Installing new Components in an old Computer

S

Seum

Hello Experts :)

These were the new components:

1 ASUS M4A88TD-V-EVO -USB3
2 Corsair 2 GB DDR3-1333 PC3-10600 CL9 Value Select PC Memory
Module (VS2GB1333D3)
3 Corsair Memory 750W TX series ATX Power Supply
4 AMD Athlon II X2 255 - 3.1 GHz - AM3 Socket (ADX255OCGQBOX)

I had a computer case and a few HDs already.

First I installed the Corsair ATX PSU and, when the old Intel board
showed signs of demise, I installed the new ASUS. Then the problems
started. The ASUS did not like previous HD IDE drives - Inaccessible
Boot Device. I tried another drive and got the same result.

I had a fairly new 750GB Sata HD but there was no OS on it already and I
wanted to install Win2K. It was divided into 3 partitions, like 350GB,
250GB and 200GB. The 350GB partition was empty and I tried to install
Win2K on that but it insisted on a FAT drive, so I went along. It
continued with Fatting the partition for a half hour and eventually gave
up with the message: "Setup was unable to format drive C: The drive may
be damaged. Setup cannot continue."

Do I suspect a BIOS setting, adjustment needed?

Suggestions invited :)

TIA
 
P

Pen

Hello Experts :)

These were the new components:

1 ASUS M4A88TD-V-EVO -USB3
2 Corsair 2 GB DDR3-1333 PC3-10600 CL9 Value Select PC
Memory Module (VS2GB1333D3)
3 Corsair Memory 750W TX series ATX Power Supply
4 AMD Athlon II X2 255 - 3.1 GHz - AM3 Socket
(ADX255OCGQBOX)

I had a computer case and a few HDs already.

First I installed the Corsair ATX PSU and, when the old
Intel board
showed signs of demise, I installed the new ASUS. Then the
problems started. The ASUS did not like previous HD IDE
drives - Inaccessible Boot Device. I tried another drive and
got the same result.

I had a fairly new 750GB Sata HD but there was no OS on it
already and I wanted to install Win2K. It was divided into 3
partitions, like 350GB, 250GB and 200GB. The 350GB partition
was empty and I tried to install Win2K on that but it
insisted on a FAT drive, so I went along. It continued with
Fatting the partition for a half hour and eventually gave up
with the message: "Setup was unable to format drive C: The
drive may be damaged. Setup cannot continue."

Do I suspect a BIOS setting, adjustment needed?

Suggestions invited :)

TIA
I don't know how you'll fix it, but I think win2k won't deal
with a 350GB drive. Its limit is 128GB. Also later editions
of NTFS are not compatible with win2k. Win XPsp2
is compatible with larger sizes.
 
S

Seum

Pen said:
I don't know how you'll fix it, but I think win2k won't deal
with a 350GB drive. Its limit is 128GB. Also later editions
of NTFS are not compatible with win2k. Win XPsp2
is compatible with larger sizes.

Thanks Pen - very interesting comment. I suspect that MicroSh*t
wants to bury the Win2K. It seems that Win2K misjudged the size of
the partition. It started off without any problems. I'll try to split
the partition and leave 120GB for Win2K. Then I'll make another effort
at installing ole Win2K there.
 
P

Paul

Pen said:
I don't know how you'll fix it, but I think win2k won't deal
with a 350GB drive. Its limit is 128GB. Also later editions
of NTFS are not compatible with win2k. Win XPsp2
is compatible with larger sizes.

Win2K SP4 can deal with large drives and 48 bit LBA addressing.

To be prepared for a large drive, you slipstream SP4 into
a new installer CD with a program like NLite from
nliteos.com. (When I needed to do that years ago, I used
a program called AutoStreamer, and it worked fine.)

What Seum can try (I think this is what I did a long time ago),
is partition the drive first, and keep *everything* below 137GB
while the initial install is taking place. Leave the upper 600+ GB blank.
Then, install SP4. After SP4 is in place, then you can take a
partition manager program, and "stretch" the partitions to
take up the available space.

