My new toy...
I pensioned off the P4/3.0 and dragged my system into the 90's
Monday, June 8, 2009 by Jafo | Discussion: Personal Computing
The old box served well for over half a decade ..... but eventually life was passing me by.... particularly during the FULL boot time being around 10 minutes....
It was [in its day] a fairly decent machine...P4/3.0 in an ASUS P4P800e Deluxe mobo with 2 gig [4x500] ram and eventually about the 'fastest' AGP card still around....a HD3850 with 512 GDDR3...all in an old Lian Li P60, powered by a TruePower 550 Watt PSU.
Then I got hacked....ending up as a mule server for email spam [I think] ... along with my having a Win 7 RC to experiment with prompted me to 'do it' sooner, rather than later.
So, off I went to my fave Comp shop armed with a list...
...and a credit card.
Just a little time later.... I had a boot full of boxes and not much money left.
Thursday last it was....as I get it all home and eagerly started poking and prodding and lots of RTFM-ing.
Friday, and out came the drill and jigsaw to cut a hole into the MoBo tray of the Case ..... so the after-market cooler would fit.... bugger of a bloody big thing it was, too.
By Saturday arvo I was sitting at the dining table with fingers in my ears as I switched it on...no OS, etc....no Keyboard or Mouse .... just to see if lights would come on....and there'd be NO smoke......
They did...and there wasn't.
Sunday...was OS time...so in went Win7 RC1 [32 bit].
Took 4/5ths of eff-all time to install and there it was in all its quasi-Vista 'splendour'.
About the only way to describe it all [other than black - as in the box] was/is "fucking fast".
I ain't got the MoBo drivers all in [Win7 compatibility]...and haven't rebooted yet since the Graphic Card driver install....
Can't even see it in real detail/scale as it's currently on a 17" CRT ....
...and I'm learning all about what won't always work as expected [like Sysmetrix]...but darn it's good...
The 'bits' I already have....to migrate across to the new machine ar the bits that plug in .... The DiNovo Edge KB ...the MS Explorer mouse ...the ASUS M221u LCD....scanners....printers....Logitech G15 wheel and pedals...etc.
What I got....
Lian Li PC-A6010 case [black]
Antec TruePower Quattro 1000w PSU
ASUS P6T-se X58 i7 MoBo
Intel i7 920 2.66Ghz LGA1366 CPU
OCZ 6G-Triple [3x2G] PC12800 Gold Ram
CoolerMaster V8 CPU Cooler [that bloodey big thing]
Vantec EZ2 Sata hot-swap racks x2
1TB Seagate Sata2 7200 HD x2 [for backup/data]
250G Seagate Sata2 7200 HD x2 [for OS]
ACR-105 Multi card reader
LG Sata DVD-RW x2
XFX 1G GTX285 Black Edition [vid]
When Win7 is finally released I'll opt for the 64bit ver...and possibly double the ram....
Funniest thing is....I thought sysmetrix wasn't working....looking at CPU load and ram usage.....till I looked closer....
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Reply #42 Thursday, June 11, 2009 12:41 AM
That sounds like a reinstall to me.
Hope we see you in the morning Paul.
Reply #43 Thursday, June 11, 2009 1:01 AM
Gah....I was hoping not to have to reinstall.....figuring there was an easier way.
Next time I'll install the OS while the second drive is out of the box.
What caused it was some quaint anomaly....Win7 hid its rescue partition on the wrong damn drive.
The OS is on 'C' where it's supposed to be....the hidden part is on 'D' where it's not supposed to be.
Both drives are physically identical....and hot removing either gets the same result.....kinda fun, really...
I can't find any hits/reference to this same issue.
BTW...all 4 drives were raw at OS install....none formatted.
I had the wild idea of drive-imaging and putting 'c' into what remains of 'd' ...but DI7 isn't compatible with Win7.....and probably wouldn't work anyway...
Reply #44 Thursday, June 11, 2009 1:10 AM
Your simple ideas are a cluster fuck. How 'bout we stick with that for a bit?
...damn, I just fired up a 4 quad Opteron rig....I smell something burning...................................
