Rebuild XP Pro....alternatives?

[SL]

Hello all,

moving next week and am going to rebuild my AMD2000+ homebuilt pc. I have
not done the XP rebuild as much as any old Win 3.1,95.98 rebuild. I have
current hardware and XP has generic drivers for all devices. The old
operating systems worked best putting in all the hardware one piece at a
time. (ex. modem,sound etc...) Not bad, as I could think through any
conflicts in the process.

I have only once left all the stuff in (not a lot grant you) on my brothers
pc I built. XP loaded a correct driver for all the hardware and the system
worked fine. My system is gonna be filled up this time and I want to
dictate resources specifically. This is to avoid my video capture cards and
sound card from cometing for IRQ's etc.

Is there any way of dictating the resource allocation from a fresh
reformat/rebuild? Some set of parameters upon installation to do this?
Disable ACPI?

What are the options here? I dont mind going the old route if it offers the
best guarantee.

thanks group,
SL

 

[Lemon Jelly]

SL - typed:

Hello all,

moving next week and am going to rebuild my AMD2000+ homebuilt pc. I
have not done the XP rebuild as much as any old Win 3.1,95.98
rebuild. I have current hardware and XP has generic drivers for all
devices. The old operating systems worked best putting in all the
hardware one piece at a time. (ex. modem,sound etc...) Not bad, as I
could think through any conflicts in the process.

I have only once left all the stuff in (not a lot grant you) on my
brothers pc I built. XP loaded a correct driver for all the hardware
and the system worked fine. My system is gonna be filled up this
time and I want to dictate resources specifically. This is to avoid
my video capture cards and sound card from cometing for IRQ's etc.

Is there any way of dictating the resource allocation from a fresh
reformat/rebuild? Some set of parameters upon installation to do
this? Disable ACPI?

What are the options here? I dont mind going the old route if it
offers the best guarantee.

Disabling ACPI also effects how well Power Management works & is
functionality I'd personally not compromise. The next possibility is to
*disable* P&P OS in your Bios (or set it to the opposite of how it's set
now):
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q314068&SD=MSKB
I'm not sure if doing so on an existing installation will stick, you may
need from within your Bios, also force ESCD data to be reloaded or Save
Configuration Settings depending on what it called.

The next option also retains ACPI & that's to read up the IRQ INT table
in your Bios manual/pdf & install PCI cards in the most optimal slots
which don't conflict with other cards or on-board devices. Some cards,
especially from a well known sound card supplier don't share IRQs very
gracefully on some systems.

 

[Alex Nichol]

I have only once left all the stuff in (not a lot grant you) on my brothers
pc I built. XP loaded a correct driver for all the hardware and the system
worked fine. My system is gonna be filled up this time and I want to
dictate resources specifically. This is to avoid my video capture cardsand
sound card from cometing for IRQ's etc.

Is there any way of dictating the resource allocation from a fresh
reformat/rebuild? Some set of parameters upon installation to do this?
Disable ACPI?

I would *not* turn off ACPI - it is going to be wanted in due course,
and it is then a pain to put back, as it affects the undermost Hardware
abstraction layer (HAL) used for the system.

There is much less need to bother about IRQs these days for two reasons:
One is that XP in conjunction with ACPI uses the queues properly as
queues, so as soon as one interrupt has been passed to the service
concerned the system is ready to handle the next one on that queue - it
is not locked out. And second, most motherboards use new APIC (Advanced
Peripheral Interrupt controller) chips that provide for interrupts up to
at any rate 31 (and maybe more, but I haven't seen things get that far.
So you will see devices happy on things like IRQ 25. Just go ahead, let
the setup work things out for itself, and don't try to coerce things

I'd start off with fancy devices - like video capture if separate from
the video card, and USB devices disconnected,, and install them later.
It is also important if you have a ZIP drive, and probably other
external storage not on IDE or SCSI to have those disconnected. If you
don't you are liable to end up with the system on drive F:, which does
not actually matter, but is inconvenient.