I believe I had a 250GB drive, and I knew if I used all of it,
without SP4 present, there'd be trouble. So to start, when using
my Win2K SP2 installer CD, I kept the partitions below 137GB,
and ran that way for a while. When SP4 got installed, then I
could use Partition Magic, to stretch the last partition all
the way to the end of the disk. It worked like a charm.
I keep my Win2K SP4 slipstreamed CD, in case I need to
repair install (because now, with the large partition,
it would not be safe to repair install with the Win2K SP2
disc any more).

What I sometimes do, is prepare a disk before using the
installer on it.

If you need to FAT32 format a large partition, you can use
the Ridgecrop formatter. This will format up to a 2TB partition
in FAT32 (whereas the Microsoft OS is somewhat restrictive
in what it'll do for you).

http://www.ridgecrop.demon.co.uk/download/fat32format.zip

( http://www.ridgecrop.demon.co.uk/index.htm?fat32format.htm )

Win2K would likely prefer to use NTFS partitions, given a chance.
But it works with FAT32 as well. And it doesn't have a problem
working with a FAT32 partition prepared by a third party
formatter.

It's possible to move a Win2K system to a different motherboard,
if you know in advance you're going to do it. It helps
if the old setup was using the standard Microsoft disk driver
for the hardware. Then, if the new motherboard also uses that
standard drive, you avoid the Inaccessible Boot Device thing.

Another way to do that (ensure that a known driver is available),
is to install a disk controller card in a PCI slot, in the old
motherboard. Install the driver for it. And move the boot
drive over to the PCI card. Later, when you want to boot Win2K
on the new motherboard, you move both the disk and the PCI card
to the new computer. And then, since the driver is already in
place on C:, it should boot up. You can then move the
hard drive, over to a motherboard port. I use a Promise Ultra133
TX2 card for this purpose (when moving one of my older
IDE drives).

But if you're dealing with a hardware failure, out of the blue,
then the last two paragraphs aren't going to help you. Then
it is time for a repair install, taking note of the size of the
partition, and using a slipstreamed service pack installer disc
known to support large disk drives.

HTH,
Paul
 
S

Seum

Paul said:
Win2K SP4 can deal with large drives and 48 bit LBA addressing.

To be prepared for a large drive, you slipstream SP4 into
a new installer CD with a program like NLite from
nliteos.com. (When I needed to do that years ago, I used
a program called AutoStreamer, and it worked fine.)

What Seum can try (I think this is what I did a long time ago),
is partition the drive first, and keep *everything* below 137GB
while the initial install is taking place. Leave the upper 600+ GB blank.
Then, install SP4. After SP4 is in place, then you can take a
partition manager program, and "stretch" the partitions to
take up the available space.

I believe I had a 250GB drive, and I knew if I used all of it,
without SP4 present, there'd be trouble. So to start, when using
my Win2K SP2 installer CD, I kept the partitions below 137GB,
and ran that way for a while. When SP4 got installed, then I
could use Partition Magic, to stretch the last partition all
the way to the end of the disk. It worked like a charm.
I keep my Win2K SP4 slipstreamed CD, in case I need to
repair install (because now, with the large partition,
it would not be safe to repair install with the Win2K SP2
disc any more).

What I sometimes do, is prepare a disk before using the
installer on it.

If you need to FAT32 format a large partition, you can use
the Ridgecrop formatter. This will format up to a 2TB partition
in FAT32 (whereas the Microsoft OS is somewhat restrictive
in what it'll do for you).

http://www.ridgecrop.demon.co.uk/download/fat32format.zip

( http://www.ridgecrop.demon.co.uk/index.htm?fat32format.htm )

Win2K would likely prefer to use NTFS partitions, given a chance.
But it works with FAT32 as well. And it doesn't have a problem
working with a FAT32 partition prepared by a third party
formatter.

It's possible to move a Win2K system to a different motherboard,
if you know in advance you're going to do it. It helps
if the old setup was using the standard Microsoft disk driver
for the hardware. Then, if the new motherboard also uses that
standard drive, you avoid the Inaccessible Boot Device thing.

Another way to do that (ensure that a known driver is available),
is to install a disk controller card in a PCI slot, in the old
motherboard. Install the driver for it. And move the boot
drive over to the PCI card. Later, when you want to boot Win2K
on the new motherboard, you move both the disk and the PCI card
to the new computer. And then, since the driver is already in
place on C:, it should boot up. You can then move the
hard drive, over to a motherboard port. I use a Promise Ultra133
TX2 card for this purpose (when moving one of my older
IDE drives).

