links on this page will take you to pages on this website, or to pages on other websites. The right mouse button is usually used to gain access to parts of the operating system or program, such the menu window that presents itself when you position the mouse pointer over the Windows Start button (in the bottom left hand corner of the screen), and click the button on the right side of the mouse. Clicking with the right mouse button is referred to as rightclicking. Since left-clicking is used most of the time, it is just referred to as clicking (with the mouse). You can now buy all kinds of wired and wireless mice that can do all kinds of things. For example, the Genius Navigator 380 is a conventional-looking silver mouse that can be flipped open and used as a VoIP Internet phone. To find vendors or more information on this mouse, you can enter genius navigator 380 in the Google search box at the top of this page (with its Web radio button enabled). If you want to see a comprehensive range of standard and exotic mice, visit http://www.xoxide.com/mouse.html. A laser mouse is an optical mouse that uses an infrared laser diode instead of an LED (light-emitting diode) to track changes in the surface over which the mouse moves in order to translate that movement into the movement of the mouse pointer across the screen. A laser diode is more precise and more expensive than an LED diode, so laser mice similar features are usually, but not necessarily, more expensive than standard optical mice. Mouse device drivers (software) All computer devices require device-driver software that is supported by the make/version of the operating system in order to be able to function. If Windows XP/Vista cannot detect the make and model of mouse and install the device driver from its driver library, when it detects new hardware it will ask you to insert the disc containing the driver, which will have come with a new mouse. If you don't install a driver, Windows will standard device driver for the mouse. If Windows installs the driver for the make/model of mouse automatically, or you install the driver when asked to do so, or it installs its standard mouse driver, you should visit the manufacturer's site for the latest driver (software) for that make/model of mouse, because the software is continually being updated. The drivers are available for the different versions of Windows. The driver support depends on the manufacturer. For example, some manufacturers

still provide drivers for Windows 98/Me, but others do not. Some manufacturers provide drivers for the Linux operating system; others don't. Microsoft now only provides the drivers for Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Vista, and the Apple OS X operating system. The drivers are available for the 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows. If you have a 32-bit or 64-bit version of Windows XP/Vista, you have to use the matching driver.
How to determine whether your computer is running a 32-bit version or a 64-bit version of the Windows operating system http://support.microsoft.com/kb/827218

Visit Microsoft's Keyboard and Mouse Products page to gain access to installation guides and software downloads for its keyboards and mice. http://www.microsoft.com/hardware/mouseandkeyboard/default.mspx

The device driver information is available in the Device Manager under the heading Mice and other pointing devices. If the manufacturer's driver is installed, the make and model of mouse will be shown there.

MOUSE NEWS Microsoft's new "High Definition Optical" mice April 5, 2006. - Microsoft has developed a new range of mice based on its "High Definition Optical" technology. A new design is aimed at the mobile laptop/notebook computer user - the Wireless Notebook Optical 3000 is new version of the company's popular Wireless Notebook Optical Mouse. Two designs are aimed at the desktop PC user. The Wireless Laser Mouse 5000 features a five-button, ambidextrous design, a Magnifier button for real-time enlargement for editing in any part of the screen, and it comes equipped with a Tilt Wheel designed to improve navigating and viewing detailed documents and spreadsheets. The new Wireless Optical Mouse 2000 features an ambidextrous design with silver accents and three buttons. According to Microsoft, the new mice offer higher responsiveness. Using a new specially developed chip, they capture 6,000 frames per second, which prevents stopping and skipping. The new chip is more energy efficient, providing a battery life of more than six months, and uses improved software - a new Intelligent Tracking SystemThe Wireless Notebook Optical Mouse 3000 is available now. The Wireless Laser Mouse 5000 will be made available later this month [April 2006], and the Wireless Optical Mouse 2000 will be made available in June [2006]. Microsoft Breeds Four Unique Mice http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/...review-2098.html

In a Windows 95/98/Me system, the settings for the Keyboard and Mouse are found in the Start => Settings => Control Panel. In Windows XP, the settings are also in the Control Panel under Keyboard and Mouse. For Windows Vista, look under the Hardware and Sound category in the Control Panel. Look for Keyboards and Mice and other pointing devices. To find out what is in the Control Panel in Windows Vista, read:
Using the Windows Vista Control Panel http://tech.yahoo.com/gd/using-the-windows-vista-control-panel/200429

The situation with mice is much the same as with keyboards. You can purchase alternatives to the standard PS/2 mouse, such as optical mice. Optical mice use the changes detected in a beam of light from a light sensor at the bottom of the mouse instead of the movements of a roller-ball to create the movements of the cursor on the screen. Most wired mice are now optical mice, because they require less maintenance. The roller ball used in the first mice gets dirty and requires regular cleaning to keep the mouse functioning properly. You can buy wired PS/2 and USB optical mice, and wireless optical mice. A cordless optical mouse that uses batteries and connects to the computer via a base unit can be purchased for around 24 or less, depending on where you buy it. Rechargeable wireless optical mice are also available. You attach them to a recharger. The Optical Desktop with Fingerprint Reader is a keyboard and mouse set. The keyboard is wired and the mouse is wireless. The fingerprint reader can be used so that only users that have fingerprint profiles can gain access to the computer. Note that wireless keyboards and mice are powered by batteries, which can be a nuisance to replace or recharge. However, Microsoft claims that its latest wireless mice provide up to six months of battery life. A wireless mouse could have a radio transmitter that connects to the PS/2 mouse port itself, or to a USB port, or obtain a signal from an infrared (IR) port connected to the motherboard. A Bluetooth radio transmitter is usually connected to a USB port. A basic PS/2 mouse with an ATX PS/2 connector costs as little as 5 to 10, and the fancier ones (cordless, etc.) can cost over 100. To use a mouse with an old-style AT connector on redundant AT motherboards requires using an AT to ATX conversion plug. All motherboards are currently of the ATX or, to a much lesser extent, the BTX

form factors. See the first Motherboards page on this site for information on motherboard form factors. The PS/2 standard for mice and keyboards has been in existence since 1987 and is still supported by Windows Vista, which is the latest incarnation of Windows that comes as several different versions. Apple has got rid of PS/2 ports in all of its desktop and laptop PCs but, at the time of writing this (November, 2007), most desktop PC motherboard manufacturers still provide PS/2 ports for a mouse and keyboard on their motherboards. That can be useful, because the other main standard used for mice and keyboards - USB - still has some flaws in its design that make it temperamental. Indeed, it is not uncommon to find that a USB keyboard and mouse don't work, and the only solution is to use a PS/2 alternative, provided that the PC's motherboard has a PS/2 mouse or keyboard port. Many new PCs, particularly from Gateway and Dell, only provide USB ports. However, there are currently (November, 2007) still many new computers, including most new PCs from HP, that also provide PS/2 ports. Most of the keyboard and mouse manufacturers provide devices that can operate with both PS/2 and USB ports. Adapters are available or come with new mice and keyboards that enable a PS/2 device to plug into a USB port and a USB device to plug into a PS/2 port. Note that these adapters won't work with just any keyboard or mouse. The device has to be designed to work with both types of port. Remember to purchase a mouse mat if your mouse uses a roller-ball on its underside to move the cursor on the screen. A mouse mat is not required for an optical mouse because the beam of light detects movement over the surface of a desk. If you purchase a mouse that doesn't come with its drivers on a CD, Windows will automatically load a driver for it. This might not be the correct driver. Check in the Device Manager to see if the name of the mouse matches the mouse you have installed. If not, download the correct driver from the manufacturer's website. A PS/2 keyboard and mouse are connected to the PS/2 plugs on an ATX motherboard, as shown in the motherboard's manual. Below is an illustration from an MSI motherboard manual of the location of the PS/2 mouse port on an ATX motherboard that has inbuilt sound and video chips and ports. The PS/2 port below it is for a PS/2 keyboard. There are two USB ports beside the two PS/2 ports. If the motherboard only provides USB 1.1 ports, you can install a PCI USB 2.0 adapter card that adds USB 2.0 ports to the system. You can download the manuals for the latest MSI AMD-based and Intel-based motherboards free of charge from http://www.msi.com.tw/.

The three large ports beside the two USB ports are legacy ports for oldtechnology devices. The large port on the top of the two smaller ports is a parallel port for parallel devices such as a parallel printer and external disk drive. The two smaller ports below it are for serial devices, such as a serial mouse, keyboard or joystick. Serial mice and keyboards are no longer sold new. A particular PS/2 port has to be used for a keyboard or a mouse, never for both. When connecting the keyboard and mouse make sure that you connect them to the correct ports. Most computers have color coded PS/2 ports. If the computer has coloured ports the mouse usually connects to the green or teal connection, and the keyboard to the blue or purple connection. The inside female plug of the port is coloured green/teal and blue/purple.

Optical mice use a source of light to monitor movement of the mouse instead of a ball inside the mouse. You can buy wired or wireless optical mice. Both kinds are operated from buttons and usually have a scroll wheel on the top of the mouse. In addition to the left and right buttons and the central scroll wheel, standard ball-driven mice and optical mice can have additional buttons that provide extra features, some of which can be programmable. If you purchase an optical mouse that has no fancy buttons - only the left and right buttons and a scroll wheel, but it doesn't come with a driver disk, if you install the mouse, all the versions of Windows from Windows 95 up will use the standard Windows PS/2 Compatible Mouse device driver. The driver will make both left and right buttons and the scroll wheel operate. With a webpage or document open, all you have to do to scroll down the page is roll the scroll wheel one way or the other to go up and down the page. If you click the scroll wheel and then move the mouse up and down, the page should scroll as quickly or as slowly as you want it to. The functions of the additional buttons on fancy mice will be explained in the instruction manual that comes with the mouse. You can probably also find additional information on the manufacturer's site.

When the mouse driver has been installed, and the mouse is attached to the computer, it will be listed as successfully installed in the Windows Device Manager under the heading Mouse in Windows 95/98/Me systems and under Mice and other pointing devices in Windows XP/Windows Vista. Only USB and FireWire mice can be hotplugged - connected to the computer while it is running. If your version of Windows supports USB, the USB driver will be loaded automatically. See the USB page on this site for more information. Other (non-USB/FireWire) devices should never be hotplugged, since doing so could damage or destroy the motherboard. In any case, Windows will only install the drivers for a USB/Firewire keyboard or mouse if it is plugged in while the computer is running with Windows fully loaded.

Wireless keyboards and mice

As with every other wireless device on the market, there are several different technologies from which to choose, all of which can sometimes be very troublesome to get to work. They are all certainly more problematic than a wired keyboard and mouse, so if you don't really need wireless devices it's good advice to avoid them altogether. Wired devices are always less problematic and more reliable. All wireless devices are subject to electrical or radio interference, so the method of transmission is very important. The main transmission technologies are IR (Infra-Red), RF (Radio Frequency), and Bluetooth. IR based systems are generally older and require line-of-sight between the devices and the base station, much like a television remote control. It's good advice to stay clear of these devices if they can still be purchased. The most common wireless technology you can purchase is an RF-based system. The general range of RF-based systems can go from 3 to 100 feet. Logitech and Microsoft claim a range of up to 6 feet for their products. Gyration is a relative newcomer to this market. Gyration uses several unique technologies in its wireless keyboards and mice. The RF frequency it uses is much higher than that used by both Logitech and Microsoft, so its products can claim ranges of up to 30 feet. Indeed, Gyration's line of professional devices claim to have a range of up to 100 feet. Steer clear of troublesome, cheap, generic brands. The third and newest technology, Bluetooth, has a lower chance of interference from other devices, but it requires the installation of special device drivers. Windows XP and Windows Vista are the only versions of Windows that fully support it. Moreover, users have reported various driver-

related issues that caused a Bluetooth keyboard or mouse to stop working completely. It's therefore good advice to stick to an RF-based system, since it doesn't require any special software to be recognised by the system, and the technology has been in existence for much longer than Bluetooth technology. Note that the slight response lag with wireless mice can be a problem for gamers. The batteries in them need to be well charged for the best performance.

PC MOUSE PROBLEMS My computer's wired or wireless mouse cursor moves around on its own Question: - I had a new hard disk drive installed on my laptop PC by a computer shop that also removed some spyware. Now the cursor of my mouse moves around on its own and wreaks havoc with my typing. The same problem occurs with a wired or a wireless USB mouse. The wireless mouse is using new batteries. Answer: - That could be a hardware problem mice that have the same problem. It could be have installed the software for more than one most probably being caused by a conflict with have already had removed. (a faulty mouse), but you have tried two a device driver problem, especially since you mouse, but that is unlikely. The problem is other software, such as spyware, which you

You should start by scanning the system for spyware. If you don't have a good spyware scanner, install AVG Anti-Spyware from http://free.grisoft.com/. Update it online and scan your system. If doing that doesn't work, you can try disabling all of the startup programs. In Windows XP, enter msconfig in the Start => Run box. In Windows Vista, enter the command in the Start => Start Search box. Doing that brings up the System Configuration Utility. Click the Startup tab followed by the Disable All button. Click on the Services tab and use your mouse to place a check mark in the box beside Hide Microsoft Services. Remove the check marks for every service except the essential services for anti-virus, firewall, etc., which you should be familiar with and should be named there. Restart your computer. On restarting, Windows warns you that the system configuration has changed and it will offer to run MSConfig. Choose No, and place a check mark in the box that says "Do not ask again" or the message will reappear every time the computer starts up. If doing that fixes the problem, re-enable entries a few at a time, restarting the computer after every change, until you discover which entry is the cause of the problem. You can use Google to find out what that entry does and if there is an update for it if it is a valid program. Pacman's Startup list of startup programs can be very helpful in this regard. You can find it here: http://sysinfo.org/. Why does my mouse pointer lag behind when I move it across the screen? Question: - My desktop PC runs Windows XP. For several months after I've been using it for an hour or so, the mouse pointer lags behind when I try to move it across the screen. I have to restart the PC to make the mouse work normally again. Answer: - When the mouse responds slowly it usually means that some process is using most of the processor's processing capability, or there is a memory management issue. In Windows 95/98/Me the system resources can be too low, thereby causing the problem. You can reduce the use of system resources by reducing the number of startup programs or programs that have been opened after startup. In Windows XP/Windows Vista, it is unlikely to be caused by low system resources, it is most probably caused by Automatic Updates, which is using most of the processor's processing time. You can make use of a program called Process Explorer to find out which process is responsible. Process Explorer for Windows http://technet.microsoft.com/en-gb/sysinternals/bb896653.aspx Read My Dell Inspiron laptop computer is incredibly slow when starting up with Svchost using 98% of processor time on this site for more information on this problem.

Gaming computer keyboards and mice

The kind of keyboard and mouse used in gaming can make a difference. For instance, the slight response lag with wireless mice can be a problem for gamers. Moreover, the batteries they use need to be well charged for the best performance. For the dedicated gamer, optical mice are the best choice, because they don't require cleaning. Some gamers prefer the wireless models because they don't like the cable getting in the way of any movement. But the gamers who don't like having a wireless mouse run out of battery power in mid-game prefer a wired optical mouse. However, it's possible to get the best of both situations by using a wireless optical mouse that uses rechargeable batteries that can be charged via a cable (instead of a cradle) while being used. Keyboards and mice specifically designed for PC gaming are available. Have a look at http://gamingmouse.com/ to see some interesting gaming mice, some of which don't have moving parts and don't require a specific driver. "A typical conventional gaming mouse has more than 30 moving parts that will wear, break and cause mouse failure.The R2 gaming mouse with Membrane Switch technology has ZERO moving parts to wear or break... A conventional gaming mouse requires special disc based drivers go be loaded on the machine for operation. The R2 gaming mouse uses the host machine's embedded HID drivers -- no special drivers to install ever...A typical conventional gaming mouse has more than 30 moving parts that will wear, break and cause mouse failure. The R2 gaming mouse with Membrane Switch technology has ZERO moving parts to wear or break." Other examples of gaming mice and keyboards are made by Saitek. You can make use of the Google search box (with its Web radio button enabled) to find other maufacturers, reviews, etc. The simple search term gaming mice and keyboards will bring up plenty of links. Mice have a resolution that is measured in dots per inch (dpi). The higher the resolution is, the more sensitive the mouse is and the less it has to be moved in order to cover a given distance on the screen. A mouse with a relatively high resolution (e.g., 1,600dpi) allows quick and accurate responses of the kind that are required in many action and shooter games. If the response is too fast, you can use the Mouse feature in the Control Panel to adjust the settings. It can also be used to increase the response time of a mouse with a relatively low dpi specification.

KVM switches
How to use two or more computers with one keyboard, monitor, and mouse If you want to access more than one computer but don't need to network them, there is a little-known device called a KVM switch that allows the operation of two or more computers from one set of keyboard - monitor and mouse. The letters KVM stand for keyboard video and mouse, I suppose because KVM sounds better than KMM. Some of these switches can allow thousands of computers to be accessed in this way, and some of them even allow the use of one sound card and one set of speakers. The computers and the one set of keyboard, monitor and mouse are linked to the KVM switch, and key toggles are used to switch from one computer to another. All of the computers are tricked into thinking that they have sole use of the keyboard, monitor, and mouse. This is an invaluable aid if you need to use more than one computer but you don't need to have them networked. You can purchase KVM switches from all of the larger online electronics and computer businesses. A four-computer model is typically priced from 36/$60 to 75/$125, and a two-computer unit is about half that price. Note that the more expensive units usually have superior cables and shielding from electronic interference than the less expensive units.
KVM Switches that do DVI from Aten "Using a KVM switch to work on two or more computers with a single keyboard, mouse and monitor can certainly make life easier. However, we had to wait a long time for KVM switchboxes to catch up with modern technology, such as the all-digital visual interface (DVI) connectors for flat panel displays. Until recently, users had no choice but to use only D-15 analog VGA connectors with KVMs - a relic of the bygone CRT era. But such devices now not only enable switching among multiple sound and USB sources, they can even switch between systems with two monitors attached." http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/...review-1370.html Clutter Rescue: 2 Port KVM Switches http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/clutter-rescue,review-935.html

Belkin - http://www.belkin.co.uk/ - make a good line of KVM Switches that make use of the PS/2 or USB computer ports.

Informative articles on the PC mouse

If you want to find out how different kinds of mice work, read this article:
How PC Mice Work - http://computer.howstuffworks.com/mouse.htm Microsoft mouse boasts 1GB of flash "Microsoft has launched a new wireless mouse that doubles as a 1GB memory stick. The Mobile Memory Mouse 8000 is aimed at laptop owners who don't want to waste their limited USB ports by plugging in memory sticks..." -

http://www.pcpro.co.uk/shopper/news/124807/...

The Expansion Cards and Peripheral Devices

This set of pages is devoted to the following adapter cards and peripheral devices. Click the relevant heading to go to information on that subject.
VIDEO AND SOUND CARDS THE MOUSE THE KEYBOARD THIS PAGE - PRINTERS

There aren't many computers these days that aren't attached to an inkjet or laser printer, or a multifunction (MFP machine) that can print, scan, and copy documents. Some MFPs can also send faxes, and most of them can read a wide range of memory cards directly without going through a computer. For your information, many MFPs can make photocopies and print photos directly from a digital camera that supports the common PictBridge USB standard. Many MFPs with memory-card readers can print images directly from the cards they support, and some of them can scan directly to USB flash drives or supported memory cards. Most photo printers have memory card readers and can also print photos directly from a digital camera. Because they are space-saving and usually cheaper to buy than separate machines, many users are now opting to buy a Multi-function Peripheral (MFP) instead of a separate printer, scanner, and copier. However, on this page, most of the information is on separate printers and scanners, because most of it applies to MFPs. Reviews of all of the different kinds of inkjet and laser printers, MFPs, and scanners are provided further down this page.

