K8N newbie

[DeRanger]

Hi all!

I just had my MSI K8T NEO FIS2R motherboard crap-out on me (problem with
the memory slots so the tech says) and to save myself a 3 - 6 week wait
to get a new one I have purchased an Asus K8N.

I will be using all my original components (A64 3400+, two sticks of
Kingston DDR 400, Maxtor 200 gig SATA, ATI x800 pro, SB Audigy) and was
wondering if there is anything special I need to know. From what I can
gather there are no 3rd party drivers necessary to install the OS as the
board will recognize my hard drive automatically without any raid
drivers, is this true? I have downloaded the latest nForce3 256 Win2K
unified drivers but am not sure if I need anything else as these don't
seem to include an AGP driver. Do I need the Cool & Quiet drivers, the
latest bios (1004?) or anything else to make the install go smoother?

I will be installing Windows 2000 pro

Thanks very much for any help, comments or suggestions!

 

[Bobbie Leslie]

Dell, the K8N designator in your subject block leads me to think of
the ASUS K8N-E. Maybe you ought to post this in the MSI newsgroup,
huh?? After all, you poinmt out your MSI K8T NEO FIS2R motherboard
and that I'm pretty sure is an MSI motherboard. Get better responses I
think.

 

[DeRanger]

Dell, the K8N designator in your subject block leads me to think of
the ASUS K8N-E. Maybe you ought to post this in the MSI newsgroup,
huh?? After all, you poinmt out your MSI K8T NEO FIS2R motherboard
and that I'm pretty sure is an MSI motherboard. Get better responses I
think.

I indicate that my MSI board is kaput as an aside and am asking advice
on installing my new ASUS K8N (non-E) motherboard. Sorry for the
confusion but would appreciate any advice on properly installing my ASUS
board. Thanks

 

[aberger]

People seem to have more problems then they should with the SATA
drives. If it was me I'd keep a small (~40GB) PATA drive in the system
just to make O/S installation go smoothly, but I'm a Luddite in that
sense.

You might try booting up enough to go into the BIOS and see if the
system recognizes the SATA drive. If it does, then you can probably
install the O/S onto it.

When I installed XP Pro I didn't do anything special and completely
installed windows with all of its default drivers and then went back in
and installed the specialty drivers for the video card, the motherboard
resources. I was pretty deliberate and always installed the latest
drivers I could find and always installed one driver at a time and then
rebooted to see that it installed. Also, I always created a restore
point so I could undo any damage.

Finally, after each driver installed I ran the system for a while and
looked for funnies before I proceeded. Maybe that's too anal for you,
but I'm a hardware designer and I don't like it when computers smoke.


Arnie

 

[Ben Pope]

People seem to have more problems then they should with the SATA
drives. If it was me I'd keep a small (~40GB) PATA drive in the system
just to make O/S installation go smoothly, but I'm a Luddite in that
sense.

Worked fine for me using A7N8X Deluxe, and MSI K8N Neo4 with a WD Raptor.

You might try booting up enough to go into the BIOS and see if the
system recognizes the SATA drive. If it does, then you can probably
install the O/S onto it.

Yes, and having the SATA controller driver on a floppy helps, too.

When I installed XP Pro I didn't do anything special and completely
installed windows with all of its default drivers and then went back in
and installed the specialty drivers for the video card, the motherboard
resources. I was pretty deliberate and always installed the latest
drivers I could find and always installed one driver at a time and then
rebooted to see that it installed. Also, I always created a restore
point so I could undo any damage.

Well, I do chipset, reboot, then everyting else, and reboot once or
twice to bed everything down.

Finally, after each driver installed I ran the system for a while and
looked for funnies before I proceeded. Maybe that's too anal for you,
but I'm a hardware designer and I don't like it when computers smoke.

Sounds like it must take you a while But if it works, it works.

Usually I get the thing booted, if anything dodgy happens, I'll run
memtest86 and prime95 ASAP.

Ben