But if you're dealing with a hardware failure, out of the blue,
then the last two paragraphs aren't going to help you. Then
it is time for a repair install, taking note of the size of the
partition, and using a slipstreamed service pack installer disc
known to support large disk drives.

HTH,
Paul


Thaaaannnkksss again Paul.

You take my breath away. You seem to know more than the rest of us put
together, or at least 100s of me. :)
 
S

Seum

Seum said:
Thaaaannnkksss again Paul.

You take my breath away. You seem to know more than the rest of us put
together, or at least 100s of me. :)

I reduced the size of one of the partitions down to 114GB, then bad
news. Almost at the end of the ASUS User Guide is the rotton news that
the board does not support Win2K. What non-Micros*** OS would be closest
to Win2k or WinXP?

A few years ago I played with Simply Mepis for a few hours and I was
surprised that I was able to cruise the Internet so quickly. However,
I'll try to follow your instructions and rescue ole Win2K.

TIA
 
P

Paul

Seum said:
... You seem to know more than the rest of us put
together ...

Um, no, not really.

It's just no one else has the time to spend that I do :)

There are plenty of people who know this stuff, but most
are too busy to share their time.

At one time, when I had access to USENET, all I did was
lurk. I used to read Sun Managers, and use what I learned
from them, to keep our Sun computers at work in good shape.
They provided some excellent pointers, to stuff I could access,
so I could do a better job than our IT department.

The world is full of Windows users, and there are likely
millions out there who could answer your questions. And I'm just
a home user, not an IT guy. So what's really amazing, is there
are so few on USENET to answer your questions. Where do they
all hide ? I mean, when a person uses a search engine, sooner
or later, there are hits that expose the existence of USENET,
so you'd think more would be curious...

Paul
 
P

Paul

Seum said:
I reduced the size of one of the partitions down to 114GB, then bad
news. Almost at the end of the ASUS User Guide is the rotton news that
the board does not support Win2K. What non-Micros*** OS would be closest
to Win2k or WinXP?

A few years ago I played with Simply Mepis for a few hours and I was
surprised that I was able to cruise the Internet so quickly. However,
I'll try to follow your instructions and rescue ole Win2K.

TIA

My approach is, I don't give up, until I hit a brick wall.

I would go to the Asus download page, and select "WinXP" as the OS,
then download and examine the drivers, for the evidence that they
don't really support Win2K.

Win2K and WinXP share a lot, in terms of underlying architecture. In the
past, it would have been relatively easy to make the same driver, work
with both.

A possible place you can get stuck on a modern system, is if you use
integrated graphics to drive your monitor. The VGA driver (a couple hundred
megabytes in size) may refuse to install on Win2K, and may do an OS check.
And then your 3D games wouldn't be accelerated. That's an example of a
brick wall. On one system, I installed an ancient card, an FX5200,
to solve that problem, as drivers exist for it. It's not a good
card, but it has drivers.

Windows also has a built-in VESA driver. That is what runs your
screen initially at 640x480 or 800x600. But that built-in driver
isn't the one you want for long term usage. It can be used if
the proper VGA driver isn't available, but the tiny screen would
drive you crazy.

You'd start with something like the chipset package, and see if
it has any drop dead issues. That one shows on the Asus site as
an 81.33 MB download. I'd start by examining that with something
like 7ZIP, opening INF files and seeing what OS support
is really in there.

LAN drivers are generally pretty good. Sometimes you even get DOS
support on new LAN chips. So LAN chips or interfaces, tend to get
better driver support (multiple flavors of NDIS).

I managed to install Windows 98 on one of my Core 2 systems. It
wasn't advertised, but I knew based on the chipset maker, that
it had potential. It's really a matter of going through all the
drivers, seeing which ones are essential, and which ones can be
worked around. On that system, I wasn't using any PCI Express stuff,
and if I tried to run Windows 98 and plug in some other cards, it
might not have worked too well. Windows 98 will only use one core
of the processor, but it was still smoking fast as an OS.