Inkjet printers
Dot-matrix printers that use a printer ribbon used to be the most popular kind of printer. They're still being used in business, because of how well they can print continuous printouts, but you would have a difficult time finding a

supplier. Businesses that use them have them built to order. Not many home users use dot-matrix printers these days, because they're noisy, can't print in colour in the same way as inkjet and laser printers can, and aren't as good as them at printing standard A4 documents. Therefore, they aren't dealt with on this page. Very decent inkjet printers can be purchased very cheaply (for between 50 and 70), but their quoted print speeds for printing documents and colour graphics can be less than half of those speeds in practice. They also tend to be more expensive to run than more expensive heavy-duty inkjet and laser printers. But most of the cheap inkjet printers are fine for light use. If you need to print many documents, you should look for a printer with double the minimum speeds and half of the printing costs of the sub-100 printers. You should look for an inkjet printer that can handle all kinds of office media, including printing envelopes and labels, and printing to recordable CDs and DVDs. If you need a printer to produce digital photographs, you should choose one that can handle subtle colour tones well. A printer that is capable of printing right up to the edge of the paper (borderless printing) can be bought inexpensively these days. You should therefore read the reviews of the wide range of photo printers that are currently available before you make a purchase. Note that you should find out how many printer cartridges an inkjet printer uses, and how much they cost compared to similar printers before you make a purchase. Cheap inkjet printers often use expensive print cartridges. For example, the HP PSC 1410 printer-scanner-copier, which is no longer available, was priced at under 50/$100, and uses HP 21 (black) and HP 22 (colour) inkjet cartridges. Those cartridges contain only 5ml of ink, which doesn't last very long but they cost as much as HP cartridges containing 20ml of ink. Fortunately, you can buy reliable remanufactured HP 21 and HP 22 cartridges that have been refilled with 25ml of ink. The cartridges can hold that much ink, but HP only fills them with 5ml of in in order to make a good profit from a cheap printer that is sold at a loss. A good supplier of remanufactured cartridges in the UK is http://www.advantage-online.co.uk/. Computer magazines usually calculate the cost per page when they review printers. Laser printers are usually more expensive to buy than comparable inkjet printers, and a toner cartridge is more expensive than a set of inkjet cartridges, but they are usually more economic to run, because a toner cartridge lasts much longer than a set of inkjet cartridges. You may find that even when an inkjet printer is printing in black, it can be using its colour inks to create the black instead of using the black cartridge. In that case, it is using a combination of three colours to create composite black and grayscale tones. Most printer device drivers allow the user to

disable an option such as "Use composite black", or enable a setting that forces the printer to use the black cartridge for black. If the blacks in inkjet photos look washed out, it's because the printer is using its colour cartridges to create composite black, because it uses a pigment-based black that is unsuitable for photos and is only used for printing text. If you want the best photo prints, look for a printer that uses a dye-based black cartridge for black. Some printers, such as the Canon PIXMA iP4500, uses five cartidges, including both dye-based and pigmentbased blacks to create deep shadows in photos and pin-sharp text. You access the printer's driver in the Control Panel via Printers and Faxes in Windows XP and via Printers in Windows Vista. The settings differ for the different makes of printers. In Windows XP, for example, to gain access to the settings, you would open the printer that appears as an icon or is listed, and then click Printer => Properties. You will have to explore the available options. If you don't understand any of them, you can make use of a suitable search term in the Google search box at the top of this page (with its Web radio button enabled) to find out more information on them. If you just use black, you cannot use only black cartridges in the printer, because the colour cartridge slots are designed to accept only colour cartridges, which differ from black cartridges. In every inkjet printer, you will find a diagram that shows where the black and colour cartridges are fitted. If you only require black, you should use a mono laser printer, which are much more economical to run than inkjet printers. Reviews of inkjet printers, MFPs, and mono and colour laser printers are provided further down this page.

How to install printers in Windows XP/Windows Vista Always read the instruction manual before you install a printer, because there is no such thing as a standard installation. For example, most of the current Canon Inkjet printers require the software to be installed before the printer is connected to the PC. However, most of the current HP Inkjet printers require the printer to be connected to the mains before the ink cartridges can be installed otherwise they can't be installed. The software on the installation CD is then installed without the printer being connected to the PC. The installation wizard then tells you when to connect the USB cable between the printer and the PC. "Other than mice, keyboards, and monitors, printers are probably the most popular computer peripheral. Unlike mice, keyboards, and monitors, however, printers are not always a "plug it in and it works as if by magic" affair because they require drivers, consumables (such as paper and ink), and configuration. Because of this, new printers come with at least two things: documentation to walk you through all the steps (some of which may be unique to your model), and drivers, the software that actually interfaces with the printer hardware and generates output. If you are fortunate enough to possess the documentation and driver disc that came with the printer, follow the directions and use the disc for a trouble-free printer installation." Most printers use a USB connection, and, as such, Windows XP and Vista install them automatically when they are plugged in. If you want to install a printer manually in Windows XP and Vista, run the Add a printer option under Printers in the Control Panel. Two options are available: Add a local printer (not a USB printer, which is installed automaticaly), and Add a network, wireless or Bluetooth printer. (Make sure that your printer is connected to the network, or that your Bluetooth or wireless printer is turned on.) Click How to Install Printers to read the full article. Troubleshooting printer problems: Inkjet, laser, and dot matrix printers The following printer troubleshooting information pages can be used to troubleshoot printer problems in Windows Vista and Windows XP. Inkjet Printer Help - http://chris.pirillo.com/category/printers/ Resources for troubleshooting printing problems in Windows XP http://support.microsoft.com/?scid=308028 Solutions are provided for a number of the problems that occur with inkjet, laser and dot matrix printers on this Printer troubleshooting guide: http://kb.indiana.edu/data/acbl.html Locate other guides by making use of the Google search box at the top of this page (with its Web radio button enabled). A COMMON PRINTER PROBLEM: Inkjet printer won't print in black even when the cartridge is changed Anonymous information on a computer forum: 1. - "I have a Canon MP360 and recently got the message 'black ink low'. I was able to continue printing for a while but then put in a new PC World cartridge. I could not print in black so changed it to a Canon cartridge. Still no black printing. Did the usual cleaning and deep cleaning but still can't get it to print in black. The colours are OK. I've done a test page and where I get the horizontal lines there is no black but the colours are there. Then when I do the check that gives the little blocks the black looks better than the colours. Any ideas please? ... [The poster found his own solution to the problem.] I did all the usual

things and I took out the cartridge and reinserted it. Still no go. Then I went on the Canon FAQs and found that the black won't work without the colours so although I wasn't getting a 'low ink' message for the colours I changed it anyway and lo and behold I got black printing back. Very strange!" 2. - "I had a similar problem with a Lexmark cart. I found that as it had not been used the ink had dried and blocked it. I left it on a damp tissue until I could see an ink stain. The problem sometimes reoccurs if I don't use the printer for a while but is easy to clear. It's worth a try!"

Printer reviews An excellent source of printer reviews for the different types of inkjet and laser printers is provided further down the page. Click here! to go directly to it. Use your browser's Back button to return to this point on the page. Printer cartridges As you should know, it is possible to create all of the possible colours from mixing just red, green, and blue. That is how colour television pictures are created, and how colour images are printed. The number of cartridges an inkjet printer uses can vary from one (black only) to seven (six colour and one black). General-purpose inkjets use four colours, but most photo inkjets use six or more. HP's Deskjet 5740 and Lexmark's Z815 use six colour cartridges and a black cartridge in order to print high-quality colour photo images. Epson's Stylus C66 and Canon's PIXMA iP3000 have separate cartridges for black, cyan (a greenish blue), magenta (a deep purplish red), and yellow. But most budget inkjet printers use just two cartridges - a black tank, and a single colour tank that contains cyan, magenta, and yellow inks.

Some printers have a pigment black cartridge for text and a dye-based black cartridge for photos. Printers that only have a pigment black cartridge for text and dye-based cyan, magenta, and yellow cartridges print the black photos by mixing those three colours to create black, which is not as black a the black from a dye-based black cartridge. Note that if a single colour cartridge is used, if one colour runs out the cartridge has to be replaced, because the printer can't work with one part of the tank empty. Moreover, it might be possible to buy cartridges for a particular make and model of printer that are described as being for light use and high yield. The light use cartridges usually contain about half as much ink as the high yield cartridges but usually cost more than half the price, thereby making it more expensive to use them. Compatible cartridges versus the printer manufacturer's cartridges You can purchase compatible or refilled printer cartridges (made by or refilled by third-party manufacturers) for all of the major brands of inkjet printer, usually at a cheaper price compared to the cost of new brand-name cartridges. But, as might be expected, you should know the about the pros and the cons. An inkjet printer's manufacturer can state that the warranty will be rendered void if compatible cartridges are used and the printer is damaged so that it requires to be repaired. For instance, Canon has such a clause in its warranty, but it also states that Canon has to prove that the use of compatible cartridges was the cause of the damage. Note that there are many manufacturers of compatible cartridges that provide their own warranty. This usually states that, in the unlikely event that their cartridges damage the printer, they will bear the cost of the repairs or replacement of the printer. You should also make sure that the compatible cartridges you buy have an ISO9001 or ISO9002 certification, which means that they have been manufactured to a high standard. You can look for your own information by entering the relevant key words in the Google search box at the top of this page (with its Web radio button enabled). For example, enter the printer's make and model within double quotation marks, and use a + sign to add key words: "canon selphy cp500" + compatible + cartridges. Chipped cartridges and printers with the print head built into the printer Note well that some makes of inkjet printers use ink cartridges that contain the print-head (chipped cartridges), and other makes just use a cartridge that fits to a print-head built into the printer (non-chipped cartridges). Most

of the current models made by the major inkjet printer manufacturers are now using chipped cartridges. Most new Epson and HP and Lexmark printers use chipped cartridges. Canon printers used to use non-chipped cartridges, but the latest Canon printers, such as the Canon PIXMA range, also use chipped cartridges. Of course, non-chipped cartridges made by the printer's manufacturer are much less expensive than chipped cartridges, because the print-head is an expensive additional overhead. Moreover, non-chipped cartridges are easier for third-party compatible cartridge manufacturers to make or refill, so nonchipped compatible cartridges are also much cheaper than the chipped compatible cartridges that are available. In many cases, chipped compatible cartridges are not available. Note that as well as making chipped cartridges for its inkjet printers, Epson also make photo inkjet printers that have the print-head built into the printer. Some printers are easier to set up than others. For example, the Epson Stylus C46 provides a manual printer head alignment system that is awkward to use. It produces three sets of printed lines and asks the user to choose the straightest line from each set. It can be difficult to discern any difference between the lines, thereby leaving the user wondering if the right choice was made.
The print-head of inkjet printers can be damaged if the ink runs dry The manufacturers of inkjet printers that have the print-head built into the printer warn users that the print-head can be damaged if the ink is allowed to run out. Therefore, they advise users to replace cartridges just before they run dry. Such printers are not delivered with ink already in the print-head. The printers are shipped for sale with an oily substance in the print-head. That is why it can take a long time to 'prime' the printer for its first use. The process can take up to 15 minutes for photo printers. The printer has to clear all of the oil from the print-head and dump it into the waste reservoir and then replace it with ink before the printer can be used. However, since most current printers use cartridges with the print head buit into the cartridge, this isn't as much of a consideration as it used to be. Most printers and multifunction devices are sold without a USB 2.0 cable Most printers and printer/scanner/copier multifunction devices are not sold with a USB 2.0 cable, so, buy one if you don't already have one. The most basic inkjet printers have just one USB 2.0 port. Some inkjets, such a photo inkjet printers, have a PictBridge USB port that allows you to connect a digital camera directly to them. PictBridge allows you to print photos without turning the printer's PC on, but you can only set basic options, such as paper size and to print with or without borders. Injet printers with memory card readers Many printers, especially photo inkjets, have memory-card readers that read the memory cards used in digital cameras, and many of them also have a large colour screen that allows

you to select photos to print and preview the results of editing features, such as red-eye correction. You should be sure to buy a printer with a memory-card reader that supports the card format used by your digital camera.

Cartridge renewal can be a very expensive business with photo printers, some of which require as many as seven different chipped cartridges - one black and six for colour. Note that some chipped inkjet cartridges, such as those made by HP, have an expiry date that can cause problems. For instance, if the system clock suddenly shows the wrong time and date, it can confuse the printer and make it close down access to the cartridge long before the ink has run out. The latest generation of HP cartridges monitor the ink levels and the expiry dates, and therefore make refilling them by third parties, or by using refill kits, far more difficult than it would be for, say, the non-monitored, nonchipped cartridges used in Canon printers. Search inkjet printer support on the Hewlett Packard site for information on this problem. I have seen the information is there, but I have not provided a direct link to it because the links change constantly. See http://www.misterinkjet.com/hpreset.htm for information on how to reset HP cartridges. You should be able to find more current pages with this information by entering the search phrase such as: reset + hp + cartridge in the Google search box at the top of this page (with its Web radio button enabled). Click the link to read Will you render a printer's warranty void if you use refill kits or third-party cartridges? on the Warranty page of this site. And click here! for possible solutions if you're having USB connection problems with an HP printer or HP MFP (Multi-function Peripheral) machine that usually consists of a printer, scanner, and copier. Some other interesting pages
Support for cartridge refillers: http://www.alotofthings.com/support_for_refillers.html Bypassing Expiration dates on HP #10 / #11 Ink Jet Cartridges http://www.alotofthings.com/supportforrefillers/expirationdatehp1011.htm

Some photo printers can read the memory cards used by digital cameras Some photo printers have the capacity to read data directly from the memory cards used by digital cameras. Such printers usually offer advanced layout and quality options, and can also be used as a memory card reader when connected to a computer. Just make sure that a photo printer with

such a facility supports the same memory card format as your digital camera. Printing on envelopes and cards Most inkjet and laser printers can print on envelopes. Inkjet printers that can do so usually have markings on their paper tray to show you where the envelopes are fed. However, laser printers usually have a feed slot specially for envelopes. The paper used in envelopes is thicker than standard sheets of A4 paper, so you have to set the printer's driver to print to envelopes as well as to thick card paper. You can access the printer's driver via Printers and Faxes in the Control Panel in Windows XP. In Windows Vista, the Hardware and Sound category provides access to the following devices: under Printers add or remove printers and connect to other printers on a network, troubleshoot printers. From there you can install, remove and set the options for scanners and digital cameras, mice, game controllers, joysticks, keyboards and pen devices. You click on the printer's icon or reference and then choose Printer => Properties in the window that presents itself to access the driver's features, which differ from one printer to another. For the HP PSC 1400 series of printer/scanner copiers, clicking the Printing Preferences button of the General tab allows you to choose the paper options (size and type). A standard bill envelope is 220mm x 110mm. There are options for different types of paper and cards, etc. Some printers can print labels on a CD or DVD Certain printers have an inbuilt tray that accommodates a CD or DVD disc so that the printer can print a label on it. An example of such a printer is the Canon i965 inkjet printer. Read an illustrated review on it here:
http://www.photo-i.co.uk/Reviews/interactive/Canon%20i965/page_1.htm

Dell inkjet and laser printers Dell is now selling inkjet and laser printers under its brand name. Lexmark makes both the printers and the cartridges for Dell, but if you visit a cartridge vendor's site, this is the message that you're likely to see: "Dell printers accept Dell ink and toner cartridges only." In short, officially you can only buy the cartridges for a Dell printer from Dell. The inkjet cartridges have a notch on them so that Lexmark cartridges can't fit Dell printers, and vice versa.

Printer memory from Crucial

Printer memory is available from Crucial for all of the major brands of printers. Shipping is free and the memory is guaranteed to work or you get a full refund. You can use the UK or the US Memory Advisors provided

below to locate memory for your make and model of printer. You can also use the advisors to locate RAM memory for a desktop PC or laptop/notebook.
Paul Mullen, the highly-respected computer guru of the Helpfile at ComputerShopper.co.uk - "I have recently been buying my memory only from Crucial Technology. I would rather pay the extra cost than waste time trying to track down the obscure program faults that bad memory can cause." The memory requirements of the versions of Windows Vista Most of the versions of Windows Vista require more RAM memory to run optimally on a computer that doesn't use memory-hungry applications than Windows XP. A video-editing application is an example of memory-intensive software. Only Windows Vista Home Basic has a recommended minimum amount of memory of 512MB, which is the same amount recommended for Windows XP. Windows Vista Home Premium, the most popular version, and Windows Vista Ultimate require a recommended minimum of 1GB (1024MB) of memory, which is twice the amount of minimum memory recommended to run Windows XP. For more information on computer memory, read the RAM pages of this site.

UK - Crucial Memory Advisor - UK

The Crucial Memory Advisor

Select your system and press go!

Top of Form

Select a manufacturer

Go!

10402016

1087277

http://w w w .cruc

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USA - Crucial Memory Advisor - USA

For example, if your computer has an Asus motherboard, open the menu, scroll down to ASUS, and click GO. If, say, you have a Dell computer, scroll down to DELL, and do likewise. You will be taken to the relevant information on Crucial's website. If you don't know the make and model of the motherboard installed in your computer, here is a good free utility - Belarc Advisor - that creates an analysis of the hardware and software on a personal computer. Look under FREE DOWNLOAD - http://www.belarc.com/. Another utility that also provides detailed information on the memory itself is CPU-Z.

Duplex printing
Duplex printing is the ability of a printer to print on both sides of a sheet of paper. After a pause to allow the ink to dry, each page is drawn back into the printer for a second pass. It's an excellent way to save paper, but the

interval between printing one side of a page and the other side makes duplex printing a much slower process than single-page printing. Duplex inkjet printers, which can also print single pages, are not as expensive compared to ordinary inkjet printers as they used to be.

It is best to use a laser printer to print to card paper

If you use decent-quality card stock (200gsm and above), the feed mechanisms on inkjet printers tend to wear out quickly. It is therefore best to use a laser printer that can handle up to 215gsm paper. At the time of writing (December 2007), the Dell Colour Laser Printer 3110cn has that specification. If you use its PostScript driver, it has good print quality and is cheap to run and maintain.

Mono and colour laser printers

Mono and colour laser printers are usually considerably larger than inkjet printers. A laser printer requires to be placed on a strong table or desk with the space around it providing good ventilation and to allow the user to be able to open its paper trays and/or access panels. Mono laser printers are as cheap as inkjet printers, but are very much cheaper to run. Colour laser printers used to be very expensive, but the prices have recently become very affordable. At the time of writing this (March 2007), it was possible to buy the small-office Canon LaserShot LBP5000 colour laser printer for only 155/$300, and the Canon LaserShot LBP3000 home colour laser printer for only 50/$100. Most laser printers connect to computers via a USB connection, the cable for which is usually not provided with the printer. Installing a printer is usually a simple matter of following the illustrated set of installation instructions that come with the printer. You should follow the instructions, because there is no such thing as a standard installation. Some printers require the printer's software to be installed before connecting the printer to the PC and others require the software to be installed during the installation process. Many laser printers have an Ethernet networking connection, which is handy if you want to share the printer on an office network. To do that you would use the printer-sharing system that is built into the Windows operating system (from Windows 95 to Windows Vista). However, you should note that network printers are not always easy to configure. Mono laser printers (that have a single toner cartridge) that can only print in black are fairly simple to operate and maintain, but colour laser printers are

complex devices that can use anything from four to ten different consumables, including several toner cartridges. Most mono laser printers come with a normal toner cartridge. However, because of the cost, most colour laser printers come with starter toner cartridges that may need to be replaced after printing about 500 pages. When buying replacement cartridges, you should shop around for the lowest prices on the genuine brand-name cartridges made by the same manufacturer as the printer, and you should choose the more expensive high-yield products that are more economical in the long run than the loweryield products. Colour laser printers that can print black, cyan, magenta, and yellow toner in one pass can print as quickly as they can print in black only. But the colour laser printers that require a pass to lay down each colour, print colour pages that take four times as long as printing pages in black only. Home and office laser printers can produce excellent results with the graphics created by business applications, but they are currently not suitable for printing photos. Certain colour laser printers can produce gloss finishes on image prints, but the low resolutions they use compared to inkjet printers produce photos that look grainier than those produced by even the cheapest inkjet printer. However, at the time of writing, HP had just introduced 220gsm Laser Gloss Photo paper for its range of Color Laserjet printers that is said to produce excellent results. You can enter a search term such as hp + 220gsm + laser + gloss + photo + paper in the Google search box at the top of this page (with its Web radio button enabled) to locate information, reviews and local vendors. All printers come with the device drivers for Windows XP, but at the time of writing this (March 2007) not all printers provide the device drivers for Windows Vista, which was officially released on January 30, 2007. If you are using Windows Vista, you should therefore check to see if the correct drivers were included with the printer, or that they are made available from the printer manufacturer's website.