Reply #45 Thursday, June 11, 2009 3:43 AM
The Win7 built-in imaging proggy gets upset when restoring....probably because I'm trying to do it without that 'D' drive in...so it can't rewrite the 100 meg part.
I'm getting closer to a win re-install....there doesn't seem to be any shortcut solutions....
Reply #47 Thursday, June 11, 2009 7:41 AM
Just last month I bought a Mac Pro (two Intel i7/2.26 GHz, 8 GB, two 1 TB SATA disks, and some sort of 512 MB ATI Radeon graphics card).
The speed is very enjoyable.
I run Mac OS X 10.5, VMware, 32 bit XP, 64 bit Vista, and some sort of 64 bit SuSE Linux (11.1, I think).
Reply #48 Thursday, June 11, 2009 8:34 AM
hold on there is a pm for you with a link for a program that will do that coming your way right now Paul
Reply #49 Thursday, June 11, 2009 11:14 AM
There is no short cut - one: windows can not do it - even though it caused it to begin with.
Two: that partition on d drive is not what you think it is...
Three: lets get it right the next time!
Reply #50 Thursday, June 11, 2009 11:22 AM
Shelby...I'll look at the files you've sent me....but I'm not at all fazed by Win7 wanting a system part of 100meg...it's SFA in a box that has 2.5 TB ....it's just Win7 saw 4 HDs...all blank and raw....and I said whack the OS in one of the 250s....and it stuck the sys part in one and the OS in the other.... the one drive I wanted to be able to hot-swap out.
It could have stuck it in one of the 2 1TB drives....I wouldn't have cared.
It could have stuck it where it's supposed to be...in the root of the OS drive.
But no, it stuck it exactly where I didn't want it......my fault for not making sure....by leaving the drive out....[wasn't to know it'd be random with its locating].
Reply #51 Thursday, June 11, 2009 12:13 PM
OK Paul
We will see whats what in the long run...
Reply #52 Thursday, June 11, 2009 1:45 PM
Clear it all up, and snap the additional drives when the OS is where it belongs... C:\
-- boot again, but this time, create a **partition** C:\ with a single addressable fake drive.
-- snap the extra drives in.
-- immediately go to the bios screen and verify detection; do not even try missing this step.
-- boot again.
-- Win7 is ready.
Reply #53 Thursday, June 11, 2009 7:26 PM
I can 'easily' reinstall Win7 whilst the problem other drive is removed, so win7 won't put the reserved partition on the wrong drive....but would prefer not having to reinstall at all.
The issue is not about having a separate partition reserved by the OS for boot info recovery/whatever......it's about having it located on the WRONG physical drive....
Reply #54 Thursday, June 11, 2009 10:50 PM
Correct - you can try and use the cd iso I sent you to do that.
Reply #55 Friday, June 12, 2009 9:30 AM
When I built this computer, I originally wanted a dual, dualcore Opteron, but it was way too expensive. Then I looked at the Q6600, but that was too expensive ($535 at the time). I finally settled on this AMD Athlon 64 X2 5200+, and I am totally happy with it.
Reply #56 Friday, June 12, 2009 10:59 AM
Solved it the sensible way.....removed the second drive [D] and reinstalled Windows.....so ALL of it is now in 'C' .....where it is bloody supposed to be....
Reply #57 Friday, June 12, 2009 11:01 AM
Noe that you have had to install windows twice I wouldn't consider it new anymore. Time to upgrade!
Reply #58 Friday, June 12, 2009 12:43 PM
As you are in Oz it probably installed upside down
Reply #59 Friday, June 12, 2009 4:57 PM
Nothing like a good deserved sleep to prevent a few weeks (or days!) worth of second-guessing a past through nightmares or dreams of a solidly stable initial setup.
Format b:\... hey, who took away my 1.44 floppy. 
Virtualize this IO transit gigs; I:\4.7 reserved - data backups -- pouf, in a drawer.
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Reply #41 Thursday, June 11, 2009 12:24 AM
First thing....name the drives (ie: C: System, D: Storage).
Second thing....you're in charge, not Windows. Clean the D drive and install Win7 on C: (use the partition option during install. Name partition: W: Win7). If the boot Mgr is already active, blow an image (or MBR) back into C: after you kill D:.