*******

Linux is an alternative. It's especially handy, to pop in a Linux LiveCD
and surf the web, to look for solutions to your Windows installation
efforts. So even if you have only one computer, Linux is great
for maintenance stuff.

You'll find the occasional distro, that can't get your LAN running on the
first try. I find those problems hard to debug (unless a second
computer is available and running). Every distro seems to do the
LAN stuff slightly differently.

Where I run into trouble with Linux, is some of the decisions the
distro makers have made. With Ubuntu, what they did with sound
was a sticking point. Sound didn't work well on low end systems,
and the solution they had required some pretty modern features
(I think some parts of the solution run "real time priority",
and rely on the best of the time keeping options for Linux).

They also tend not to document everything to an equal level.
I like to use things like "telnet" and "FTP" on my own home
LAN, for quick experiments. And I might end up wasting half
the day, figuring out how to do it. The purpose of "telnet",
is for connecting to a computer where the GUI has died and
the keyboard no longer works. You should be prepared for
some contingencies like that with Linux, at least if
you want to rescue something you're working on, like some
document you haven't saved. (Yes, there are more secure
protocol alternatives. I even use them sometimes, but it
means carrying a floppy diskette from one computer to
another, with security keys on it. A PITA! Eventually,
you get sick of walking that floppy around.)

My best experience with Telnet and FTP, was on my old MacOSX
box. It had a simple tick box for Internet services. You could
tick "FTP", do a quick file transfer with another machine,
then turn it off again. Those kinds of protocols are not
recommended for "Internet exposed" machines, as given enough
time, you'll get hacked. If you're behind a NAT box, that's
a bit better (i.e. don't port forward your Telnet setup :) ).

The best level of control, comes with Gentoo distro. In there,
I could cut out the sound subsystem I didn't like. But I found
desktop integration wasn't as "colorful" as Ubuntu. So on the
one hand, the solution could be "technically tuned" the way
I wanted, but couldn't compete with the colorful Ubuntu desktop.

This is a screenshot of my first Gentoo install, showing the
USE flags. The "-pulseaudio" entry, turns off pulseaudio, and
uses an older sound solution instead. It can take up to 24 hours
of compile time, to build Gentoo (if you include enough packages),
but they give excellent recipes on how to do it, so it's like
baking a cake. With Ubuntu, it's like being given a store bought
cake, and not liking the icing, and the cake tastes a little strange.
With Gentoo, you're responsible for more of the baking process.

http://img198.imageshack.us/img198/8893/gentoo.gif

I have a longer list of USE flags, on some of my other installs.
That was just my first attempt at it. You build that list
gradually, as you're working on one package after another.
When you "rebuild world" later, that's when those get reused,
and help make the whole environment consistent.

Paul
 
N

Nobody > (Revisited)

I don't know how you'll fix it, but I think win2k won't deal
with a 350GB drive. Its limit is 128GB. Also later editions
of NTFS are not compatible with win2k. Win XPsp2
is compatible with larger sizes.

For the OP as well...
(In case someone else has more/better info, feel free to tell it.)

I'm no longer familiar with W2K, last time I played with it was in 2K on
an 80gig drive, but it should see the size properly in the setup part
(kind of a version of FDISK). Set the boot partition (C:) to about
20gig (?,see below) there, format as FAT32(?,see below) and it should
install. After the bare install, use whatever partition/format tool in
W2K to set up the rest of the drive in NTFS. make those about 120gig or
less. You'll have to set up W2K to install apps on the D: or E:

IIRC, there is a way to set up a tiny bootloader partition, but I don't
remember it and my GoogleFu isn't working to find a proper combination
of keywords to find it.

W2K may also be confused, and the size may be screwing up the error
message about FAT. You may be able to do the setup as NTFS if you select
up the boot partition as 120gig or less.




--
"Shit this is it, all the pieces do fit.
We're like that crazy old man jumping
out of the alleyway with a baseball bat,
saying, "Remember me motherfucker?"
Jim “Dandy” Mangrum
 
R

RayLopez99

You take my breath away. You seem to know more than the rest of us put
together, or at least 100s of me.   :)

More like the latter. Anybody who still wants to use Win2k cannot be
said to be a power user.

RL
 
S

Seum

RayLopez99 said:
More like the latter. Anybody who still wants to use Win2k cannot be
said to be a power user.