Inkjet and laser printers and MFPs as rated by Computer Shopper

The following sections provide links to information on top products, printer reviews, and buying advice. To see all of the current reviews visit: Computer Shopper - Printer Reviews: http://www.pcpro.co.uk/shopper/archiveproductsearch/15/Printers

Home/Small office colour laser printers http://www.pcpro.co.uk/shopper/labs/240/... Inkjet MFPs http://www.pcpro.co.uk/shopper/labs/239/inkjet-mfps/products.html Alternatively, to read the review of a particular printer, visit the Computer Shopper site and enter the printer's name in the Search For box. To find vendors and other reviews, enter the make and model enclosed within double quotation marks in the Google search box at the top of this page (with its Web radio button enabled). Note that a printer described as a mono printer means that it can only print in black. INKJET PRINTERS Click the make/model link to visit the manufacturer's website. [USB 2.0 Hi-Speed] Lexmark Z1320 - Four-colour inkjet - Reasonable print costs and good quality document and photo printing Canon PIXMA iP1800 Canon PIXMA iP4200 Four stars - Budget Buy award in October 2007 - 33 in December 2007 Four stars - 31 in May 2007 Five stars - 63 in May 2007 Budget Buy award Five stars - Best Buy award 56 in January 2008 - Reviewed in October 2006 Five stars - 53 - Best Buy award in November 2005 - Still current - Best Inkjet Printer award in October 2006 PHOTO INKJET PRINTERS [USB 2.0 Hi-Speed] ARTICLES ON PHOTO INKJET PRINTERS 10 Quick Tips For Perfect Prints The tips provided in the following article were originally written by HP. http://www.hp945.com/10tipsprinting.shtml Four A6 Photo Printers Head-to-Head "Most of today's printers that output small format photos deliver quality images whether connected to a computer or printing from a flash memory card. Their built-in displays and simple controls make it easy to select and print one or many photos from flash memory, all with set-and-forget simplicity. Most can handle fairly large image files and reduce them

Canon PIXMA iP4300

HP DeskJet 5940

nicely to A6 size prints the costs of which usually rival the costs of digital prints from online and local retailers. We look here at a mix of dye sublimation and inkjet printers from Kodak, Epson, Samsung and Canon. Be sure to check out our star ratings for each printer..." http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/printer-roundup-uk,review-2066.html Canon Pixma iP4500 - Four standard CMYK ink cartridges instead of the usual six or more for photo printing, but its Five stars - Budget Buy award photos are among the best. A fifth pigment black cartridge in June 2008 - 61 in June 2008 is used to print documents. Inexpensive, excellent photo and document quality, and low print costs. Epson Stylus Photo R360 - A very large printer. Six ink cartridge printer with a 3.5" screen and integrated memory-card reader. Excellent photo quality; poor document quality. Simple direct printing features. Epson Stylus Photo R1900 - Uses seven pigment-based high glosss ink cartridges along with a clear gloss optimiser cartridge. Superb high gloss photos. Fast print speeds. Detailed greyscale prints.

Five stars - Best Buy award in June 2008 - 80 in June 2008

Five stars - Best Buy award in June 2008 - 334 in June 2008

Epson PictureMate 240 - Four-colour compact (mini) photo printer - Excellent image quality, cheap, with a dedicated Five Stars - Best Buy award in February 2008 - 70 in February dye-based black ink cartridge that gives more accurate 2008 blacks than a printer that uses the colour cartridges to create composite black. HP Photosmart A826 - Three-colour compact (mini) inkjet Four stars - 50 in February photo printer - Relatively expensive, large screen, 2008 animated onscreen instructions, can print 7x5" photos. HP Photosmart A526 - Three-colour compact (mini) inkjet Four stars - 138 in February photo printer - Cheap, good image quality, few direct 2008 printing (no PC involved), image editing options. Epson Stylus Photo R360 - Six-colour photo inkjet USB and PictBridge USB connections. Four stars - 80 in January 2008 - Reviewed in January 2008

LASER PRINTERS - Colour and Black (Mono) [USB 2.0 Hi-Speed]

ARTICLES ON LASER PRINTERS New Lexmark Color Laser Printers Surface http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/...review-2175.html Colour Laser Printers: Fast and Affordable! "Sales of colour laser printers are expected to increase by 20% annually in the years ahead, while monochrome laser printer sales remain level. What's happening with colour laser technology parallels the history of inkjet printers, but on a smaller scale. In a few years, there's a good chance that colour laser printers will outstrip monochrome printers in sales. For two years now, manufacturers have been offering some particularly economical models, and HP has even broken new ground by launching a colour laser - the Colour LaserJet 1600 - selling for less than 200 in mass-retail chain stores..." http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/...review-2072.html HP Color Laser Jet 3600 (Colour) - Home / Small Office Five stars - Best Buy award printer - Cheap to run, good overall print quality, fast print 248 in January 2008 speeds TallyGenicom 8108N (Colour) - Home / Small Office printer - 10/100 Ethernet network port HP Colour LaserJet 2700n (Colour) Four stars - Budget Buy award - 107 in January 2008 Four stars - 329 in March 2007 Four stars - 155 - in March 2007 Four stars - 176 - in May 2007 Five stars - 152 - Budget Buy award in May 2007 Five stars - 65 in January 2007 - Best Buy award - August 2006 Five stars - 155 in November 2007 - Best Buy award in May 2007 Five stars - 388 in March 2007 Five stars - 749 in March 2007Reviewed in February 2007 Four stars - 174 in September 2007 - Budget Buy award in

Canon LaserShot LBP-5000 (Mono) KYOCERA MITA FS-1030D (Mono, very low running costs and high-quality printing) Lexmark E250dn (Mono - home/small office - fast highquality printing) Samsung ML-2510 (Mono)

Dell Laser Printer 1720dn (Mono - fast high-quality printing, low running costs) Dell Colour Laser Printer 3110cn (Mono) Konica Minolta Magicolor 5550 (Colour) Konica Minolta Magicolor 2500W (Colour)

March 2007 Five stars - 197 in November 2007 - Budget Buy award March 2006 - Best Printer award in October 2006 Reviewed again in March 2007 SCANNERS These scanners use either a Charge Coupled Device (CCD) or a Contact Image Sensor (CIS) to record the scanned image. CCD sensors are more expensive, use more power, produce images of a higher resolution, and have a wider colour range (gamut). Film scanners usually use CCD. CIS sensors are cheaper to manufacture and use less power. Scanners not supported by Windows Vista If you can obtain the device drivers for a particular make/model for Windows Vista, try using the following program that has a free trial period: "VueScan is a powerful, easy to use program that: works with 750 flatbed and film scanners runs on Mac OS X, Windows and Linux makes old scanners work on Vista and Leopard improves your productivity and quality of scans has been downloaded more than 5 million times." - http://www.hamrick.com/ Epson Perfection V200 Photo - CCD flatbed scanner 3200x9600 optical resolution - USB 2.0 (Hi-Speed) connection Canon liDE 600F - CIS flatbed scanner - 4800xx9600 optical resolution - USB 2.0 (Hi-Speed) connection Canon CanoScan 8800F - CCD flatbed scanner 4800x9600 optical resolution - USB 2.0 (Hi-Speed) connection Epson Perfection V100 Photo - CCD flatbed scanner 3200x9600 optical resolution - USB 2.0 (Hi-Speed) connection Canon CanoScan 4400F - CCD flatbed scanner 4800x9600 optical resolution - USB 2.0 (Hi-Speed) connection Epson Perfection V350 Photo - CCD flatbed scanner 4800x9600 optical resolution - USB 2.0 (Hi-Speed) connection Five stars - Best Buy award in March 2008 - 60 in March 2008

Epson AcuLaser C1100 (Colour)

Four stars - 89 in March 2008

Four stars - 115 in March 2008

Five stars - Best Buy award in July 2007 - 62 in September 2007

Four stars - 58 in July 2007

Four stars - 65 in November 2007

MULTIFUNCTION PERIPHERALS (MFPs) - INKJET AND LASER - PRINTER, SCANNER, AND COPIER [USB 2.0 Hi-Speed]

ARTICLES ON MFPs Multifunction printers call the tune "Average home PC users are equipping themselves with more and more multifunctional peripherals, to the detriment of traditional A4 printers. In 2005, the market saw an increase of 27% in the number of units sold-according to the market research company GfK-when in the same period the increase in A4 inkjets was only 12%. There are several factors behind this success. A primary one is that multifunction printers are now barely more expensive than conventional printers, but offer much greater versatility. In fact, Canon points out that the average sale price of a conventional printer can actually be marginally more expensive than that of a multifunction printer..." http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/...review-1598.html Canon PIXMA MP520 - Colour inkjet MFP - USB 2.0 (HiFive stars - Best Buy award in Speed) - PictBrige USB interface - Fast, high-quality prints November 2007 - 77 in January 2008 and low running costs Canon PIXMA MP610 - Colour inkjet MFP - USB 2.0 (HiSpeed) - PictBrige USB and infra-red (IrDA) interfaces Fast, high-quality prints and low running costs - prints better colour documents than the MP520, but although it has an additional black photo cartridge, the cheaper MP520 produces better photos

Four stars - 114 in November 2007

Lexmark X6570 - Colour inkjet MFP - USB 2.0 (Hi-Speed) - 802.11g wireless network interface - Fax - Inexpensive Four stars - 111 in November 2007 for a fax MFP - Fast, high-quality prints - Poor scanner interface - No wireless scanning Epson Stylus Photo RX685 - Colour inkjet MFP - USB 2.0 (Hi-Speed) - PictBrige USB interface - Fast, high-quality prints, excellent photo printing. Expensive to buy HP Photosmart 2575 - Inkjet MFP - Excellent detailed scans - Network compatible - Low running costs - Photo prints not perfect HP OfficeJet Pro L7780 (Inkjet MFP) - Fast, high quality prints and copies - Very low running costs - Wireless printing on a network, but problems with the wireless connection Four stars - 170 in November 2007 Five stars -Budget Buy award in June 2007 - 60 in June 2007

Five stars - Best Buy award in June 2007 - 315 in June 2007 Five stars - Best Buy award September 2006 - Best MFP award in October 2006 - 335 in July 2007 Four stars - Budget Buy award in January 2006 - Still current - 149

Dell Multifunction Laser Printer 1815dn (Mono laser MFP)

HP Photosmart 3210 (Inkjet MFP)

Canon Pixma MP510 (Inkjet MFP) - Excellent text quality - Five stars - Best Buy award in

Fast photo prints - Speedy scanning - Low running costs

June 2007 - 62 in September 2007 Four stars - 35 in September 2007 - Budget Buy award in November 2006

Canon PIXMA MP160 (Inkjet MFP) (217 J

Printer reviews
Photo Printers - Reviews - http://www.steves-digicams.com/printers.html Computer Shopper - Printer Reviews: http://www.pcpro.co.uk/shopper/archiveproductsearch/15/Printers Computer Shopper - Latest Reviews - the latest computer hardware and peripherals, including printers: http://www.pcpro.co.uk/shopper/reviews/latest/ Over 3,000 reviews are browsable by category or company name. Computer Shopper Laboratory (tests): http://www.pcpro.co.uk/shopper/labs/ Computer Shopper Hotlist - hot computer products, including printers: http://www.pcpro.co.uk/shopper/reviews/hotlist/ 20 PC Printers Under $200 "Find out which inexpensive inkjet printers are worth the cost of replacing the ink and which you can toss after the cartridges run out." http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle...

Wireless printing: Wireless printer adapters and print servers The printer ranges currently (September, 2007) available from HP, Canon, and Epson don't come with an inbuilt wireless adapter that allows them to be connected to a wireless network. Therefore, the easiest way to be able to print wirelessly is to add a third-party wireless adapter such as the Linksys 54Mbps Wireless Print Server, which can connect a USB printer to a wireless network. It is now possible to buy wireless printer adapters that use Bluetooth technology and connect to the USB port on a printer. You just have to install the Bluetooth software in order to be able to use the printer wirelessly. More printers with inbuilt wireless adapters, such as the Lexmark Z1420 wireless printer, are expected to be made available towards the end of 2007. For more information on this subject, enter a search term such as wireless + printer + adapters or wireless + print + servers (as is) in the Google search box provided at the top of this page (with its Web radio button enabled). Connecting a printer to more than one PC If your computers are networked, all you have to do is enable file and printer sharing (look it up using Windows Help and Support) on each computer in order to use a single printer that is connected to one of them. The computer connected to the printer has to be turned on in order to use the printer. If you have spare USB ports on your computers and one on your printer, you can connect them using a Bluetooth wireless connection. You must have a Bluetooth adapter in the printer's USB port and a Bluetooth adapter in a USB port on each PC. If you have a laptop/notebook PC with inbuilt Bluetooth, you don't need an adapter for it. You should then be able to print from any of your computers. Printing directly to CD/DVD It is possible to print directly to a recordable CD or DVD disc, but the printer must provide that feature. Visit the following links in order to read the reviews of printers that provide it. Photo Printers - Reviews - http://www.steves-digicams.com/printers.html Epson Stylus Photo R800 - prints to CD/DVD http://www.steves-digicams.com/2004_reviews/epson_r800.html Photo printers that use dye-sublimation technology Dye-sublimation printers don't use liquid ink. They use a ribbon that is permeated with cyan, magenta, and yellow dyes. The print head heats the dyes, which become a gas that transfers to photo paper where it becomes solid again. Each colour is printed separately so the printer has to move the paper across the fixed print head three times. Inkjet photo printers are much slower than dye-sublimation printers. However, because different quality and layout settings affect the amount of dye used, it's difficult to calculate how much a a typical print costs. Note that the ribbon can only print a set number of pages before it needs to be replaced, which is more often than an inkjet photo printer needs to have its ink cartridges replaced. Moreover, dye-sublimation printers can't print over the full length of a page. The photo paper used has perforated tear-off strips that have to be removed. If you want more information on this technology, you can use the term in the Google search box provided at the top of this page.

Buying advice and how to install a printer

Look under the HOW-TO heading on PCWorld's site for advice on buying a printer or scanner and most other electronic devices. If you want to print documents or websites you'll need to buy an inkjet or laser printer. There is plenty of information about printers on the Internet (suppliers' and manufacturers' sites, and information sites). You can buy a good brand-name inkjet printer retail for a little as 50. Laser printers are more expensive, but they are usually cheaper per page to run. Mono laser printers only offer black and shades of grey. A colour laser printer will usually cost more that a comparable inkjet printer, both of which provide colour printing. Any printer you buy will come with a CD containing its drivers and other printing software. If you use a printer for heavy-duty image printouts, make sure that it comes with enough memory (RAM) installed, and make sure that you can add more memory at a later date. You should take pains to find out how much the ink cartridges (for inkjets) and toner cartridges (for lasers) cost before you make a purchase. The prices can vary wildly from model to model, and they are seldom included in adverts. Visit this site - http://www.inkjet-printer-cartridges.org/ - to read an article on inkjet printer cartridges that contains a survey. The reason that printers are so cheap is because the manufacturers will recoup many times the cost of a printer by selling the ink cartridges and toners expensively. In fact, you can often get a printer free of charge if you agree to purchase all of the cartridges from a particular supplier. Neither Windows XP nor Windows 95/98/Me will install a printer's (or a scanner's) driver automatically unless it is a Plug and Play (PnP) device. As long as a printer is connected to the computer and it is a Plug and Play (PnP) printer, Windows should recognise and install the drivers as for any other device. If Windows XP/Windows Vista doesn't install the drivers automatically, it has an Add Printer Wizard. To use the wizard in Windows XP, click the Start button, and then click Printers And Faxes. In the Printer Tasks bar click Add A Printer to open the wizard's Welcome screen. For some reason, you may have to install the printer manually using the Add Printer Wizard in Windows XP/Vista. In Windows Vista, after you have connected the printer to the PC and have turned it on, click Start => Control Panel => Hardware and Sound => Printers. Click Add a printer which launches the Add Printer Wizard.

Click Add a local printer. The rest of the process is fairly simple. You select the port that the printer is using, select the printer's manufacturer. If the printer isn't listed, click the Have Disk button, which requires a source, such as a CD/DVD containing the drivers, or a folder that contains a file that installs the latest drivers. Windows 95, 98, and Me (Windows 9x) have the option Start => Settings => Printers => Add a Printer in order to install a printer that is not a Plug and Play (PnP) device. You install the printer (or printers) after Windows has been successfully installed - has detected and loaded the drivers for all of the devices that have been installed. In Windows 9x/XP, installing a printer is just a matter of installing the manufacturer's device driver by using the printer utility/wizard, and connecting the printer to the correct port, which is usually a LPT parallel port, or a USB port. The image below from an MSI motherboard manual shows where the LPT Parallel Port is located on an ATX motherboard (the largest port - top middle). You can download the manuals for the latest MSI motherboards free of charge from http://www.msi.com.tw/. If an LPT port has been installed, it will appear under the Ports (Com & LPT) heading in the Device Manager. If a COM or LPT port is not listed, it has to be installed by using the Add New Hardware utility that is in the Control Panel. (It is just Add Hardware in Windows Vista under Hardware and Sound in the Control Panel.)

Installing a parallel port printer: http://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000441.htm

The image below also from an MSI motherboard manual shows where the USB ports are located on an ATX motherboard. USB ports are not shown in the Device Manager because they are controlled by the USB Controllers, which are listed in the Device Manager if the motherboard, BIOS, and the operating system support USB, and USB has been installed by enabling it in the BIOS.

Most current printers are connected to a computer via a USB port, but you usually have to buy the USB cable separately, so you have to make up your mind which type of cable you want to use. An LPT parallel port has to be installed in the Device Manager if a parallel port printer cable is used, and the computer's motherboard must have a parallel port. Most current motherboards still have a parallel port, but it is old technology that will soon be disappearing from motherboards. If you are using a USB port, USB has to be enabled in the BIOS setup program (for Award and AMI BIOSes, hit the Del key at start-up to enter it) so that a USB controller is shown in the Device Manager. If Hi-Speed USB 2.0 ports are available, and Enhanced Host Controller will show under Universal Serial Bus controllers in the Device Manager. If there is only a USB Universal Host Controller, then only much slower USB 1.1 ports are available, but you can install a PCI USB 2.0 adapter card that adds USB 2.0 ports to the system. See the USB page of this site for more information on the Universal Serial Bus. As you can see by clicking the following link, there is a heading in the Device Manager called Ports (COM and LPT), which has a + sign beside it. The USB ports are not listed under the Ports heading, they are controlled by the USB Controller. Click the + sign in your computer's Device Manager to reveal the ports that have been installed. To use USB devices, there has to be a Universal Serial Bus controllers heading in the Device Manager. If there is no such heading you will have to enable USB in the BIOS, and Windows will install it automatically. You might have to load the Windows CD if the files are not present in the Windows folder. The USB Controller can often be updated by installing the update

from the manufacturer of the computer's motherboard's website. Updating it can often solve problems with USB devices. If you're using a parallel port and there is no LPT printer port listed in the Device Manager, you'll have to make use of the Add New Hardware utility in the Control Panel to install one. (It is just Add Hardware in Windows Vista under Hardware and Sound in the Control Panel.) Scroll to the Ports heading on the list and choose an LPT port. There are BIOS settings that enable the modes of operation (SPP/EPP/ECP/Normal) for parallel-port printers, and there may be another LPT port setting under Power Management Setup that enables the power-management timers that cuts the power to the printer when no activity is detected. The printer's manual should tell you which options to enable for that particular printer. These settings do not apply to USB printers, which are controlled via the USB Controller. Look under the Integrated Peripherals section of most BIOSes for the Onboard Parallel Port, Onboard Parallel Mode, and USB settings. You must use the correct mode for a parallel-port printer. For example, if you set the mode as SPP for a bi-directional printer that requires the printer to be able to communicate with the computer, it will not function because the SPP mode is not bi-directional. Most new printers require EPP or ECP mode to be set, but an older printer might require the SPP mode.