RL

Hey Rey :) and a Good Today,

I have not the very slightest interest in power using. My main interest
is to get rid of that Win7 Explorer and I am looking for alternative.
Win2k is slow but with faster machines it should speed up. Of course I
would not keep any valuable data on that OS.

I guess our aims are aaaalllll different.
 
S

Seum

Paul said:
Um, no, not really.

It's just no one else has the time to spend that I do :)

There are plenty of people who know this stuff, but most
are too busy to share their time.

At one time, when I had access to USENET, all I did was
lurk. I used to read Sun Managers, and use what I learned
from them, to keep our Sun computers at work in good shape.
They provided some excellent pointers, to stuff I could access,
so I could do a better job than our IT department.

The world is full of Windows users, and there are likely
millions out there who could answer your questions. And I'm just
a home user, not an IT guy. So what's really amazing, is there
are so few on USENET to answer your questions. Where do they
all hide ? I mean, when a person uses a search engine, sooner
or later, there are hits that expose the existence of USENET,
so you'd think more would be curious...

Paul

Great work. Continue this and you will continue to have a sharp
brain and a longer life :)
 
R

RayLopez99

Hey Rey :) and a Good Today,

I have not the very slightest interest in power using. My main interest
is to get rid of that Win7 Explorer and I am looking for alternative.
Win2k is slow but with faster machines it should speed up. Of course I
would not keep any valuable data on that OS.

I guess our aims are aaaalllll different.

Then why bother with a faster machine? If it ain't broke, don't fix
it is an American saying.

Just saying...

RL
 
S

Seum

Paul said:
Um, no, not really.

It's just no one else has the time to spend that I do :)

There are plenty of people who know this stuff, but most
are too busy to share their time.

That's understandable. Life these days pulls us in all sorts of directions.
At one time, when I had access to USENET, all I did was
lurk. I used to read Sun Managers, and use what I learned
from them, to keep our Sun computers at work in good shape.
They provided some excellent pointers, to stuff I could access,
so I could do a better job than our IT department.

Smart man :)
The world is full of Windows users, and there are likely
millions out there who could answer your questions. And I'm just
a home user, not an IT guy. So what's really amazing, is there
are so few on USENET to answer your questions. Where do they
all hide ? I mean, when a person uses a search engine, sooner
or later, there are hits that expose the existence of USENET,
so you'd think more would be curious...

Paul

I have enjoyed playing with computers and I built my first one from
scratch around 1985 and it used Windows 3.0. I have heard of Usenet but
I have never visited or been a member.

Thanks again for your info.
 
S

Seum

Nobody said:
For the OP as well...
(In case someone else has more/better info, feel free to tell it.)

I'm no longer familiar with W2K, last time I played with it was in 2K on
an 80gig drive, but it should see the size properly in the setup part
(kind of a version of FDISK). Set the boot partition (C:) to about
20gig (?,see below) there, format as FAT32(?,see below) and it should
install. After the bare install, use whatever partition/format tool in
W2K to set up the rest of the drive in NTFS. make those about 120gig or
less. You'll have to set up W2K to install apps on the D: or E:

IIRC, there is a way to set up a tiny bootloader partition, but I don't
remember it and my GoogleFu isn't working to find a proper combination
of keywords to find it.

W2K may also be confused, and the size may be screwing up the error
message about FAT. You may be able to do the setup as NTFS if you select
up the boot partition as 120gig or less.

Thank you Pen. My recollections of working with Win2K are very similar
to yours.
 
R

RayLopez99

I have enjoyed playing with computers and I built my first one from
scratch around 1985 and it used Windows 3.0. I have heard of Usenet but
I have never visited or been a member.

You must mean 1995, as Windows 3.0 was not invented in 1985.

RL
 
S

Seum

Paul said:
My approach is, I don't give up, until I hit a brick wall.

I would go to the Asus download page, and select "WinXP" as the OS,
then download and examine the drivers, for the evidence that they
don't really support Win2K.

I visited www.asus.com and they signed me up. Now I have a username and pwd
:). I spent several hours around that web site and came away with very
little to show for it. The pushed forms at me to fill out - mostly about
the ASUS motherboard I had bought. I got out of there without being able
to access files about Win2K or WinXP.
Win2K and WinXP share a lot, in terms of underlying architecture. In the
past, it would have been relatively easy to make the same driver, work
with both.

That sounds encouraging.
A possible place you can get stuck on a modern system, is if you use
integrated graphics to drive your monitor. The VGA driver (a couple hundred
megabytes in size) may refuse to install on Win2K, and may do an OS check.
And then your 3D games wouldn't be accelerated. That's an example of a
brick wall. On one system, I installed an ancient card, an FX5200,
to solve that problem, as drivers exist for it. It's not a good
card, but it has drivers.

My Sony is model SDM-HX75 and I know it has both digital and analog
connections but I have not seen any integrated graphics. Fact is that I
wouldn't know that even if it punched me in the nose :) I have several
video cards and I will try them if I run into another hole.
Windows also has a built-in VESA driver. That is what runs your
screen initially at 640x480 or 800x600. But that built-in driver
isn't the one you want for long term usage. It can be used if
the proper VGA driver isn't available, but the tiny screen would
drive you crazy.

I remember that old fall back situation but I didn't know it was
continuing until today.
You'd start with something like the chipset package, and see if
it has any drop dead issues. That one shows on the Asus site as
an 81.33 MB download. I'd start by examining that with something
like 7ZIP, opening INF files and seeing what OS support
is really in there.

I really had trouble with the www.asus.com web site today and I gave up.
LAN drivers are generally pretty good. Sometimes you even get DOS
support on new LAN chips. So LAN chips or interfaces, tend to get
better driver support (multiple flavors of NDIS).

Would they be similar to the software that comes with DSL and router
software?
I managed to install Windows 98 on one of my Core 2 systems. It
wasn't advertised, but I knew based on the chipset maker, that
it had potential. It's really a matter of going through all the
drivers, seeing which ones are essential, and which ones can be
worked around. On that system, I wasn't using any PCI Express stuff,
and if I tried to run Windows 98 and plug in some other cards, it
might not have worked too well. Windows 98 will only use one core
of the processor, but it was still smoking fast as an OS.
Amazing!

*******

Linux is an alternative. It's especially handy, to pop in a Linux LiveCD
and surf the web, to look for solutions to your Windows installation
efforts. So even if you have only one computer, Linux is great
for maintenance stuff.

That would be great for an emergency. I still have that CD.
You'll find the occasional distro, that can't get your LAN running on the
first try. I find those problems hard to debug (unless a second
computer is available and running). Every distro seems to do the
LAN stuff slightly differently.

Where I run into trouble with Linux, is some of the decisions the
distro makers have made. With Ubuntu, what they did with sound
was a sticking point. Sound didn't work well on low end systems,
and the solution they had required some pretty modern features
(I think some parts of the solution run "real time priority",
and rely on the best of the time keeping options for Linux).

They also tend not to document everything to an equal level.
I like to use things like "telnet" and "FTP" on my own home
LAN, for quick experiments. And I might end up wasting half
the day, figuring out how to do it.

Isn't that what makes life interesting :)
The purpose of "telnet",
is for connecting to a computer where the GUI has died and
the keyboard no longer works. You should be prepared for
some contingencies like that with Linux, at least if
you want to rescue something you're working on, like some
document you haven't saved. (Yes, there are more secure
protocol alternatives. I even use them sometimes, but it
means carrying a floppy diskette from one computer to
another, with security keys on it. A PITA! Eventually,
you get sick of walking that floppy around.)
Understood.

My best experience with Telnet and FTP, was on my old MacOSX
box. It had a simple tick box for Internet services. You could
tick "FTP", do a quick file transfer with another machine,
then turn it off again. Those kinds of protocols are not
recommended for "Internet exposed" machines, as given enough
time, you'll get hacked. If you're behind a NAT box, that's
a bit better (i.e. don't port forward your Telnet setup :) ).

I was aware of Telnet a long time ago but I never got close to it.
FTP I have done regularly for decades. It's an easy one.
The best level of control, comes with Gentoo distro. In there,
I could cut out the sound subsystem I didn't like. But I found
desktop integration wasn't as "colorful" as Ubuntu. So on the
one hand, the solution could be "technically tuned" the way
I wanted, but couldn't compete with the colorful Ubuntu desktop.