SCANNERS Installing a scanner is much like installing a printer. The manual that comes with the device should provide you with the necessary information. The maximum optical resolution that a scanner supports is the most important specification. The artificial computer-generated interpolated resolution is not of much importance. A scanner's scanning optical resolution is measured in dots per inch (dpi). A scanner with an optical resolution of 1,200x2,400dpi can capture 2,880,000 (1,200x2,400) pixels of information from a square inch of a document being scanned. Most magazines are only printed at 300dpi, so scanning their pages at higher resolutions than that won't increase the detail that is captured any higher than that. However, if you are scanning film, you should use a scanner with a minimum optical resolution of 2,400dpi. See this page for the technical information on how a scanner works: http://computer.howstuffworks.com/scanner.htm Click here! to read: "How to install a scanner" - Windows 98 and Windows XP, parallel port and USB installation. Scanners not supported by Windows Vista If you can obtain the device drivers for a particular make/model for Windows Vista, try using the following program that has a free trial period:

"VueScan is a powerful, easy to use program that: works with 750 flatbed and film scanners runs on Mac OS X, Windows and Linux makes old scanners work on Vista and Leopard improves your productivity and quality of scans has been downloaded more than 5 million times." - http://www.hamrick.com/ Scanner reviews Click Scanners on this page - Computer Shopper Review Archive: http://www.pcpro.co.uk/shopper/reviews/archive/ Computer Shopper - Latest Reviews (computer hardware and peripherals): http://www.pcpro.co.uk/shopper/reviews/latest/

Note that you have to have a motherboard and operating system that supports USB in order to be able to use a USB keyboard, mouse, or printer, etc. An old AT motherboard does not have any inbuilt USB ports, so you will have to install a USB card in a PC slot, or purchase a keyboard or monitor that has inbuilt USB ports, to be able to use USB devices. The same goes for the new FireWire devices. Windows 98/Me/XP/Vista provide full USB support. Versions of Windows 95 prior to version OSR 2.0 do not support USB at all. Windows 95 OSR2 can be made to support USB inadequately by installing an update, but it is not nearly as good as the version that is built into Windows 98. Therefore, if you have Windows 95 and you want to use USB, you should upgrade to Windows 98. Note that Microsoft stopped supporting Windows 98/98SE/Me on 11 July 2006, so no futher updates will be provided. However, the MS Knowledge Base articles will still be available from Microsoft's site. Accessing the settings in a printer's driver Printing requires making the printer print documents and images as they appear on the screen, or in draft form, so you need to have control of the quality of the printing (Draft, Normal, Best). Therefore, Windows gives the user access to a configurable driver. For most printing requirements, such as word-processing, printing web pages, etc., the manufacturer's device driver is all that you need. In Windows XP, you access the printer driver via Printers and Faxes in the Control Panel. In Windows Vista look under Hardware and Sound => Printers.

To access the settings right-click on the entry for the printer and then click on Properties in the menu that presents itself. You can set the type of page to be printed to (A4, A3, etc.), the orientation of the page (portrait, landscape), the quality of the printing, and even colour management. There is also usually an option that, if enabled, makes the printer print a test page. Third-party printer drivers If your printer supports them, you can also install third-party drivers, such as PostScript, that provides even greater control on the output. Most laser printers support PostScript. If you install another driver for the printer, another entry for that printer will appear under Printers and Faxes in the Control Panel. You have to use the correct instance of the printer in order to make use of a particular driver. Visit the USB pages of this site for more information on USB.

Sharing a printer on a network

There are plenty of tutorials on the web on how to install a printer so that it can be shared by the client computers on a network. It is merely a matter of enabling settings on the client computers that you want to to share the printer (or printers). The settings depend on the version of Windows (or some other operating system such as Linux) being used by the client computer. A network can have client computers using any operating system that has the networking protocols (usually TCP/IP) that link them on the network. Use search terms such as network + printer + "windows xp", or network + printer + "windows 98" in the Google search box at the top of this page.

Tips on how to make a good choice of printer

1. - Having read many printer reviews, I would say that this is the order of rank among laser printer manufacturers - Hewlett Packard (usually the most expensive brand by far), Lexmark, Okidata (Oki), Brother, NEC, Epson, and Canon. The order of rank for inkjet printers is more difficult to establish, because most of the above companies produce very good inkjet printers, but HP is probably at the top of this list as well, closely followed by Canon, Epson, and Lexmark. Lexmark's inkjet cartridges are usually more expensive than the other brands' cartridges. 2. - Don't purchase the cheapest model. The more you spend, within reason, the longer the printer will last, and the more economical it will be in the long run. If you do a lot of text printing, it is much more economical to buy coloured letterheads and use a monochrome laser printer than it is to use a colour inkjet printer. You can now purchase a monochrome laser printer of good quality at a very affordable price. Toner cartridges (for laser printers) cost significantly more, but they can print many thousands of pages more than the equivalent amount spent on inkjet cartridges. Mono laser printers are cheaper to run than

inkjet printers. The cost per page produced by cheap laser printers, although still inexpensive, is usually about twice that of the expensive models. In the UK it is about 2 pence a page compared to 1 pence a page. 3. - Don't purchase a "Windows printer". - In other words, do not buy a printer that lists Windows as a system requirement, otherwise you won't be able to obtain drivers for it if you want to use the printer with another operating system such as Apple's OS/X, or Linux. 4. - Make sure your version of Windows is listed among the versions that the printer supports. Windows XP support is a good idea, because, sooner or latter, unless you change to another operating system such as SuSE Linux Pro, you'll have to upgrade to it. A good printer will usually last much longer than a PC. 5. - Unless the speed of the printer is of crucial importance, it is not usually necessary to select one printer over another just because it can print faster. Most new printers can print acceptably fast for ordinary business purposes. 6. - 300 dots per inch (dpi) is all you need for business correspondence. There is no need to set the printer to print at 1400 dpi or higher. Doing that is just a waste of ink. Configure the printer to use the most economical modes for your particular printing requirements. 7. - Re: the HP Printer Control Language - PCL. - Your printer should support PCL 5 or better compatibility. Enter "PCL" or "Printer Control Language" in a search engine [there's a Google search box at the top of this page] to find articles on this subject. 8. - Before you purchase a printer, find out how much the toner cartridges or inkjet cartridges cost, how many cartridges are used, how many pages on average one cartridge is reported to print , and the average cost per page. Ordinary colour inkjet printers use four colours of ink - black, cyan, magenta, and yellow. But photo inkjet printers can use six or more colours. The printer will usually use two cartridges - one for black and one for colour or have a different cartridge for each colour. Some printer manufacturers provide this important information on their websites, and it is usually provided in PC magazines whenever they review printers. 9. - For business use, a 50- or 100-sheet paper tray is inadequate. A sheet-feeder that can hold 200 to 250 sheets is required. You will be surprised at how fast the paper is used up. 10. - If an inkjet printer uses a combined colour cartridge, unless you can get the cartridge refilled manually, or do it yourself, you have to throw away the ink when one colour runs out, because it won't work when one colour runs out. Epson printers are often criticised for wasting ink in this way, and because if the cartridge runs dry the printer itself is irredeemably ruined. As mentioned earlier in this article, new Epson and HP printers use chipped cartridges that have the print-head on the cartridge, which is an expensive overhead. New Canon printers use non-chipped cartridges. The print-head is built into the printer. Therefore, Canon printers are less expensive to maintain than Epson and HP printers.

An explanation of the terms used to describe printing methods

Duplex printing is the ability of the printer to print on both sides of the paper, as is required when printing a book. Automatic duplexing requires printer hardware that takes the pages as they come out of the printer and then feeds them back into it the other way up.

This makes duplex printing very easy. Inkjet printers have to pause to allow the ink to dry before re-feeding the paper. Manual duplexing requires a manual re-feeding of the pages. Reverse-order printing means that the printer is set to print the last page first and the first page last so that the whole book or articles does not have to be reordered, because the first page will be at the top of the pile instead of at the bottom. Multiple-up printing saves paper by reducing the pages so that many pages can be printed to a single sheet of paper. A relatively cheap printer with a built-in duplex unit is the HP DeskJet 980 that retails at about 165.

The Dial-Up Modem

NETWORKING AND INTERNET PROBLEMS Click here! to visit the page on this site devoted to Networking and Internet Problems and Solutions. Dial-up modem in a computer's Modem Riser) that fits into an cards (internal modems) are installed in an ISA or PCI slot motherboard. Or a computer can have an AMR (Audio or CNR (Communication and Network Riser) modem AMR or CNR riser slot on some but not all motherboards.

The short brown AMR riser slot is usually located on the far left-hand side of the motherboard (when the top of the motherboard contains the its ports) next to the PCI slots. Motherboard manufacturers would usually place the other kinds of riser-card slots that can accommodate a modem in the same area of the board.

AMR modems are more difficult to obtain than ISA and PCI modems, but they can usually be obtained by mail order. To find Internet vendors for an AMR modem in the UK, say, you could try entering a search phrase such as "amr modem" + uk in the Google search box at the top of this page. You probably won't be able to find vendors for new CNR modems, because they are usually only supplied to brand-name computer manufacturers. However, you might be able to find them for sale on eBay. An ordinary ISA or PCI modem cannot use a motherboard's AMR or a CNR riser slot. AMR and CNR modems are cheap, and function as well as ISA/PCI internal modems, but they tend not to be Plug and Play (PnP) devices. Windows installs the software device drivers for PnP devices automatically. For a device that doesn't support Plug-and-Play, Windows requires the drivers to be installed manually. If the drivers aren't installed manually, the modem will be installed and appear in the Device Manager as an Unknown PCI device, and probably won't work. AMR and CNR modems are usually made by bulk manufacturers for use in brand-name computers, such as Packard Bell PCs, and as such rarely carry any identification, or perhaps only a product number on the edge of the card. If you don't have a disk that contains the device-driver file, finding a download for that specific make and model of card can be next to impossible. But, if the modem is installed in a brand-name computer, the manufacturer often provides driver files for current and superseded products. Packard Bell does provide this service. Therefore to find the driver file for a particular model of computer made by Packard Bell, you would visit its site. If you want to buy a model that fits into any of these riser slots you must make sure that it is, say, an AMR model, not a CNR modem, because an AMR riser slot can only accommodate an AMR modem, not a CNR or an ACR modem. None of the modems designed for any one of these riser slots on a motherboard can fit into any of the other riser slots. ACR stands for Advanced Communications Riser and is a new rival standard to CNR. ACR supports modem, audio, LAN, and DSL broadband Internet connections. An ordinary ISA/PCI modem cannot be installed in an ACR slot on a motherboard. Nor can an AMR or CNR modem use an ACR slot. An AMR slot is usually found on the motherboards of budget PC's where manufacturers can use this slot to add modem and sound capability cheaply. Unfortunately, anything that runs in this slot is completely run by the processor, and therefore hinders system performance. Unless you are looking to build a cheap Internet computer, motherboards with this feature should be avoided.

A CNR slot is a newer type of slot that is one step above an AMR slot, because it also allows for the connection to a network. Short for Communication and Networking Riser, this is found on motherboards with chipsets such as the Intel i815e chipset. It is designed for reducing costs for PC manufacturers that offers a home networking implementation, or audio and modem subsystems. It also suffers from the same issues as AMR slots, so high-end gaming computers and workstations will not have this slot on their motherboards. Click here! for more information on these riser slots that can be found on some motherboards.

Windows 95/98/Me are no longer supported by Microsoft Note well that Windows 95/98/Me are no longer supported by Microsoft, so users that use any of those versions do so at their own risk, because security and other support ended on July 11, 2006. The risk might not be very high, because most of the viruses and malware is and will be written for Windows XP and Windows Vista when it becomes available to home users in early 2007. USB dial-up modems USB dial-up modems are available that plug into a USB port, but, as most of the boffins on computer forums will tell you, an external serial modem followed by an internal PCI modem are better choices from a reliability point of view. An example of a USB dial-up modem: http://www.multitech.com/DOCUMENTS/Collateral/data_sheets/2031.asp Send or receive faxes via e-mail or from a website Numerous services are now available that allow you to send and receive faxes via e-mail or from a website. This is an excellent way of sending faxes, because they don't hog the phone line and they are delivered much faster. Some of these services are designed for small businesses and small fax jobs, and others are optimised for mass-faxing. To find these services, you can enter a search, such as web + fax + online, as is, in the Google search box at the top of this page (with its Web radio button enabled.) **** You can use the Google search box at the top of this page (with its Web radio button enabled) to search for additional information.

Linux drivers

Most internal modems are software-driven, but you can purchase internal modems that are hardware-driven, which means that a chipset does the processing instead of software via the computer's processor. Most software modems are winmodems, which means that they are made specifically to run on Windows systems, not usually with another operating system such as Linux. Hardware-driven modems usually have drivers that enable them to run on the operating system of your choice. "How do you know whether it's a hardware modem? - If the specifications say that it can run under DOS, it's a hardware modem." While that's true, there are some winmodems that are capable of working in DOS. So let me put it another way, if the specifications say the modem will work under Linux, then you know you have a hardware modem. - Scott Finnie's Newsletter In other words, you don't need to use a Linux driver for a hardware modem (a modem that has its own signal processor), because Linux is already programmed to run any hardware modem, but finding a Linux driver for a winmodem used to be a problem. However, the situation is much improved now. The latest major distributions of Linux, such as SUSE Linux, come with inbuilt support for many winmodems. And the support is growing stronger all the time. You might also be able to find a Linux driver for a winmodem on this site: http://www.linmodems.org/. Windows/Linux software modem If you want to purchase an excellent V.92 software modem for $20, for which Linux drivers are available, click the following link. Modemsite.com - http://www.modemsite.com/56k/subwv92.htm

The BT line-testing facility

You can use the BT (British Telecom) line-testing facility to test the quality of your BT telephone line. Dial 17070. A recorded message will play. Select option 3, then 1, then 2, and hang up. The recording will say "Call down" instead of hang up. You will then be phoned back with the results of the test.

Newsgroup information
Note that a newsgroup devoted to modems with excellent people involved is - comp.decom.modems. Here is a typical thread taken from it that addresses a very typical problem with dial-up modems. -

Modem disconnects intermittently I posted back a few weeks ago about the frequent disconnects involving my Supra 56K PCI modem. I have since determined that, much to my chagrin, that unit is a "Winmodem", and although it connects at a good speed (up to 52000), there is a software conflict somewhere in my system which causes it to disconnect spontaneously. I have "solved" the problem by rebooting immediately before using the modem, and when I do this, the modem works flawlessly for at least two connections; after that, it disconnects again. Obviously, something happens when I reboot that "clears" something. I have tried to defrag the memory (MemTurbo II), but this does not help without a reboot (the system has 256MB of physical RAM, and there is at least 120MB free when the modem disconnects). I know that some will say to junk the modem; but is there a way to determine what the software conflict is and eliminate it? Many thanks, Bob Don't assume the problem is in the modem. Determine the reason for disconnect first and operate from there. Query the modem in a terminal program [such as the Windows Hyperterminal] immediately after one of these unexpected disconnects occur with [the AT command] at&v1 and look for "Termination cause". That info will be most helpful. I seriously doubt it is any kind of conflict that's causing these but, if it was, that conflict would likely be evident when you checked where all your IRQs are are assigned. The reason I don't think it's a conflict is because a conflict would not be cleared temporarily by a reboot or anything else. You might try something as simple as reducing the max speed the modem can attain. This limits errors which lead to retrains and sometimes disconnects. Something like +ms=,,,,50667 placed in Extra settings [under Modems in the Control Panel] (assuming Win95 through WinME here) should be enough. Hooda Gest

Internal and external dial-up modems

I refer to the installation and configuration of an internal modem here, but you could also purchase an external hardware modem. Unless they use a USB port that can draw power from the system, external modems have their own power source (are not powered via the motherboard), and are superior to software-driven internal modem's, because they have hardware that does the coding, decoding, compression, and decompression. That is why external modems are usually more expensive than internal modems. An external modem will be attached to a serial port at the back of the case, so, if it is using an ordinary serial port, it has to be enabled in the BIOS. An internal modem uses a virtual COM port that is not addressed to the back of the case. It is usually the default BIOS setting to have both serial ports - COM 1 and COM 2 - enabled, but if you have disabled them, you will have to enable the one you want the external modem to use.

If you are using a USB modem, your motherboard must have USB ports, or you have to have a PCI adapter card fitted that provides USB ports, and the version of Windows you are using must support USB. Windows 98 supports USB 1.1, and Windows XP supports USB 2.0. A USB port is a super-fast serial port, and USB has to be enabled in the BIOS. You can check if USB has been enabled by looking for a USB Controller in the Windows Device Manager. If you are using a COM port for an external modem, it has to appear under Ports in Device Manager, as well as being enabled in the BIOS. In a Windows 95/98/Me/XP system, if you don't have a COM port listed in Device Manager, you can add as many as you like using the Add New Hardware applet in the Control Panel. To add a COM port just select the manual options instead of the automatic ones, and scroll down to the Ports heading. An external hardware modem will come with a manual that should provide detailed installation instructions. Although it will not use software to make it work, you will still have to install its software drivers, because every device has to have a software driver to make it work with the operating system.

Using a dial-up modem on a digital phone system with an anolog-to-digital converter

Before hotels provided broadband and wireless connections, business travellers that required Internet connectivity used an analog-to-digital converter that makes it possible for an analog dial-up modem to make a connection through a hotel's digital telphone system. analog-to-digital converters can still be purchased on the web. If you have need of one, you can find local vendors by entering a search term such as, analog + modem + analog-to-digital + converter, as is, in the Google search box at the top of this page (with its Web radio button enabled). Use analogue instead of analog if you are searching for a British site. Here is a example: http://www.konexx.com/mobile_konnector.htm.

A problem with external modems and Windows XP

Note that a problem has come to light with regard to external modems and Windows XP Windows XP is based on Windows NT and NT's upgrade Windows 2000, not on Windows 95/98/Me.

To speed up the boot process Windows XP is programmed to assume that the hardware is the same as was the case when the system was last shut down. It then checks for new hardware. If the external modem was switched off before the system was shut down, XP may leave it out of the start-up process. This is likely to be the case with external modems that connect to a serial port at the back of the case, because they are not plug and play (PnP) devices, and XP will not automatically detect the presence of one. This situation will not arise with USB modems that use a USB port and as such can be hotplugged to the system (plugged in with the computer running), and Windows XP will install the drivers automatically. Don't ever hotplug devices that are not serial devices, because you could destroy the motherboard. Serial devices are USB or FireWire and SATA and eSATA (external SATA) devices. If Windows XP fails to detect your external modem, open XP's Device Manager, use the right mouse button to click on the Modems heading, and click the Scan for Hardware Changes option. This will force XP to detect the modem. Alternatively, you could leave the modem on permanently, but this method is an unnecessary waste of electricity.

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An internal software modem will come with a cable that has a telephone jack (an RJ45 jack in the UK) at one end that fits into the telephone network socket, and a square jack at the other end that fits into a socket on the modem. There is often, but not always, a port on the modem that the telephone jack can be connected to so that the telephone works through the computer even when the computer is switched off. - Check to make sure that it is a socket for an elongated (not square) RJ45 jack, not one for a US phone, which has a square jack the same size and shape as the one that links the modem to the telephone network. Always remember not to use force when plugging any kind of electronic equipment into a socket or slot. Each type of jack has a small plastic lever on it that is pressed inwards to unplug it, and these have a tendency to break off very easily. Having installed the modem card in its ISA or PCI slot with the PC switched off, installing the modem's driver software is usually merely a matter of starting the system, and using the Have Disk button when Windows detects new hardware - in this case a new PCI Communications Device for a PCI modem. You insert the CD into a CD drive and then use the Browse option to navigate to the folder containing the correct drivers on the CD. The route to the correct folder will be provided in the installation instructions that came with the modem.

You should not have to do anything yourself, other than enter your area dialling code and country code when the relevant window with the Dialling Properties appears, because the modem will use its own virtual COM port (not an actual COM port addressed to an outlet at the back of the case, such as an external modem uses) that will not appear under the Ports heading in the Windows Device Manager. - E.g., if COM ports 1, 2, 3, and 4 appear in the Device Manager, Windows will install the modem on COM 5, which will not appear in the Device Manager. If there is an option in the BIOS to set the modem's IRQ, disable it, or set it to the same one that Windows has given it.