If only we had more time to play :-(
This is a screenshot of my first Gentoo install, showing the
USE flags. The "-pulseaudio" entry, turns off pulseaudio, and
uses an older sound solution instead. It can take up to 24 hours
of compile time, to build Gentoo (if you include enough packages),
but they give excellent recipes on how to do it, so it's like
baking a cake. With Ubuntu, it's like being given a store bought
cake, and not liking the icing, and the cake tastes a little strange.
With Gentoo, you're responsible for more of the baking process.

http://img198.imageshack.us/img198/8893/gentoo.gif

I have a longer list of USE flags, on some of my other installs.
That was just my first attempt at it. You build that list
gradually, as you're working on one package after another.
When you "rebuild world" later, that's when those get reused,
and help make the whole environment consistent.

Paul

Amazing Paul. Thanks again for all the information :)
 
P

Paul

Seum said:
I really had trouble with the www.asus.com web site today and I gave up.

OK, a couple drivers I looked at, for WinXP, were protected by
InstallShield, so I really couldn't look at the CAB files
and see everything in there.

It looks like the ATI chipset driver (the one that would do
disks, USB, PCI and the like), only has an obvious SMBUS
driver in it. That might not be absolutely critical to
Win2K installing.

I would put your Win2K install in the "experimental"
category.

In the BIOS, set "Full Screen Logo" to [disabled], so
you can observe the BIOS sequence properly.

It appears the BIOS puts your SATA ports in IDE mode
by default, and that should be sufficient for your
Win2K install purposes. If using a SATA drive, I would
plug the drive into one of the ports 1-4 group.

So, to start the experiment.

1) Install a graphics card which has available, a Win2K driver.
I think my 7900GT met the requirement. My collection
of FX5200 cards would work. Modern stuff will be as
bad as the built-in 880G - no Win2K driver. YMMV.

The VGA connector on the back of your motherboard, will
be able to use the build-in Win2K VESA driver, but the ATI
downloads to install a proper 880G driver (full screen res.)
will likely be checking the OS version, and stop in its
tracks. The ATI driver dependencies include .NET 2, DirectX 9,
and probing the OS and falling on its face, if WinXP or later
is not the OS.

2) The RealTek network driver on your motherboard CD, may be
sufficient for Win2K. If not, check this driver and see
if there is Win2K for 8111E. If you have a working network
driver, you can "dial out" and see us :) Put this on
some storage media, you can see from your fresh Win2K install.

http://www.realtek.com.tw/downloads...d=5&Level=5&Conn=4&DownTypeID=3&GetDown=false

3) If you have a working network, you can then use a browser
in there, to bootstrap yourself (find further drivers, if
that is possible). You can then download your FX5200 driver
or whatever, and get back to full screen resolution.

When I did my Win98 install, it was purely for the amusement
value. I don't use that install. I use Win2K as a maintenance
OS. If I want to work on a Windows drive, do stuff to the
C: on it, I can boot a second drive with Win2K and use
Partition Magic to do backups or whatever. Right now, that's
the main value I get from Win2K.

In terms of support from Microsoft, you have your Win2K CD,
you have available to you Service Pack 4, as well as
Update Rollup 1 Revision 2. That rollup has some of the
Windows Updates, after SP4. And you will occasionally run
into some software, that wants the rollup on there as well.
Thats as good a patch job as I could do. While there is
at least one web site that talks of "AutoPatcher", there
is no archive with all the stuff for Win2K, so patching
past the Rollup, isn't available. At least, I couldn't
find it.

KB891861-v2 where the "v2" means the second release of the rollup file.
Install this after SP4.

http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=18997

Good luck,
Paul
 
R

RayLopez99

Good luck,
    Paul

Paul don't waste any more time with this Third World guy who cannot
afford to run anything better than W2K, yet he insists on running it
faster. Jeez is he posting from Sahara or what? Price of a used
Win2k system is probably less than $50 USD. I actually threw one out,
with 2 GB Seagate drives, the other day.

RL
 
S

Seum

Paul said:
OK, a couple drivers I looked at, for WinXP, were protected by
InstallShield, so I really couldn't look at the CAB files
and see everything in there.

It looks like the ATI chipset driver (the one that would do
disks, USB, PCI and the like), only has an obvious SMBUS
driver in it. That might not be absolutely critical to
Win2K installing.

Good, I have a few ATI cards and some drivers.
I would put your Win2K install in the "experimental"
category.

OK, I'm for that.
In the BIOS, set "Full Screen Logo" to [disabled], so
you can observe the BIOS sequence properly.

It appears the BIOS puts your SATA ports in IDE mode
by default, and that should be sufficient for your
Win2K install purposes. If using a SATA drive, I would
plug the drive into one of the ports 1-4 group.

So, to start the experiment.

1) Install a graphics card which has available, a Win2K driver.
I think my 7900GT met the requirement. My collection
of FX5200 cards would work. Modern stuff will be as
bad as the built-in 880G - no Win2K driver. YMMV.

See way below. I have 4 video cards and two are ATIs. The graphics cards
don't fit. The new ASUS motherboard is slightly different but not usable
with my graphic cards. Seems that, in the manufacture, the board was
pushed further to the rear so the video cards could not enter the slots.
More below. I may have to return it.
The VGA connector on the back of your motherboard, will
be able to use the build-in Win2K VESA driver, but the ATI
downloads to install a proper 880G driver (full screen res.)
will likely be checking the OS version, and stop in its
tracks. The ATI driver dependencies include .NET 2, DirectX 9,
and probing the OS and falling on its face, if WinXP or later
is not the OS.

2) The RealTek network driver on your motherboard CD, may be
sufficient for Win2K. If not, check this driver and see
if there is Win2K for 8111E. If you have a working network
driver, you can "dial out" and see us :) Put this on
some storage media, you can see from your fresh Win2K install.


http://www.realtek.com.tw/downloads...d=5&Level=5&Conn=4&DownTypeID=3&GetDown=false

If I install the SATA drive in the "new" computer, with the one
partition formatted NTFS, is it likely that I will be able to install
Win2K, when the Win2K CD is in the CD Tray? or do I need to make further
preparations before trying to install Win2K? It's been most of a decade
since I have done these types of operations and it embarrasses me.
3) If you have a working network, you can then use a browser
in there, to bootstrap yourself (find further drivers, if
that is possible). You can then download your FX5200 driver
or whatever, and get back to full screen resolution.

When I did my Win98 install, it was purely for the amusement
value. I don't use that install. I use Win2K as a maintenance
OS. If I want to work on a Windows drive, do stuff to the
C: on it, I can boot a second drive with Win2K and use
Partition Magic to do backups or whatever. Right now, that's
the main value I get from Win2K.

Intriguing :)
In terms of support from Microsoft, you have your Win2K CD,
you have available to you Service Pack 4, as well as
Update Rollup 1 Revision 2. That rollup has some of the
Windows Updates, after SP4. And you will occasionally run
into some software, that wants the rollup on there as well.
Thats as good a patch job as I could do. While there is
at least one web site that talks of "AutoPatcher", there
is no archive with all the stuff for Win2K, so patching
past the Rollup, isn't available. At least, I couldn't
find it.

I'm sure that I have the CD, and at least the 4 SPs.
KB891861-v2 where the "v2" means the second release of the rollup file.
Install this after SP4.

http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=18997

Thanks again for all that info. Seems like it will take me a week to
analyze it
:)

Good luck,
Paul

Thanks once more Paul. :)

I tried to follow some of your suggestions today, especially about the
video card. I had 4 video cards ready and had drivers for two of them.
Guess what? None of the video cards fit. The end of the teeth on each
card was about 3/16" past the end of the slot the teeth were supposed to
go into. I loosened all the screws holding down the board and pushed it
back as far from the rear as possible but it made no difference. Seems
that the board was moved closer to the rear of the computer when
manufactured. I have had at least 6 motherboards in that box over the
years and I never had this problem.

I have also been trying to get a HD that I can try to install Win2K on.
I have a SATA and I managed to reduce the size of one partition on it to
114GB. Today I put the SATA drive into its external case and hooked it
up to Advent. I looked for the format and was offered NTSF and ExFat. I
chose NTSF and am hoping that this is the NTFS that accomodates Win2K.

Have a great weekend :)
 

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