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The modem will most probably work without configuring the settings, but you can improve the performance by tweaking the settings. If you don't know how to tweak the settings and want to see images of the setup windows, click here! to go directly to the links to modem sites (on the second of the four Links pages on this site) that provide tutorials with the necessary images. For example, if you're using Windows XP, the following link leads to a page that provides an illustrated guide to setting up and tweaking a dial-up modem.
Windows XP Modem Tweak Guide http://www.techspot.com/tweaks/winxp_modem/print.shtml

To run the Modem Troubleshooter in Windows XP, open Start => Help and Support enter modem troubleshooter in the Search box. However, I will provide the information on the Windows 95/98/Me settings that can be tweaked, but without any images of the setup windows. You can copy and paste it into a printable document, or print it via your browser. Windows 95/98/Me Note well that Windows 95/98/Me are no longer supported by Microsoft, so users that use any of those versions do so at their own risk, because security and other support ended on July 11, 2006. The risk might not be very high, because most of the viruses and malware is and will be written for Windows XP and Windows Vista when it becomes available to home users in early 2007. In Windows 95 / 98 / Me, open the Modems applet in the Control Panel (under Start => Settings). The name of your modem should show in the inner pane of the first window. If the name of a modem doesn't appear, a modem has not been installed. Click the Properties button. (The Dialling Properties button lower down in

this window is to set the dialling area and country codes, and to choose a Pulse or Tone dial. Most telephones use Tone dial.) The General tab of the Properties window has a setting called Maximum speed that is set by clicking the drop-down menu. For a 33.6K and 56K modem you should (quite safely) use the maximum setting of 115200. The default setting is usually 57600, which is only half the maximum speed of these modems.

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Unless they meet your needs, the other tabs available on this setup window - Connection - Distinctive Ring - Forwarding - should be left alone, because they are left blank by default. The Diagnostics tab of the modem's Properties window has More info, Driver, and Help buttons. Clicking More info makes the modem provide its name and type, and some of the AT commands it can execute. Clicking the Help button runs the Windows Modem Troubleshooter. Use it if you have connection problems.

Microsoft's AT modem command reference

Below is the page on Microsoft's site that provides the modem commands that can be used with AT (Hayes) compatible modems. Note that all of the commands are used with the AT prefix when using a program such as the Windows HyperTerminal. But if you enter an AT command in the Extra settings box under the Advanced Connection Settings tab of Modem Properties window (Control Panel => Modems), you enter the naked command (minus the AT). For example, to set the speaker volume manually to medium, the ATL2 command would be entered in a communications program such as HyperTerminal. Note that these are general modem commands. Certain commands may not work with all modems. Consult the documentation for your modem if you experience difficulties, or contact your modem manufacturer's technical support department. For more on modem AT commands, click this link to an article called, AT Modem Command Reference. http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;164660

or look up MS Knowledge Base article 164660 by entering the number in the search box on this page. http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?pr=kbinfo&

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The installed COM ports will be listed in the main Diagnostics window. You will have to select the COM port with your modem's name beside it to run

the More infoutility. If no modem info is given you should remove the modem by selecting it in the Device Manger and then clicking the Remove button. Next, shut the system down all the way, make sure that the modem is properly inserted in its ISA or PCI slot, and reboot. Windows will re-detect the modem and either install its software drivers or ask you to find it on a CD. The speed of the virtual COM port will be set automatically when you select 115200 on the Properties window, which has an Advanced button on its Connection tab. The settings on the Advanced window are set automatically. You should not select the Require to connect option, which should be unselected by default, because, for some reason unknown to me, it will probably make it impossible to make a connection to your Internet service provider.

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Note that in a Windows 9.x system, the setting for the COM and LPT (printer) ports appear in the win.ini system file under the [Ports] heading. You can access it by entering sysedit in the Start => Run dialogue box. Remember, COM 1 will be disabled in the BIOS, because by default it is addressed to a serial port at the back of the case, and an internal modem uses a virtual COM port. Windows can only use COM 1 as a virtual modem port if COM 1 is disabled in the BIOS. The entry for an internal modem installed on COM 1 and set to run at the maximum speed of 115200 looks like this [Ports] COM 1:=115200,n,8,1,p But I myself open the win.ini file, scroll down to [Ports], and replace the 115200 with 921600, because the chipset on my motherboard that controls the port data transfers has this as its maximum speed. [Ports] COM1:=921600,n,8,1,p You can test it yourself, because you cannot do any damage by using a setting that is too high. If the chipset on your motherboard doesn't support it, you will merely be unable to make a connection, or it will run at its maximum speed. Using the higher setting will not increase the speed of the modem, but it does enable faster data decompression, so it appears as if the connection is running faster. Note that even with COM 1 set at 921600 in the win.ini file, the maximum speed will be shown as 115200 in the modem's log, because this is the

modem's maximum speed setting. The 921600 setting is to allow the motherboard's chipset to operate at its maximum speed.

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In Windows 9.x, the View Log button [Control Panel => Modems => General => Properties => Connection => Advanced Connection Settings => View Log] opens the modem's log, which can be helpful in diagnosing problems, because the initialisation string and speed is given. Below is an extract from such a log.
12-04-2001 20:08:29.38 - Conexant HCF V90 56K Speakerphone PCI Modem in use. 12-04-2001 20:08:29.38 - Modem type: Conexant HCF V90 56K Speakerphone PCI Modem 12-04-2001 20:08:29.38 - Modem inf path: CXT1035.INF 12-04-2001 20:08:29.38 - Modem inf section: Modem 12-04-2001 20:08:30.37 - 115200,N,8,1 12-04-2001 20:08:30.37 - 115200,N,8,1 12-04-2001 20:08:30.37 - Initializing modem. 12-04-2001 20:08:30.37 - Send: AT<cr> 12-04-2001 20:08:30.37 - Recv: AT<cr> 12-04-2001 20:08:30.37 - Recv: <cr><lf>OK<cr><lf> 12-04-2001 20:08:30.37 - Interpreted response: Ok 12-04-2001 20:08:30.37 - Send: AT&FE0V1S0=0&C1&D2+MR=2;+DR=1;+ER=1;W0<cr> 12-04-2001 20:08:30.37 - Recv: AT&FE0V1S0=0&C1&D2+MR=2;+DR=1;+ER=1;W0<cr> 12-04-2001 20:08:30.38 - Recv: <cr><lf>OK<cr><lf> 12-04-2001 20:08:30.38 - Interpreted response: Ok

Below after Send: is the initialisation string from the same modem log, which is the set of AT commands, explained in the modem's user manual, that enable communications with other modems. Send: T&FE0V1S0=0&C1&D2+MR=2;+DR=1;+ER=1;W0<cr> The maximum speed setting is 12-04-2001 20:08:30.37 - 115200,N,8,1 But the actual connection speed for the compressed data is 12-04-2001 22:43:42.46 - Connection established at 44667bps. 12-04-2001 22:43:42.46 - Data compression on. You set the maximum speed much higher than the actual connection speed in order to account for decompression, because the data received at 44,667bps has been compressed to reduce the size of the files, etc., and is then decompressed at the maximum speed of 115200bps.

A line in the modem log such as - 12-04-2001 11:29:17.71 - Modem inf path: PCI1009.INF - provides the name of the INF file that Windows uses to configure the modem. You can find the file by looking in the Windows\INF folder, or use Find to locate it. Use the right mouse button to click on the file, and use Open to see the information it contains. This is a quick way to find out which AT commands and other configuration commands are supported.

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You can add extra commands yourself. You do this by clicking on the Modems icon in the Control Panel. The clicking path to follow is - the Properties button on the General tab => Connection tab => Advanced button => Extra settings dialog box. If you enter an extra AT command in this box, do not begin it with AT, just put the naked command in. Here are the instructions to limit the speed of an HCF or HSF modem. Doing this can surprisingly increase the throughput of the modem, because, if it is set too fast, the number of errors that result make retransmission necessary. Setting the modem slower avoids errors and hence retransmissions. Indeed, in some circumstances, it is possible to have better throughput from a V.90/V.92 modem if it is set to use the V.34 standard used by 33.6K dial-up modems. To limit the Rockwell-chipset (Conexant chipset) modem to a minimum of 44,000bps [bps = bits per second. 8 bits = 1 byte] and a maximum of 52,000bps (52Kbit/s), the following string, shown in red, would be entered in the Extra settings box. +MS=,,44000,52000 [non HCF modem] +MS=,,,,44000,52000 [HCF modem] Note - If you place any commands after the +MS= command, you must terminate the +MS portion with a semicolon - i.e. +MS=12,0;s10=7. Also, don't try setting the maximum to 56K, because contrary to common knowledge, a 56K modem never reaches 56,000bps. Log on to the Internet several times and then view the Modem's log. Notepad brings it to the screen. Enter the word connection in Notepad's Search => Find and Find Next to find all of the connection speeds. This will give you a reliable range of speeds at which the modem connects. My 56K HCF modem connects at speeds between 44000bps and 46667bps, so it never gets anywhere near 56000bps using the connections to two ISPs. You can read the information on the Rockwell/Conexant HCF software modem at - http://modemsite.com/56k/rockhcf.htm On modemsite.com it is recommended that you purchase a Lucent LT Win Modem - http://808hi.com/56k/ltwin.htm - instead of the more

problematic modems using the Rockwell/Conexant HCF chipset - regardless of the fact that manufacturers such as HP and Compaq are using HCF modems in their PCs instead of the superior Lucent Win Modems. I have to say that I have not had any connection problems with HCF modems that I haven't also had with any other kind of modem. You are also advised to try installing an HCF modem in a different PCI slot if you experience installation problems. It is reported on the site that enabling USB in the BIOS solved an installation problem, even though the HCF modem uses a PCI slot, not an AGP slot, which has an association with USB.

Dial-Up Networking
Note that if you are using a Windows 95/98/Me system, you should download and install the Dial-Up Networking 1.4 update from Microsoft.

There is no separate Dial-Up Networking feature in Windows XP In Windows XP, there is no separate feature called Dial-Up Networking (DUN) that shows each dial-up Internet Service Provider (ISP) connection. DUN has been incorporated into Network Connections in the Control Panel. Therefore, the references to DUN below and on this site apply to Windows 95/98/Me. The settings are more or less the same under Network Connections in Windows XP, so all you have to do is look for them. If you need one, there is an illustrated guide on this page: Windows XP Modem Tweak Guide http://www.techspot.com/tweaks/winxp_modem/print.shtml Windows Registry tweaks for Windows 9x/XP/2000 The information on Registry tweaks can be applied if the connection you use is a dial-up or a broadband connection. One of the most important settings is called the Maximum Transmission Unit (MTU). If, say, your Internet service provider uses an MTU setting of 1492, Windows uses a default value of 1500, which is probably the most common setting, so if you changed the setting to 1492, your download and upload speeds would improve because the packets of information would not be fragmented. If the MTU size being used by Windows is greater that the one being used by a service provider, each packet of data has to be broken up so that it fits the smaller packet size. The more the packets of data are fragmented, the longer they take to reassemble. There are several other settings in the Windows Registry that can affect data-transfer speeds. For more information on the settings, such as MaxMTU, and TCP Receive Window/RWIN, consult one of the following documents from Speedguide.net: Windows 2000/XP Registry Tweaks Windows 9x/ME Registry Tweaks More Win2000/XP Tweaks Advanced Tweaking (Win9x/ME) When you know what the settings are, you can download the latest version of TCP Optimizer (version 2.03). It is an excellent utility that is now designed for connection speeds of up to 20Mbps. It is very user-friendly, automatically suggests optimal settings, and automatically saves a backup of the original settings.

In Windows 95/98/Me, under Modems (under Phone and Modem in Windows XP) in the Control Panel, the Port Settings button on the Connections tab opens a window that provides the port settings. You should click the relevant checkbox to select Use FIFO buffers, and the Receive and Transmit buffer settings should both be set to High by using the mouse to drag the slider as far to the right as possible.

You should also check the settings of your Internet service provider's (ISP's) connection under Dial-Up Networking (DUN). Unless you have created a shortcut to DUN on your desktop, its folder can be found in the bottom left hand pane of the Windows Explorer (Start => Programs => Windows Explorer). There should be an icon in DUN's right-hand window representing the connection to your ISP. Select it with the mouse, click on it with the right mouse button, scroll down to and then click Properties. (If trying to access DUN brings up a message that it is not set to use the installed modem, use the drop-down menu to select the installed modem. If you once had another modem installed, it is probably the one selected.) The General tab allows you to access all of the modem's settings, which you should check to make sure that they match the settings under Modems in the Control Panel. The General tab also shows the ISP's number and dialling code, which you can edit if, say, the ISP informs you of a change of telephone number. The Server Types tab contains different settings that you should know about. Unless your circumstances demand it, you should only have the Enable software compression, Require encrypted password, and TCP/IP settings checked, with PPP, Internet, Windows NT Server, Windows 98 selected in the Type of Dial-Up Server box. You should leave the Log on to network option unchecked or you might not be able to log on to the Internet, but it also might make no difference if this setting is enabled or disabled.

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Note that you can experiment with the settings. Just make sure that you only test one change at a time so that you know that it and no other setting is responsible for any problems. The two ISPs I use allow the Log on to network setting to be enabled or disabled, but this might not be the case with other ISPs. My Internet connections connect faster if that setting is disabled. The recommended setting is usually disabled. When experimenting, if you find that a particular setting causes problems, just disable it.

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Next, click the TCP/IP settings button. Only the automatic server assigned settings should be enabled, but you can also safely check Use IP header compression and Use default gateway on remote network. The other DUN tabs should be left unchanged. If you do not have Dial-Up Networking installed, perhaps because you did not elect to install it during the Windows installation, you can add it by clicking the Add/Remove Programs icon in the Control Panel. The

Windows Setup tab has a category called Communications, under which DUN can be found. Select it and click the Details button. Put a check in its box. You can then install DUN by either directing the process to the Windows CD, or to the copy of the Windows CD somewhere on your system. The Network icon in the Control Panel is used to add or remove communication items, such as the protocols TCP/IP, IPX/SPX, NetBEUI, etc. You must have TCP/IP installed in order to be able to use a dial-up connection. For an ordinary 33.6K or 56K modem, you should have the Client for Microsoft Networks, a Dial-Up Adapter, and TCP/IP appearing in that order in the Configuration tab. Any other adapters or protocols can be removed by selecting them and using the Remove button. If you want to add a protocol, use the Add button, and choose Microsoft as the manufacturer. The Properties button brings up a window with all sorts of options that should have been installed correctly automatically. To work properly, the dial-up adapter has to be bound to the TCP/IP protocol, so do not remove the check in the TCP/IP box of the Bindings tab if you view the properties of the Dial-Up Adapter. For security purposes, you should not have the File and Print Sharing options enabled. Having either option enabled could allow a hacker to make use of these facilities from a remote connection, because you are installing a server by enabling file and printer sharing. Trojan programs are illegal small servers that are capable of remote connections. In the Device Manager, click the + beside Modem, and double-click the name of the installed modem. If it is an HCF modem, a windows with many settings tabs will be presented, one of which is called Country Select. Make sure that the correct country is selected. Check these settings no matter which kind of modem is installed.

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If you cannot make a connection, you should check the Internet Properties. (Click the Internet Options icon in the Control Panel, or right-click the Internet Explorer icon on the desktop and click Properties on the proffered window. Click on the thumbnail image below to see a full-size image of the Internet Properties window with Internet Explorer 6.0 installed.

Under the Connection tab, make sure that the option selected is Always dial my default connection - not either of the other two options. Also, to speed up your downloads and uploads, click the Settings and LAN Settings buttons on the same tab, and make sure that none of the options are enabled. Enabling any of those settings on a standalone PC slows the connection speeds considerably, as can be verified by a utility capable of reporting the actual connection speeds, such as CheckIt NetOptimizer, with either or both of the Automatically detect settings options enabled, and then disabled. You will have to be off-line when you change the Internet Properties settings. Under the General tab of Internet Properties, click the Settings button. You can set the size of the Internet files' cache by entering an amount, or by using the slider. For optimal performance, this cache should not be too large. Set it anywhere between 20 and 25MB. You should clear your History and Temporary Internet Files folders regularly by using the Clear History and Delete Files options. The reason for doing so is because large folders are searched slowly, and because the Index.dat files that Windows uses to index cookies and Internet files can only log a maximum number of files. As soon as that number is exceeded the connection is brought to an end. The Index.dat files, of which there are several, are given deletion protection by Windows while in the Windows folder, and are not cleared (probably so that Microsoft or the security services can obtain information about your browsing habits).
CCleaner CCleaner is a freeware system optimization and privacy tool. It removes unused files from your system - allowing Windows to run faster and freeing up valuable hard disk space. It also cleans traces of your online activities such as the index.dat files, one of which contains a history of your browsing that cannot be deleted while Windows is running because it is a system file. It is fast, usually taking less that a second to run, and contains no spyware or adware. - http://www.ccleaner.com/

Under the Power Management Setup menu in the BIOS, the modem can be set to wake the computer up from a suspended state should the telephone ring. The setting will be called something like Ring Resume from Soft-Off. Read the BIOS section of the motherboard's manual for the

precise name of the setting, which varies between the BIOS manufacturers. You can also find out from the same source how to set the different shutdown and power-on modes. Click this BIOS link to read more about the BIOS setup program on this site.

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Note that it is not advisable to have your Internet settings set so that access to the Internet can be obtained automatically, because applications such as antivirus programs can be set to download file updates, and if you have taken a Trojan virus on board, it may access the Internet automatically, which, unless you have an always-on connection, could cost you a fortune in telephone bills. The best way to prevent automatic access to the Internet is not to have the password saved. You could also have a firewall program such as ZoneAlarm set to ask for confirmation before access to the Internet is permitted. ZoneAlarm also has a locked setting that prohibits Internet access. And ZoneAlarm Pro - the paid-for version - allows you to set a password to prevent the settings from being changed. If you have a proprietary make of modem and you don't have its manual, you should be able to download one from its manufacturer's website.

How to restrict modem speeds

Obtaining a connection speed that is too high for the modem is possible. If a dial-in connection is negotiated at a speed that is prone to errors, something that can happen all too frequently, the extra speed will never been experienced, and the connection will more than likely experience tardy negotiations or frequent disconnections. The usual method for correcting this condition varies from modem to modem, but it is usually just a matter of introducing a few extra settings in the modem's initialisation string. Here is a site that explains how this is done for several different types of modem. - http://808hi.com/56k/x2-linklimit.asp

V.90 and V.92 dial-up modems

All of the current modems on the market are V.92 modems, but V.90 modems are still available second-hand. You should not buy anything less than a 56K modem that supports the universal V.90 or V.92 standards.

Most V.90 modems are flash (software) upgradable to the newer V.92 standard. Before the V.90 standard became universal, US Robotics and Rockwell (now called Conexant) had their own 56K modem standards - the X2 and the K56Flex standards respectively - both of which most Internet Service Providers (ISPs) no longer support, so don't be conned into buying anything less than a V.90 modem. If an ISP doesn't support V.92 modem's yet, a V.92 modem is capable of using the V.90 standard, which all ISPs support. The V.92 standard has a new On Hold facility that allows an Internet connection to be put on hold while a voice call is answered. A workable alternative to having a second line installed for an Internet connections. It also allows for a quick connection, because much of the speed negotiations between your modem and the one you are connecting to have been removed. A definite improvement, because a V.90 modem can often take an uncomfortably long time to establish a connection. Also, a V.92 modem can upload files at a maximum speed of 48K (kilobits per second). A V.90 56K modem can only upload files at a maximum speed of 33.6K. You require a processor that is capable of executing MMX instructions to be able to use most new internal software modems. Any processor with a speed above 200MHz will be able to execute MMX instructions, but some Intel, AMD, and Cyrix 133, 166, and 200MHz processors are non-MMX, while others are capable of executing MMX instructions. The blurb on the modem's box will usually state the hardware requirements. You should purchase a brand-name modem, because they can be flash upgraded, and updated drivers are usually provided by the manufacturer's website. If you purchase a generic, no-brand modem you might still be able to obtain flash firmware and driver updates, but this will not be guaranteed, so do the necessary research before you purchase such a modem. In any case, a boxed, retail modem (internal card or external unit) will come with a CD containing its software drivers and any other software that can be used with it.

Troubleshooting a dial-up modem

Not installing or configuring a modem properly is the cause of most problem. There are many sites that show you in illustrated detail how to configure a modem for the best results.

For example, troubleshooting advice on a wide range of modems is given at - http://808hi.com/56k/trouble.htm#trouble However, it can be a problem if you use Windows XP that you won't be able to make the modem hang up. If this is the case, the information in Modem Issues: Auto-Connect/Disconnect & Dialup for Windows XP at http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_modem.htm will probably provide the information you need to sort the problem out. If there is no such known issue with a modem and a version of Windows, which can usually be discovered by searching the MS Knowledge Base, the next step you should always take if you have trouble with a modem is to search the Internet for links to its make and model from a library, Internet Cafe, or by using a friend's connection, etc. You'll quickly discover if there's a bug plaguing it. For instance, Aztech V.92 modems were disconnecting often after a message saying: "You have just ignored an incoming call," came up. You can make use of the Google search box at the top of this page (with its Web radio button enabled) to enter a search term such as aztech + V.92, which should bring up links that would tell you of a bug with these modems that can be rectified by downloading the latest driver file, etc. If there are no such bugs, the next step to take is to troubleshoot the problem. You can download useful modem utilities (paid-for or free). Click here! to view the links to diagnostic programs, and click here! to visit many modemrelated links on the second of the four Links pages on this site. CheckIt NetOptimizer from the TouchStone Software Corporation is a reasonably priced utility that can optimise the hidden dial-up networking settings, such as TTL (Time to Live), MTU (Maximum Transmission Unit) size, test a modem, run a troubleshooter, and monitor of the actual connection speed. This utility is often given away free on the cover disks of computer magazines. For more information about it, visit http://www.touchstonesoftware.com. You should read and understand all of the information it provides in its Help files before changing any settings. The CheckIt PC diagnostics application from the same company also provides modem tests. Don't forget that viruses, worms, spyware, adware, and Trojan programs can often be responsible for destroying a connection that used to work perfectly. For computer security information on this site visit the Security pages on this site.

A typical modem troubleshooting problem

Problem This is by far the most common problem Windows 95/98/Me/XP and Internet Explorer users experience with regard to loss of Internet connectivity. You have a Windows 95/98/Me/XP system, and when you dial up your ISP (Internet Service Provider), the PC's browser makes a connection via the modem, but no web pages are displayed, or e-mail cannot be downloaded or uploaded, and you have to disconnect by right-clicking the Dial-Up Networking icon in the System Tray/Notification Area. Possible solutions
Windows 95/98/Me are no longer supported by Microsoft Note well that Windows 95/98/Me are no longer supported by Microsoft, so users that use any of those versions do so at their own risk, because security and other support ended on July 11, 2006. The risk might not be very high, because most of the viruses and malware is and will be written for Windows XP and Windows Vista when it becomes available to home users in early 2007.

The first action to take is to make sure that you only have Internet Service Provider (ISP) software installed that you use. If you have installed the software of many ISPs in order to try them out, you must remove the ones you don't use regularly, because each ISP makes changes to the system, many of which can screw it up for other ISPs. Often it is difficult to remove an ISP's software, because no uninstall utility is provided, either in Add/Remove Programs or in Start => Programs/All Programs, so the best advice is not to install free ISPs just to try them out unless you can find out how to remove them first. The second action you should take is to check the settings of any firewall (ZoneAlarm, Norton's Firewall, etc.) that is installed on the system and set to load at system start-up. Often the firewall can somehow have been set to prevent Internet access by the browser (Internet Explorer, Opera, Mozilla, etc.), or the e-mail program (Outlook Express, Eudora, etc.) If the settings are correct, disable the firewall and then try accessing the Internet, or try using the e-mail program, because, for reasons unknown a firewall can prevent access even if the settings are correct. I have even accessed a suspect website listed in a computer newsgroup that was somehow able to set ZoneAlarm to prevent Internet Explorer from accessing the Internet. If the firewall is not to blame, you should check to make sure that all of your modem's settings and Dial-Up Networking (DUN) settings - as discussed earlier in the article - are correct.

By left-clicking on the DUN icon on the Windows Desktop, and clicking on the entry for your ISP, and then clicking the Dial Properties button, you can check to see if the correct dialling property is enabled. Most modern telephones use Tone instead of Pulse dialling. If an ordinary left-click on the ISP entry brings up a message saying something like, "Unable to use the listed modem to make a connection", the wrong modem has been set as the default modem. Often if you have installed more than one modem during the computer's life, an uninstalled modem will still be listed in the drop-down menu (accessed by right-clicking on the ISP's DUN entry), and may have somehow become the one chosen to use DUN. If so, just use the drop-down menu to select the current modem that is listed in the Device Manager. By using the right mouse button to click on the ISP entry and then clicking Properties, you can check if the correct telephone number to your ISP is listed. If the use of a proxy server is enabled under Connections => Settings section of Internet Properties, disable it by removing the tick in the check box next to Use a proxy server for this connection. It is unlikely that running the Windows Modem Troubleshooter in a Windows 95/98/Me system will solve this problem, because it is too basic, but if you have not tried it, you might as well do so just to get an idea of its abilities. Look it up under Start => Help. But Help and Support provided by Windows XP is far superior, so might be of assistance. The ISP's server could be responsible for the problem, but that is unlikely if you fail to make a successful connection over a period of days, because ISPs usually rectify problems at their end fairly quickly. If you have two ISPs installed, try using the other one if one of them gives problems. If one works and the other doesn't, you know where the problem lies immediately. Otherwise, the cause of a connection problem is most likely to be corrupt Dial-Up Networking files on your system that were messed up or corrupted by the installation of one or more conflicting programs, such as firewalls or antivirus programs, or by a virus. So check for viruses with an updated antivirus program, and then remove or disable it and any firewall program(s) you have installed. If none of the above is the cause of the problem try this next. - Windows 95 does not have the following utility, but in Windows 98 and Windows Me, you should run the System File Checker (SFC) under the Start => Programs => Accessories => System Tools => System information menu. ****

The System File Checker (SFC) is still present in Windows XP and Windows 2000, but it is run from the Command Prompt instead of via Accessories => System Tools or by entering sfc in the Start => Run box as it is in Windows 98/Me. To find out what the commands and switches are, open the Command Prompt by entering cmd in the Start => Run box, and then enter sfc /? to bring up a list of them. Take care when using this utility, because if you allow a file that Windows updates with current data to be replaced with an empty file from the Windows CD, the system could experience problems such as not being able to boot. You should have a certified Windows XP CD - not a System Recovery CD of the kind that comes with many brand-name computers instead of a Windows CD - because the SFC utility makes use of it. **** You should use the SFC to check the system's files, and you should use the utility to replace any corrupt files. Especially if the wsock32.dll (winsock) file is named. This is an essential part of Dial-Up Networking software that makes dial-up modem calls. There may be more than one version installed, but the correct one is in the Windows\System folder and have a file size of 65KB for Windows 95 and 40KB for Windows 98 and its date should match the date given for the other files in the folder. If that does not work, or you could not attempt it because your version of Windows does not have the System File Checker (Windows 95), you should try removing Dial-Up Networking, and then reinstalling it. If you have installed an updated version of DUN, it should be listed in the Add/Remove Programs => Install/Uninstall tab, which is accessed via the Control Panel (Start => Settings => Control Panel). If it is listed there, you can highlight it and click the Add/Remove button to uninstall it. If DUN is not listed under the Install/Uninstall tab, click the middle tab called Windows Setup. Click on the Communications heading to highlight it, and click the Details button. Its check box will have a tick in it. To remove DUN, just remove the tick, and click the OK button. Windows might ask you to insert the Windows CD in the CD-ROM drive. You can avoid this by creating a folder called Win98, and copying the whole Windows CD into it... If you don't know how to create a folder using Windows Explorer, consult the Start => Help files. Enter the word folder in the search box, and when the options are presented scroll down to and click creating...

Whenever the system asks you to load the CD, use the Browse option to navigate to the Win98 folder, which could be placed on a different hard disk drive, or a separate partition on the boot drive, or just in a folder of its own on the C: drive. Reboot so that the removal of DUN is complete. To reinstall DUN, all you have to do is reverse the process by clicking inside the empty check box beside Dial-Up Networking. Windows installs any option with a tick in its check box and removes any option with the tick removed. You will have to reboot to complete DUN's reinstallation. Alternatively, you can download and install the latest version of Dial-Up Networking - version 1.4 for Windows 95/98/Me systems - from Microsoft. In Windows XP, look under Start => Help & Support => Index for information on removing DUN. If doing that has not solved the problem, you will have to conduct a step-bystep search for the source of the problem, as follows... Connect to the Internet. Click the Start => Run. Enter winipcfg, which stands for Windows Internet Protocol Configuration. The window that presents itself should show the four settings for the PPP Adapter,which is another name for the dial-up networking connection. - PPP stands for the point-to-point protocol. Ipconfig in Windows 2000/XP Click here! for a download link to the wntipcfg utility that works in Windows XP and Windows 2000 in the same way as winipcfg does in Windows 9.x. That is, it allows IP addresses to be released and renewed. You enter ipconfig in the Start => Run box to run it. Click on the More Info button. Look to see if an IP Address is given. (IP stands for Internet Protocol.) If the setting is shown as zero, or has an autoconfiguration IP address in the range 169.254.xxx.xxx, then DUN did not make a successful connection to the network. If you are connected, the IP Address that shows is the dynamic one assigned by your ISP, which will be reassigned to someone else when you log off. There will also be addresses shown for the DHCP Server and the Default Gateway. - DHCP stands for Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol. The DHCP server is the computer on your ISP's network that responds to requests for an IP Address. You have to have an IP address so that your

ISP's modem can establish a connection with your computer via DUN. The DHCP server also tells the connecting computer which gateway to use and usually also which DNS server to use. - DNS stands for Dynamic Name System. The DNS server is the computer that translates the web domain name into its IP address. For example, the UK domain name for the Internet service provider (ISP) Netscape Online was http://www.netscapeonline.co.uk, and its IP address was 194.200.20.15 (on 27 June 2002). To bypass the DNS server, you would have to enter the IP address instead of the domain name for each website in order to connect to it. Most ISP's send their DNS server's address when they allocate your system a dynamic IP address, but some ISPs require that you enter it in the IP Configuration window (Start => Run => enter winipcfg). Of course, any ISP that requires you to configure DUN will tell you how to do it when you install that ISP's software, otherwise you would never be able to establish a connection to it. Confusingly, Microsoft also allows you to set your ISP's DNS server address under Network in the Control Panel by clicking the Properties button with TCP/IP highlighted. But you should not do this if you have more than one ISP, or DUN connection, because this setting will override all of the others. That is why you enter winipcfg in the Run dialogue box after you have dialled the ISP you want to connect to. You want to see the settings for that connection, not any other. Solving this problem may require finding out if you have the correct DNS server for the ISP you want to connect to, and if it can be reached. This is done by by using the ping command in DOS mode. When you enter the ping command, it sends a test message to the IP address in the command, and then shows if a response was received. While connected to your ISP, open a DOS window by entering the word command in the Start => Run box in Windows 95/98/Me. Under Windows NT/2000/XP, click Start => Run and enter cmd. When a DOS window opens, type in ping followed by a domain name for your ISP and press the Enter key. You could also enter any other domain name such as http://www.netscapeonline.co.uk, because you are testing if the DNS server is able to translate a domain name into an IP address. You can find out what the IP address is for any website by using the command ping followed by its domain name in at a DOS prompt (usually C:\>) while online. For example, to obtain the IP address for eBay.com, enter the command - ping http://www.ebay.com/.

You should get a reply giving the number of packets received and the time taken. If that did not happen, enter the IP address that corresponds to the domain name, which for the Netscape Online example is ping 194.200.20.15. If you get a reply using the IP address - in this case 194.200.20.15 - you know that the TCP/IP system is working, and that the DNS system is not working. If you did not get a reply, then the chances are that no connection was made, or the ISP's network is at fault. Next, you should try sending the ping command with the other IP addresses listed in winipcfg - or IP Properties. If you don't even get a response using the gateway that has been assigned to your system, as a last resort try entering the command: ping 127.0.0.0 This address is called the localhost. It's your computer's local host address. If it cannot ping itself then the TCP/IP networking on your computer has been irrecoverably corrupted and you will have to remove and reinstall it. You should click Start => Settings => Control Panel => Network, and remove all of the TCP/IP entries you see under the Configuration tab Client for Microsoft Windows - Dial-Up Adapter, TCP/IP, and any others. Just click to highlight each entry and click the Remove button. Reboot, and then reinstall Dial-Up Networking by using the Add/Remove Programs' Windows Setup tab - as described earlier. If that doesn't work, you will probably have to reinstall Windows over itself, choosing the custom installation in order to install DUN. You can reinstall Windows over itself and your data files will be preserved, but you will have to reinstall all of the applications that have placed entries in the Registry, because reinstalling Windows destroys the old Registry and creates a fresh one. If you have back-ups of all of your data files - My Documents, Internet Explorer Favorites, the Windows\Application Data folder where all of your email and newsgroup information is stored, etc., you can start the system in DOS mode (by pressing the F8 or Ctrl key at start-up before Windows starts to load), and reformat the drive by entering the reformat c: /s command at the C:\> prompt. Note that this method destroys all of the data on the boot drive, so you must have CDs for Windows and your applications, or have the system properly backed-up so that it can be restored. That is why it is a good idea to purchase a CD-R or CD-RW drive in order to create a restorable back-up of your whole system on a CD-R disk. You can do this by installing Windows on the C:\> drive and your data files and

programs in their own partitions, which Windows will give drive letters, such as D:\> and E:\> - with the CD drive as F:\>. - On a newly formatted hard disk drive, you can use the Windows FDISK program to create as many partitions as you like, but you require a program such as Partition Magic in order to create partitions on the fly. Partition Magic can delete, re-size, and create partitions without destroying any data, but using FDISK to create or remove partitions will destroy all the data on the drive. FDISK is simple to use. You create a Primary partition that can be the entire drive, or add an Extended partition to it in which you can create as many logical drives of any sizes as you want as long as they don't exceed the total disk space. - Click here! to go directly to some relevant links on FDISK on this site. Entering fdisk in the Google search box at the top of this page will will present you plenty of other useful links. See the Disk Drive page on this site for more information on HDD, CD, and DVD drives. But before you take any action, Windows 95/98/Me users read the following Microsoft Knowledge Base articles that cover this sort of problem 181599, 151237, and 169790. Windows XP users should look at article 314067, and Windows 2000 users should look at 102908. See the Diagnostics page on this site for information on many Knowledge Base articles and how to access them. NETWORKING AND INTERNET PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS Click here! to visit the page on this site devoted to networking and Internet problems and their solutions.

A good tip
If you have to switch between modem and telephone manually by connecting the modem's or telephone's jack to the telephone socket, and you cannot go online with the modem because it cannot detect a dialling tone, remove the cover from the telephone socket and make sure that all of the connection pins are aligned correctly. It is possible that the constant change of jacks forced one or more of the internal pins out of alignment so that it might even come into contact with another pin. This happened to me once. The telephone worked properly, but the modem kept coming up with a message that no dialling tone could be detected. The pin that provides the dialling tone was shorting another pin. I thought that I has been infected with a virus when all sorts of strange symptoms plagued my system into the bargain. I did a complete reinstallation of Windows that had no effect before it occurred to me to check the telephone socket for irregularities. The fact

that the telephone was working perfectly made me dismiss the socket as a possible source of the problem.

Connection speeds measured in kilobits and megabits, kilobytes and megabytes

Note that dial-up and broadband connection speeds are usually given in kilobits and megabits per second (Kbit/s and Mbit/s. A Mbit is 1024 Kbits). There are 8 bits in a byte, so to get the speed in kilobytes (KB) and megabytes (MB) respectively, the figure has to be divided by 8. A 1Mbit/s connection speed is therefore really only 128 kilobytes per second (128KB/s), which is pretty fast considering that the usual actual connection speed of a 56Kbit/s dial-up modem is only about 4.6 kilobytes per second (4.6KB/s). Click here! to go to a more detailed calculation on this page. Use your browser's Back button to return to this point on the page. "Many cable companies tout cable modems as fast as 100 times faster than dial-up Internet connections - that, however, is a slight exaggeration. Theoretically it can be done, but realistically, for a number of technological reasons, it rarely occurs in practice. A more accurate figure would be about 20 times faster than a 56K dial-up connection" - http://www.cable-modem.net

Dial-up modem sites

Rockwell, the modem chip maker, is now called Conexant - http://www.conexant.com/ US Robotics (USR) - http://www.usr.com/ The Modem Site - http://modemsite.com/

Click here! to go directly to many relevant and useful links on the second of the four Links pages on this site. There is a Google search box at the top of this page that you can use to search the web for further information.

Broadband cable and ADSL modem information and sites

How to optimise your broadband connection This site offers some excellent free tests and tools to help you get the most out of your DSL, Cable or Satellite Internet connection. - http://www.dslreports.com/tweaks Cable Cable access makes use of a different kind of modem to the type used for a dial-up telephone connection. The cable company supplies the modem unless it is built into a digital television set-top box. A standard Ethernet network interface card (NIC) is required to connect the external cable modem to the computer. The UK's has two main cable companies - NTL and Telewest owner of Blueyonder. Although they have some coverage in common, they mostly cover different areas of the UK. UK cable coverage is still patchy, with most of the country uncovered.

To increase your broadband cable modem speed, visit http://www.speedguide.net. The site has some excellent registry and .inf files to download to improve cable access. Cable sites Robin Walker's Cable Modem Pages - http://homepage.ntlworld.com/robin.d.h.walker/ How Cable Modems Work - http://computer.howstuffworks.com/cable-modem.htm Cable-Modem.net - http://www.cable-modem.net/ ADSL An ADSL connection requires an ADSL modem, and a router to connect it to the telephone line. British Telecom (BT), the only provider of this service in the UK charges for the installation of the service, and the modem and router. You can purchase an ADSL connection from an ISP, such as Wanadoo, but it will be obtaining it from BT on your behalf. The ISP will purchase the service from BT at a discount and then sell it to you. You will then be connecting to the ISP's servers instead of BT's. Telephone lines that have been specially adapted to provide ADSL via telephone exchanges. BT has about 60% of the country's exchanges converted, and aims to have the the others converted soon. To check in the UK if you have an ADSL telephone exchange, click http://www.bt.com/ and search for information about ADSL. In the USA, look here - http://www.nwfusion.com/research/dsl.html ADSL sites How DSL Works - http://computer.howstuffworks.com/dsl.htm How VDSL Works - http://www.howstuffworks.com/vdsl.htm ADSL Guide - For advice on (A)DSL connections to the Internet. http://www.adslguide.org.uk DSL Resource Page - http://www.nwfusion.com/research/dsl.htm

You can use the Google search box at the top of this page to find out more information on any of these topics.

Megabits
Note that a megabit is 1048576 bits (1024 X 1024). To convert megabits to bytes, divide the megabits by 8, because there are 8 bits to a byte. Divide the bytes by 1024 to derive the kilobytes per second, and divide the kilobytes by 1024 to derive the megabytes per second. These communications companies clearly use megabits per second because it looks more impressive than in kilobytes per second, etc. E.g., 38 megabits per second is 38 X 1048576 bits = 39845888 bits, because there are 1048576 bits in a megabit. This is 39845888 divided by 8 = 4980736 bytes. Or 4980736 divided by 1024 = 4864 kilobytes. Or 4864 divided by 1024 = 4.75 megabytes per second.

Impressive, but it doesn't sound as good as 38 megabits per second, does it? Standard 56K modems measure their speed in kilobits per second (Kbit/s). One kilobit is 1024 bits per second, so a 56K modem working at 53 kilobits per second is really only working at 1024 X 53 = 54272 bits per second, which is 54272 divided by 8, or 6784 bytes per second, which is only 6784 divided by 1024, or only 6.625 kilobytes per second. Indeed, you will be lucky if a 56K V.90 or V.92 modem downloads at more than 4.6KB per second. Moreover the uploading speed of such a modem is the same as a 33.6K modem. - A 33.6K modem's maximum speed is only around 3.3KB per second. A V.92 modem's uploading speed is about 1KB per second faster.

Troubleshooting and other websites

NETWORKING AND INTERNET PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS Click here! to visit the page on this site devoted to networking and Internet problems and their solutions. If you want to troubleshoot, tweak, or optimise your modem , visit these sites.
Troubleshoot modem problems - http://modemsite.com/56k/trouble.asp The 56K Modem Troubleshooting Guide - http://www.56k.com/trouble/connect.shtml Tweaking and optimisation http://www.dslreports.com http://www.speedguide.net/ http://www.tweak3d.net/tweak/modem/ http://www.modemsite.com/56k/speedup.asp http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=modem+tweak+rwin+mtu OTHER SITES How [Dial-Up] Modems Work - http://computer.howstuffworks.com/modem.htm

Click here! to go directly to many other modem-related sites on the second of the four Links pages on this site, several of which provide driver information/downloads, and modem-identification information.

How to Assemble the PC Components and Install Windows

Note that you can switch the computer on without replacing the cover while installing software or testing it, but you should not touch any of the components unless it is switched off at the wall socket. For obvious reasons, if you have small children or pets, you should never leave it unattended in an exposed state. Often a computer is not switched off when powered down - it remains in a suspended mode, so it is always best to switch it of at the wall socket. Leave the plug in the socket with the switch off, since in this state it is earthed. Always replace the cover if you are not going to be in attendance and you have pets or children - and never have drinks, etc., nearby when working on electronic components.

Confirmation or clarification of the information provided here...

If you want confirmation or clarification of the information provided on this page, and/or you want to view images not provided here, visit PCGuide.com, or http://www.buildyourown.org.uk/, or Tom's Hardware, or Intel's Build Your Own information. If you're interested in building a budget gaming PC, read this article:
Build Your Own Budget Gaming PC - How to buy & assemble the right components & peripherals for less than $2,500. http://computershopper.com/feature/build_your_own_budget_gaming_pc

You should also be able to find many other such sites by using the Google search box at the top of this page. If you want to see small video clips of installations, visit the Build Your Own site.

Computer hardware troubleshooting flowcharts As you can see from looking at any of the diagnostic charts made available from the following links, there are no photo-illustrations or explanations of basic computer functions. The intended audience is the hobbyist or technician who already has some experience of repairing computers. If you can understand a particular flowchart, it would be a good idea to print them just in case you can't boot your computer and you need the information. CPU, RAM, and Motherboard Troubleshooting: http://www.fonerbooks.com/cpu_ram.htm Power Supply Failure: - http://www.fonerbooks.com/power.htm Video Card Diagnostics: http://www.fonerbooks.com/video.htm Hard Drive Failure: http://www.fonerbooks.com/ide_hd.htm CD and DVD Troubleshooting: http://www.fonerbooks.com/ide_cd.htm Modem Failure: http://www.fonerbooks.com/modem.htm Sound Card Diagnostics: http://www.fonerbooks.com/sound.htm Network Trubelshooting Flowchart: http://www.fonerbooks.com/network.htm

PC Installation Checklist
1. - You have the tools required for the job at hand. It is possible to use nothing other than a standard Philips screwdriver, but a pair of pliers are handy for removing recalcitrant power-supply connectors, a pair of tweezers are handy for removing and replacing jumpers, or setting DIP switches, a magnifying glass is handy for reading the small print on the motherboard, or on the other hardware, or for seeing if pins have been bent, etc., - and a torch is handy if the lighting is insufficient. - Inexpensive tool kits can be obtained from most computer stores. The motherboard's user manual The motherboard you purchased to build your PC should have come with a user manual that you will need to read before you install in in the PC's case and then add the components. You should have it handy to consult as you configure jumpers/dip switches, or install the components. 2. - You have purchased all of the components, and you have reminded yourself to touch the metal case to earth yourself before you install electronic hardware. Even touch metal, such as a radiator, before handling

electronic components. I have never used an anti-static wrist band that connects to the computer's case by a clip to discharge static electricity, and I have never had any components destroyed by static electricity. Note that I have read How to Build a PC guides that recommend removing the plug from the wall socket. But as long as the computer is switched off at the wall socket, its contents will be earthed, because the earth wire remains connected and open when the wall socket is switched off. By removing the plug from the wall socket the earth link is broken. You should work on a desk or table that is well lit. It's not a good idea to use the sitting-room carpet, because you're likely to suffer from aches and pains, such as sore knees. 3. - You have read through and understood this whole article. - You have accessed other sites offering the same information just in case I have left out something you need to know - or I have provided it inadequately. You have fitted the motherboard so that it does not make contact with the case anywhere other than at the stand-off screws. You have made sure that there are no loose screws or pieces of metal in the case that might short the motherboard. NOTE WELL - BEFORE TURNING THE POWER SUPPLY ON, ENSURE THAT THE VOLTAGE SELECTION SWITCH ON THE PSU IS SET CORRECTLY (230V in the UK -115V in the USA). Failure to ensure this switch is set to the correct voltage will probably destroy your PSU. - And do not use the power supply unit unless it has a load attached to the motherboard, such as the processor, the processor's cooling unit, and RAM memory. Turning the power on with only the motherboard attached to it, could also destroy the power supply unit, which must have a load to function. If necessary, visit http://www.buildyourown.org.uk/ for an illustrated guide on installing a power supply uinit. Other sites with this information can be found by using the Google search box at the top of this page, using a search phrase such as: install + psu or install + "power supply unit", etc. 4. - You have installed the processor in its socket (or slot if you're installing an old Slot 1 or Slot A Pentium or Athlon processor), and fitted the heatsink and fan unit over it according to the instructions that came with it, or by visiting its manufacturer's site. Because of space considerations, you might prefer installing the processor, processor cooler, and RAM memory on the motherboard before you install it in the case. The way in which the processor's cooling unit is installed can

require installing the processor and cooling unit before installing the motherboard in the case. Note that in order to install a particular make and model of processor in a motherboard, that motherboard and its BIOS setup program must support it. All of the recent and current processors made by Intel and AMD just have to be installed in a motherboard that is properly installed in a PC's case with RAM memory, video/graphics card, etc., in order for the supporting BIOS to recognise and configure it for the operating system, which is usually a version of Windows. Make sure that you purchase a heatsink and fan cooling unit that is designed to fit the type of processor that you're using. Note that if there is a plastic covering over a sticky square of thermal compound in the middle of the heatsink where it fits over the central core of the processor, be sure to remove it, because attaching the cooling unit with the film still in place will cause the processor to heat rapidly and burn out. The the processor core is visible behind a perspex window in the centre of some of the older Intel and AMD socket processors. The cooling unit has to be fitted so that the groove in the heatsink fits over the core's slightly raised window in the centre of the top of the processor. This is not the case with the earlier Socket 7 and Super-Socket 7 processors. The chip's processing core is hidden by the casing with these processors, and the cooling units made for them fit flush over the top of them. It is a good idea to have a spare cooling unit on hand, because they're prone to break down. A high-speed processor with a failed cooling unit attached to it might lead to a fried processor - even with built-in overheating protection. So, from time to time, even if your motherboard has built-in overheating shutdown circuitry, which all motherboards have had for over five years, and the motherboard's BIOS or a software utility is set to monitor the processor's temperature and give a warning when it reaches a predetermined high temperature, it is a good idea to check if the cooling unit is functioning properly. You could also have applied a thin layer of special heat-conducting termal compound, available from most computer stores, to the top of the processor as a way of improving the conduction of heat between it and the heatsink. It has to be a thin layer of this paste - otherwise the processor will overheat. If the processor has been installed with its default settings, (at its specified voltage, and it is not overclocked in any way), I would only use thermal paste if there is none already on the heatsink and you experience heatrelated problems, such as erratic fatal exception and page fault error messages, reboots, failure of applications to run properly, etc.

Do not overclock the processor or video card unless you have researched how to do it thoroughly. Note that some motherboards now have the technology that allows the system to overclock itself automatically to provide it with extra power in order to cope with processing demands that are higher than the nonoverclocked system can deal with. The MSI K9A2 Platinum (AMD Socket AM2+) motherboard provides this technology, which it calls Dynamic Overclocking Technology. 5. - Preferably, you should have installed the processor and cooling unit on the motherboard before the RAM modules in order to avoid damaging them. Having touched the metal case of a computer (connected to a wall socket that is switched off) to discharge any static electricity, you have fitted the RAM modules in the DIMM sockets in the order given in the motherboard manual. Some motherboards don't mind what the order of installation is, but others require the banks to be filled in a particular order, starting with Bank 0. DDR/DDR2/DDR3 memory modules running on motherboards that support dual-channel DDR mode must be installed in pairs and must be installed in the DIMM memory slots that support dual-channel mode. See the RAM page on this site for more information on this. 6. - Depending on the methods used by the motherboard, you have set the correct jumper or DIP switch, or BIOS settings for the hardware installed, as shown in the motherboard's manual. All new motherboards now use the BIOS (instead of jumpers or DIP switches) to configure the following settings. The motherboard has a front side bus frequency (FSB) setting, which also sets the speed of the RAM, or the RAM can have its own frequency setting. The processor has a corevoltage setting, and there will be a range of clock multiplier settings. Most current AMD and Intel processors have the clock multiplier setting set within them instead of in the motherboard's BIOS, so that overclocking them by increasing this setting is made too difficult or obscure for most people to attempt. However, both manufacturers sell unlocked processors (usually the most exensive models, but not always) that are unlocked and that allow overclocking of the clock multiplier, which is done via the BIOS. As was mentioned above, the settings can be made by setting jumpers or DIP Switches on an elderly motherboard, or by setting them in the BIOS, which all of the current motherboards now use. The motherboard's manual will have illustrated instructions on how to set the motherboard up to run a particular processor or type of RAM.

Click here! for information on this site on the motherboard settings for the processor. The availability of the settings depends on the motherboard, and, with regard to the clock multiplier settings, also on the type of processor. For instance, some motherboards do not have a range of processor core voltage settings; the motherboard sets the core voltage automatically. Another make of motherboard can provide a wide range of core voltage, bus frequency, and clock multiplier settings. Another make/model of motherboard can automate all or most of the BIOS settings so that they can't be changed. Some motherboards provide only a very limited range of settings. - You have to read a motherboard's manual to find out how the settings are set and what range of settings is available. Most reputable motherboard manufacturers provide manuals for their boards on their websites. Unless you know how to set the variable inbuilt clock multiplier settings on the latest AMD and Intel processors, you will only be able to adjust the system bus frequency (FSB) and core voltage settings - if the motherboard allows it. If they are set manually, you have checked all of the settings again to make sure that they are correct. If you want to know what the overcocking potential is for a paricular make and model of processor, the following sites have forums and/or pages devoted to overclocking:
http://www.tomshardware.com/ http://www.overclockers.com/ http://www.motherboards.org/ http://www.sysopt.com/

7. - You have fitted the motherboard into the case, and fitted the processor and its cooling unit to the motherboard - as described on Page 2 of this article - and you have attached the heatsink and fan to a power point on the motherboard, or to a plug from the power supply unit. If possible, you should buy a cooling unit that attaches to a plug from the power supply unit instead of to the motherboard, because the fan might draw more power than the motherboard connection can supply and short it. 8. - The following information applies to parallel ATA (PATA) IDE hard disk drives... Having fixed the hard disk drive into a suitable internal bay (invisible from the outside of the closed case) with four short screws, you have installed the

drive's cable on to the Primary IDE Channel - as shown in the motherboard's manual - so that, with ATA 33 40-conductor ribbon cables (only for use with an ATA 33 and earlier ATA drive), the side of the cable with the red line along its length is fitted to the side of the channel that has Pin 1. If the new 80-conductor ATA66 ribbon cables are being used, make sure that the blue end connector is attached to the Primary IDE Channel, the black end connector is attached to the drive, and any slave HDD or CD/DVD drive is attached to the grey connector in the middle of the cable. Note that it has come to my notice that 80-conductor IDE cables can come with a colour code different from blue-grey-black, such as red-grey-black. In this case the red connector will be connected to the motherboard. You have plugged one of power cables branching from the PSU into the hard disk drive. If you attach the boot hard disk drive to the Secondary IDE Channel, the system will not start up (boot). Note. - Make sure that IDE cables are properly connected to the motherboard. I have heard of HDDs that have been written off because the cable connector wasn't connected properly to the motherboard. Serial ATA (SATA) hard disk drives The above information applies to parallel ATA (PATA) IDE hard disk drives. Click here! to go to information on this site on serial ATA hard disk drives, which are easier to install because the cable can only be fitted in one way to the motherboard and to the drive itself.
How to mount a hard disk drive To remind you, below are the kind of instructions that are provided in the manual that is provided with a retail boxed HDD, or that can be downloaded from the manufacturer's website for OEM drives that are supported by the vendor instead of the manufacturer. These instructions were provided in the manual of a Seagate drive.

"You can mount the drive in any orientation using four screws in the sidemounting holes or four screws in the bottom-mounting holes. See Figure 4 on page 23 for drive mounting dimensions. Follow these important mounting precautions when mounting the drive: Allow a minimum clearance of 0.030 inches (0.76 mm) around the entire perimeter of the drive for cooling. Use only 6-32 UNC mounting screws. The screws should be inserted no more than 0.200 inch (5.08 mm) into the bottom mounting holes and no more than 0.14 inch (3.55 mm) into the side mounting holes. Do not over-tighten the mounting screws (maximum torque: 6 inch-lb). Do not use a drive interface cable that is more than 18 inches long." 9. - Fitting a CD/DVD/Floppy Disk Drive requires the removal of a covering (facia) from the front of the case through which the drive protrudes. These are easily removed by pressing them out from inside the case. You should not throw these covers away because you might decide to network the PC

and use it without any external drives. If you throw the covers away, you will have to leave the drive in place in order not to leave gaps that look unsightly and prevent the case from cooling properly. Having fixed the drive into one of the FDD bays at the front of the case, you have installed the floppy disk drive's cable to the FDD Channel as shown in the motherboard's manual - so that the side of the cable with the red line along its length is fitted to the side of the channel that has Pin 1. One of the plugged power cables - the smallest of them - branching from the PSU - has been plugged into the drive. The end of a floppy disk drive cable that has the twisted crossover lines is attached to the drive; the other end is attached to the motherboard. See the image below, which shows clearly the end of the cable that has a characteristic twist in some of its conductor wires.

10. - If you are going to use inbuilt graphics on the motherboard (only certain makes/models have inbuilt graphics), all you have to do is plug the monitor into the VGA or DVI port on the motherboard with a VGA or DVI cable that connects to the VGA or DVI port on the monitor. If you have an old PCI or AGP video/graphics card, you have fitted it into its PCI or AGP slot. If you have a new PCI Express x16 graphics card, you have to install it in a long PCI Express x16 slot. Some PCI Express cards require a power connector from the power supply to be connectd to them. The power supply you have purchased or that came with the case must have such a connector. If you want to install two PCI Express graphics cards using either SLI or CrossFire dual-card technology, you have to have a motherboard that supports that specific technology (CrossFire or SLI) and a power supply that has the extra power connectors. Refer to the user manual that came with the graphics card(s) or that you have to download from the manufacturer's website. If you have a sound card don't install it for the time being. You can add it after the operating system (Windows, Linux, etc.) is installed. Many motherboards provide an inbuilt sound chip and external ports that provide good sound quality when connected to a quality set of speakers. If the motherboard has an inbuilt video/graphics card you don't have to connect anything unless the video port is on a riser card, in which case you will have to install the riser card into its slot on the motherboard. Most ATX

motherboards with an inbuilt graphics chip have the video port(s) built into it as well. Some recent motherboards provide both a standard analog VGA port and a digital DVI port that can run two monitors. The new PCI Express slots The video/graphics standard called PCI Express has replaced the AGP standard on new motherboards. Click here! to go directly to the information about the PCI Express standard on the Video & Graphics page on this site. Use your browser's Back button to return to this point on this page. 11. - According to the information in the motherboard's manual, you have attached the collection of plugs (including the LED - light-emitting diode plugs) to the motherboard that are on the end of the wires that run back to the switches and lights on the front of the case. These plugs have to be attached to the motherboard so that the Power-on switch and light, the Reset switch, and HDD-activity light function or light up. You won't be able to switch the PC on unless the Power-on switch is connected to the motherboard, but the other LEDs provide nonessential features, and do not have to be connected to the motherboard for the PC to switch on. The motherboard has been plugged into the power supply unit (PSU). - The PC has been plugged into a wall socket. - The monitor has been plugged into a wall socket, extension to a wall socket (or the back of the PC), depending on the cable. - And the monitor's other cable has been plugged into the video card's port at the back of the case. Note that you must have a power supply unit that has a connector that can connect to the motherboard's 20-pin or 24-pin connector. Click here! to go to the page that deals with power supplies.

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Testing: Assembling the components outside the case If you place the motherboard on the antistatic bag it came in, or on a nonconductive material such as a cardboard box, for testing purposes, you can assemble all of the components without installing them in the case. The hard disk drive should also be placed on non-conductive material so that its circuitry doesn't come into contact with anything that conducts electricity. For this purpose, you can remove the PSU from the case. To start the naked computer all you have to do is place the head of a screwdriver across the pins that the Power-on LED cable in the case is connected to. I never do this myself, because I've seldom had any problems firing a system up successfully after I've installed the main components on the motherboard

and then in the case. On the rare occasions I've had a problem, I've usually fixed it by simply swapping components, such as the RAM modules and the PSU, with known good ones.

How to install the operating system

12. - You are now ready to switch the system on and install the operating system. Installing a version of Windows 9x (Windows 95/98/Me) is much the same as installing Windows XP, but, since Windows XP no longer has an MS DOS interface, it will not come with a boot floppy disk, and will have to be installed from a CD drive unless you have a Windows 9x start-up (boot) disk that you can use to provide CD-ROM access on a system that has no operating system installed. If you are buying a retail version of Windows XP, make sure that your system can be set to boot from a CD/DVD drive in the BIOS setup program, because the Windows XP Home edition comes on a CD or a DVD, not on floppy disks. The first feature that Windows XP and Windows Vista installation routine goes through is the formatting and partitioning of the boot hard disk drive. You do not use the FDISK program, or a third-party program, as you would when partitioning and formatting a hard drive to install a Windows 9x system. If you want to re-partition the boot hard drive, or partition a second or third hard drive, you would run the Windows XP CD. With Windows XP and Windows Vista, the setup program does most of the installation work for you.

Installation advice from a computer forum

If you have followed the above instructions, and you have problems booting the system to the BIOS, or experience any other kind of failure, the following is good advice to follow, because it shows that the problem is likely to be caused by the power supply, which could be faulty, or not delivering enough power... "A lot of individuals make the mistake of hooking up all of their components (sound card, multiple CD-ROM drives, multiple hard disk drives, FireWire/USB cards, network cards, etc., etc.) when first building their system. The best thing to do is build your system with the minimum hardware requirements to POST. [Get beyond the Power-On-Self-Test that is enabled in the BIOS] That is, you'll need to install the processor fitted with cooling unit, motherboard, RAM, and video card, then slowly add to the setup, such as a hard disk drive, and CD-ROM drive to actually install an OS."

Note that you don't have to have a hard disk drive installed to be able to boot as far as the BIOS setup program, or boot from a floppy disk. You can run the BIOS setup program with just the RAM and video card installed on the motherboard. But you obviously have to have a hard disk drive installed to be able to install an operating system.

The Windows Device Manager

If you are installing a hard disk drive (HDD) from another PC that already has Windows 9x (Windows 95/98/Me) installed on it, all you will have to do is press the F8 or Ctrl key when Windows 9x is about to start up, and then select the item on the menu that presents itself that starts the system up in Safe mode. You can then open the Device Manager (Start => Settings => Control Panel => System => Device Manager tab), select the devices that no longer pertain to the system, and use the Remove button to get rid of them. For instance, the HDD Controller might have been from VIA because the previous motherboard used a VIA chipset. But the current motherboard chipset is made by ALi, and so requires an ALi HDD Controller. If you remove the VIA controller in Safe mode, Windows will automatically install an ALi HDD Controller as it starts up. If you have upgraded Windows instead of installing it cleanly it is a good idea to clean the Device Manager of redundant entries, which only appear in it in Safe mode. Clean Up the Device Manager in Safe mode Visit the Device Manager page on this site for information on how to perform such a clean up. It covers Windows 9x and Windows XP. If you require more detailed information, try using a search phrase such as clean + "device manager" + "safe mode" in the Google search box at the top of this page. Note that redundant device entries can also build up when you install new hardware into a new system.

The PC BIOS
If the system has no operating system installed on it, you should be able to switch it on and access the BIOS setup program. You will have to be able to boot the system up to the memory count in order to be able to access the BIOS - usually by pressing the Del key. When you first switch on the PC and it starts up, if the HDD options in the BIOS are all set to Auto (which they should be by default), the HDD will be configured for operation automatically - if it has been installed properly to the motherboard and the PSU.

The motherboard's manual should have a section devoted to BIOS settings, so, if necessary, read through it before you attempt to install Windows. The HDD configuration settings are usually accessed by clicking the first menu item, often called something like Standard CMOS Setup. The HDD IDE ports and their modes of operation are usually enabled under a heading named something like Integrated Peripherals. If any of the hardware, such as the HDD and FDD do not work, make sure that the ribbon cables and power supply connectors are properly connected. The boot HDD has to be connected as the master drive to the primary IDE connection point on the motherboard. Take all of the expansion cards and RAM modules out and re-seat them, making sure that they are properly installed. Screwing the adapter cards in too tightly can sometimes cause them to lift out of their sockets. Check all of the jumper, DIP switch, or BIOS settings (as shown in the motherboard's manual) to make sure that they are set up properly for the type of RAM and processor that are installed. If you cannot get the system running after having checked all of the installations and settings, you should take the case (with all of the devices required to boot a system installed) in to a good computer shop for advice.

How to partition and format hard disk drives

Note that no new motherboards provide device drivers for Windows 95/98/Me, so you can only install those versions of Windows on an old motherboard that supports them. New motherboards only provide the drivers for Windows XP and Windows Vista. I am now assuming now that you have installed a new HDD that has nothing on it, and you have succeeded in entering the BIOS program by pressing the entry key at start-up (usually the Del key), before or after the memory count has taken place. During the memory count, a series of running numbers much like those of a petrol pump roll by on the screen until all of the memory has been counted. You will now have to install Windows - or whichever alternative operating system for which you have the installation disk(s). If the HDD has not been partitioned or formatted, you will have to do this first. If it is a brand new hard drive out of its box, you can assume that it needs to be partitioned and formatted. If your operating system is Windows 95/98/Me, it should have come with a boot floppy disk that can be used to partition and format the HDD. You boot to the Windows XP CD to run the formatting/partitioning utility. Or you can use Windows XP's Disk Management feature within Windows XP to install additional internal or external FireWire or USB hard drives. Click here! to read up on how to access and use this feature on this site.

There are several ways of accessing Disk Management in Windows XP, the easiest of which is to enter diskmgmt.msc in the Start => Run box, which also works in Windows Vista, but you use the Start => Start Search box. For a Windows 9x system, you boot the system from the floppy disk, and then run the DOS FDISK utility that should be on it to create one Primary Partition that covers the whole HDD, designated as the C:\> drive, or a Primary Partition of a chosen size, and an Extended Partition, in which you can create as many logical drives of whatever size you like as long as the total size of all of them does not exceed the total volume of the HDD. Each logical drive will be given a drive letter of its own. The Primary Partition will be the C:\> drive, and the logical drives in the Extended Partition will be the D:\>, E:\>, F:\> drives, etc. The CD/DVD drive will be given the letter that comes after the letter for the last logical drive, which in this case is G:\>. Windows XP and Windows Vista has its own set order for providing drive letters. If you are installing Windows 95/98/Me, click here! to go directly to some important update information on FDISK on the Disk Drives pages of this site. And click here! to go to FDISK links on the first of the four Links pages on this site. (Note that Windows XP/Vista do not use the MS DOS FDISK partitioning utility.) The following information only applies to Windows 95/98/Me systems. If you are having difficulty using it, there are many tutorials on how to use FDISK to partition a large HDD. If you want to find them, just enter a search phrase such as fdisk + tutorial in the Google search box at the top of this page. If partitioning and formatting software was provided with your HDD, it should have come with a full set of instructions on how to use it to get the drive in a state fit for the installation of an operating system. You have to format each drive before the operating system can be installed or data can be transferred to it. You do this by using the Windows boot floppy disk, or the one that came with the HDD. This description applies to the Windows floppy disk. Insert it in the floppy disk drive (FDD), and switch the system on. The system should boot to the A:\> drive. You can now enter the format c: /s command. A warning will come up saying that all of the data on the drive will be destroyed if you proceed with the formatting. Ignore it and choose to go ahead. When the formatting process is over you can repeat the process for the other drives.

You shouldn't use the /s switch in the command when formatting the other drives, because it transfers the system files to the intended boot drive to make it bootable. The other drives are not boot drives. So use the command format d: to format the next drive, etc.

How to install Windows

All brand new motherboards will be able to boot from a CD. In fact, many motherboards dating back to 1998, or thereabouts, will be able to boot from a CD. Versions of Windows from Windows 98 to Windows Vista can be booted from their setup installation CD or DVD. All you need to do is enter the BIOS setup program, usually by pressing the Del key as the memory count takes place. There will be an option that sets the boot order of the FDD, the HDD, the CD-ROM drive, etc. All you have to do is enable the CD drive as the boot drive, and then reboot with the Windows 98, Windows XP, or Windows Vista CD/DVD in the drive. Windows should bring up its opening window that gives you the options to run its setup program. Note that if a PC's system is so elderly that it can't boot from the installation CD/DVD of a particular version of Windows, you shouldn't try to install Windows XP or Windows Vista on it, because the PC is unlikely to meet the minimum system requirements to run those versions of Windows. No new motherboards provide device drivers for Windows 95/98/Me, so you can only install those versions of Windows on an old motherboard that supports them.
Microsoft has extended support for Windows XP Home and Media Center Editions February 23, 2007. - Microsoft has extended its support for Windows XP Home and Windows XP Media Center Editions to match the support it has always intended to give Windows XP Professional Edition. Support for those two versions was supposed to end five years after their introduction, but Windows XP Home Edition was released in October 2001, and Windows Vista was only officially made available on January 30, 2007, so, although Microsoft had to extend its support for them, it has done so very generously. Windows XP Home and Windows XP Media Center Editions are to receive free mainstream support until April 2009. Mainstream support includes feature requests, security updates, hotfixes, and support. After mainstream support ends, five years of extended support begins. Extended support provides free security updates and paid-for support. Official support for all three versions of Windows XP (including Windows XP Professional Edition) will end in 2014. Always disable the Virus Warning/Anti-Virus Protection BIOS setting before installing Windows 95 or Windows 98 Note that when enabled the BIOS setting that appears as Virus Warning / Anti-Virus Protection makes the BIOS flash a warning message whenever there's an attempt to access the boot sector or the partition table. Under normal circumstances this feature should be enabled. It only protects the boot sector and the partition table, not the entire hard disk. The setting, when enabled, causes problems with the installation of certain software, such as the installation routine of Windows 95 and Windows 98, which will fail.

Therefore it must be disabled before those versions of Windows are installed. (Windows XP and Windows Vista are not affected.) Moreover, many disk diagnostic utilities that access the boot sector can also trigger the warning message. The setting should therefore be disabled before using such utilities.

If the motherboard is so elderly that it doesn't allow booting from a CD, you will have to boot the system from a boot floppy disk. You can download the files to create a boot floppy disk for most of the versions of Windows from http://www.bootdisk.com/. To do that the CD-ROM drivers have to be installed, because you are still going to install Windows from its CD. If the boot disk installs CD-ROM drivers, all you have to do is change from the A:\> prompt that the floppy brings to the screen to the drive letter of the CD-ROM drive, which will be D: with only one HDD and one CD drive installed. Just type cd d: in at the A:\> prompt to change to D:\>. All you have to do to run the Windows setup program is type setup, or setup.exe in at the D:\> command prompt. As Windows installs, if you don't want to or know how to customise the installation, just choose the express setup option that installs the most commonly used features. You can always access the CD to add or remove features, such as Backup, etc. In fact, it is a good idea to create a folder called, say, Win98SE, if that is the version of Windows being installed, and copy the whole of the Windows CD into it. Then, if Windows needs to access its CD for any reason, you can use the Browse option to direct it to that folder instead of loading the CD in the CD drive. If you have a copy of the CD on its own partition of a drive, or on a separate drive, just clicking the drive's icon in My Computer will bring the Windows CD's interface to the screen.

An even better way of accessing the contents of the Windows CD is to use the FDISK utility that is on the boot floppy disk to create the HDD into a Primary Partition with and Extended Partition that is made up of as many logical drives of any size you want. The Primary Partition will be the C: drive, and the each logical drive within the Extended Partition will be treated by Windows as if it were a HDD on its own. So, you could partition a 20GB HDD into a Primary partition of 5GB, and have an Extended Partition split into three logical drives, each of 5GB. The logical drives with be given the drive letters D, E, and F by Windows, and the CD drive will be given the drive letter G. In this way, when you format or defragment the C:\> drive, you will only have 5GB of disk space affected instead of the whole 20GB HDD. Windows 95, 98, Me, XP and Vista are Plug and Play (PnP) operating systems. Windows will install all of the hardware it detects and has the drivers for automatically. If Windows does not have the driver, it will ask you to insert the driver CD or floppy disk, etc., into its drive, and use the Browse option to find the correct drive. If Windows or you yourself do not have, say, the video card's driver, it will use the standard VGA driver. This will enable you to access the Internet to download the driver from its manufacturer's website and install it.
The latest device drivers A CD containing the software device drivers should be provided with most of the items you can buy and install in a home-built computer - the motherboard, the video card, the sound card, the dial-up modem, and the disk drives (CD/DVD and hard disk drives). The processor and the RAM don't use device drivers. Windows uses an .inf file to configure the monitor that can be obtained from its manufacturer's site if Windows doesn't have it in its driver library and therefore installs and uses its standard monitor file. However, because the supplied drivers are often out of date, after the computer is up and running, it's always a good idea to visit the respective manufacturers' sites for the latest drivers - especially for the motherboard, which uses a range of drivers - an AGP video driver, IDE busmaster drivers, and a USB controller. You can also update DirectX, the gaming software driver provided by Microsoft. If the correct drivers are installed, the correct manufacturers' names of the devices will be shown in the Device Manager. If only standard names are showing, you need to install the manufacturer's drivers. In some cases, you need to know how the manufacturer displays its name. For instance, Seagate hard disk drives have the letters ST at the beginning of the entry that describes one it its drives (as in ST32132A). If you see an entry under Disk drives in the Device Manager that begins with ST, then you know that a Seagate drive is installed.

Several reboots later, you should be able to boot up without any interference from Windows. You should now check the Device Manager. The quickest way to open it in Windows XP is to enter devmgmt.msc in the Start => Run box. In Windows Vista, enter devmgmt.msc in the Start => Start Search box.

The thumbnail image above is the Device Manager's window. Click it to read an article on it and view full-size images. Images of the Device Manager in Windows 95/98/Me and Windows XP systems are shown. If you see any item of hardware with a yellow exclamation mark, or a red cross against it, this means that there is a problem with the device. Either it is conflicting with another device, it has not been installed properly, or the wrong device has been installed. You will have to remove it and try installing the manufacturer's driver. In Windows XP/Vista right-click on the device and choose Uninstall.

How to repair/install/reinstall any version of Windows

Windows Support Center - http://aumha.org/ Visit http://www.bootdisk.com/ for many tutorials on the installation and reinstallation of Windows, software, and device drivers. The site provides the files for every kind of start-up disk, and there is also a good BIOS optimisation guide.

Installing the sound card in a Windows 95/98/Me and a Windows XP/Vista system
With Windows up and running you can shut the system down and add the sound card to the system. With this done, when you start up, Windows will detect the new hardware and install the correct drivers, or request that you load the CD/DVD with the drivers on it and then browse to the correct folder containing the drivers. The sound card should come with instructions on how to load the drivers. If Windows loads the drivers in the Device Manager under the heading Other Devices, and places yellow exclamation marks beside them, in Windows XP/Vista, right-click on any device that appears under Other Devices, and choose Uninstall from the menu that present itself. In Windows 95/98/Me, use the Remove button to get rid of them, and load the drivers directly from the CD/DVD, or by highlighting and then clicking the installed monitor in the Device Manager, or by using the Add New Hardware utility to select the Sound, video, and game controllers category from which to load them, either from within Windows itself, or from the manufacturers CD.

If you want to hear sound from CDs/DVDs you have to attach a special sound cable to the sound card and CD/DVD drive. One of these will have come with the CD/DVD drive. You can also purchase them from computer stores. Just connect one end of the cable to the only port it can possibly fit into at the back of the CD-ROM, (it is usually next to the IDE cable), then connect the other end to the sound card's 'CD-IN' connection point, as shown in the sound card's manual. If your motherboard has an inbuilt sound chip and sound ports, refer to the motherboard's manual for the location of the 'CD-IN' connector. You can also install your modem, printer, and scanner now. Install one device at a time so as not to confuse Windows. That's it. - You can now explore Windows to your heart's content.

Useful information
There are many good articles worth reading at Tweak3D, such as Build a PC, Case Cooling/Cutting, Install a HDD, Install Memory (RAM), Install Add-in Cards, Install a CD/DVD Drive, Install Linux, Multi-boot Windows and Linux, and several articles on overclocking processors and video cards - to name just a few. The more you read the better, because one article from one source will cover an aspect that another article from a different source neglects or misses out. There are also many links provided on the fourth Links page on this site that are Windows related (look under the letter W), and there are numerous Windows newsgroups that you can read, or post questions to in order to resolve any problem you may experience. Look under the letter B on the Links page for "Build Your Own PC" sites. See the Newsgroups page on this site. If my descriptions are not clear enough for you, you will be able to find many sites offering illustrated information on how to install computer components by entering a phrase such as "How to install a xxxx" (where xxxx stands for the device, such as RAM, hard disk drive, etc.) in the Google search box at the top of this page. If you have any problems, you can also search previous and current Usenet postings via the Groups heading on the main Google page.

Useful tips
After you have the PC running, never install more than one piece of hardware, or one application or utility at a time

In this way, if the PC begins to misbehave in any way, you will know that the chances are excellent that the new addition is responsible. You can then remove it in normal mode, or in Safe mode. But if you install many devices and programs at the same time, you won't be able to tell which one was responsible. Antivirus applications in particular, such as those provided by McAfee, can make a PC behave in weird ways if their scanning options are enabled and don't agree with the system. For Windows 98 systems, you should enter MSConfig in the Start => Run box, and click the Startup tab. All of the programs listed are loaded at start-up, and you can disable them by removing the tick from their check boxes Windows 95 (or 98) users can download the Start-up Control Panel from www.mlin.net, which is installed in the Control Panel. You will have to download the Microsoft Installer to install Mike Lin's programs. He tells you where to find it on his site. Being able to disable the start-up programs and then re-enable them one at a time is an invaluable troubleshooting technique. Avoiding IRQ conflicts An article called Complex Configurations and IRQ Information for the AMD Processors on AMD's site discusses IRQs and how IRQ conflicts can be avoided. The article provides a suggested order for installing devices in order to avoid such conflicts. However, nothing is mentioned about the BIOS setting called APIC mode. APIC mode (Advanced Programmable Interrupt Controller) is a BIOS setting made available to Windows 2000 and Windows XP systems that increases the number of IRQ (Interrupt Request) lines available to the processor. When APIC is disabled in a Windows 2000/XP system, only 16 IRQs (0 to 15) are available to the processor, as is the case with Windows 9.x systems, instead of the 23 that are available with this setting enabled. This reduces the amount of hardware that can be run on the system to the level of Windows 9.x system, and can therefore be the cause of unnecessary hardware conflicts. Spilling drinks over keyboards and notebook computers Carbonated soft drinks are very acidic. Over the years, I have seen various electronic devices rendered completely irreparable due to spills of fizzy drinks. The cleanup technique is to get it wet and then soak it up. Blowing air over the wet device serves only to concentrate the residue that can act as a conductor of electricity and blow the circuitry. You can wash a mouse and a keyboard with a mixture of warm water and washing-up liquid, and several rinses. Just make sure that it is left to dry out properly before you attempt to use it. In the case of a notebook PC, use a wet sponge or cloth, then immediately apply a dry sponge or towel. Never attempt to wash it in the way you can with a mouse and a keyboard. The idea is to draw the liquid into the dry material. If necessary use several towels, and keep the sponge dry. The idea is to syphon the bad stuff away from the notebook. Always keep liquids far away from computers. How to remove accumulated dust and clean a desktop computer Before working inside the case of a desktop computer, or with any of the components, make sure that you earth yourself according to the instructions provided on Page 1 of this section of this site. To remove accumulated dust in desktop computer, all you have to do is use cotton buds to loosen the dust and a can of compressed air (available from most computer shops) to send blasts of it into the the air intake(s) and outlet(s) of the fans used in the processors's cooling unit, power supply unit (PSU), and the case fans.

You can also use the compressed air on the keyboard to blow out accumulated dirt. I use cotton buds to remove any grime or dirt from around the outlets and drive bays. With some desktop keyboards, the keys can be removed so that you can clean underneath them. Just make sure that you put a particular key back where it came from or you'll get the wrong character coming up on the screen when you press the key. A relatively cheap can of compressed air costing a few pounds or dollars can last for several cleanings. It produces directionally controllable, intense bursts of dry, clean air, and usually comes with a long plastic nozzle that's used for cleaning dust out of crevices and other areas that are difficult to reach. There should be instructions on how to use it in the packaging, or on the can itself. Take care when aiming compressed air at any of the fans. A strong blast can over-rev a fan sufficiently to cause damage to its motor or bearings. To prevent such damage, keep the fan from spinning as you clean it by, for example, inserting a clean cotton bud between the fan's blades to secure it, or by holding the blade fast with a pair of tweezers. Quite a bit of dust can be expelled with the first few blasts of air. Note that with some makes of can it's possible for a super-cooled liquid to be expelled if you invert the can, which won't do either the computer or anything else the liquid may come into contact with any good, so make sure that you follow all the instructions that come with the particular product you use. If there is dust anywhere else, such as on the motherboard, you can use a fine painter's brush or something similar to remove it. If you use a hair-dryer or a vacuum-cleaner to blow dust away, make sure that you don't place the air outlet too close to the electronic components because of the danger of a discharge of static electricity that can easily destroy them. For that reason, you shouldn't use a vacuum-cleaner to suck dust away, only use it to blow air if it has that option. The TFT LCD screens of desktop and laptop computers are far less robust than the glasscovered screens of standard CRT monitors, so care should be taken when cleaning them. The laptop's user manual should provide tips on how best to keep the screen clean. A desktop computer should never be used if the processor's cooling fan or any of the fans in the power supply unit are dead, because permanent damage may be the result. Replacement fans can be purchased from most good suppliers. If the computer is out of warranty, you can open the case and install a new heatsink and fan unit over the processor, or install a new PSU yourself. But if the computer is still under warranty, or if you're not confident of your abilities, it's best to get a qualified technician to do the job. A free temperature, fan-speed, and voltage-monitoring utility SpeedFan from http://www.almico.com/speedfan.php is a free thermal monitoring utility that can monitor the temperatures, fan speeds, and voltages of many computer systems. Not all of SpeedFan's features work on all systems, but temperature monitoring, which is its most-important function, works on most systems that are equipped with the kind of thermal sensors that most laptops have.

Troubleshooting: Windows XP boot CD

BartPE - Bart's Preinstalled Environment - an essential recovery and repair utility August 9, 2005. - BartPE (Bart's Preinstalled Environment) is a free utility that allows you to create a bootable Windows XP CD that loads its essential

files into RAM memory and operates from the CD completely independently of an installed version of Windows, allowing you to troubleshoot and repair an ailing installation of Windows. Bart says, it's "... a complete Win32 environment with network support, a graphical user interface (800x600) and FAT/NTFS/CDFS file system support. Very handy for burn-in testing systems with no OS, rescuing files to a network share, virus scan and so on. This will replace any DOS bootdisk in no time!" - http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/ Visit the Recovering Windows XP section of this site for more information on BartPE. Common problems You have built a computer by following all of the instructions, and it won't boot AND Windows 95, 98 and XP won't install on a self-built computer Click here! to go to the page containing the short articles listed above.

More websites to do with building a PC

Here are some good US sources of hardware. Many more can be found by using the Google search box at the top of this page. Price Watch - http://www.pricewatch.com/ PC Connection - http://www.pcconnection.com/ Tiger Direct - http://www.tigerdirect.com/ NewEgg.com - http://www.newegg.com/ More information on building PCs and servers... Build Your Own Server - http://www.pcmech.com/byos/index.htm Build Your Own PC - http://www.buildyourown.org.uk/ Motherboard Homeworld - http://www.motherboards.org/ Tom's Hardware Guide - http://www.tomshardware.com/ PC Mechanic - http://www.pcmech.com/build.htm Hardware Central - http://www.hardwarecentral.com/hardwarecentral/tutorials/109/1/ PCNineOneOne - http://www.pcnineoneone.com/howto/buildit1.html