Preparing for building a new PC - how do I install OS!

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publiusdiamond

New Member
I'm about to build my girlfriend a PC out of some old (but not that old) parts. I have at the moment:
A motherboard (no AGP or PCI-Express) (came with my old PC, shop bought)
Processor (2.93GHz, she's lucky!)
Some RAM (512mb)
An old GPU (an FX 5200...she won't need it for uber games)

I'll obviously need an opitcal drive, case and a power supply, as well as a monitor and an OS.

My question is, how do you load an OS onto a new system? Does it detect the optical drive straight off? Once I've assembled it all, and booted it up, how do I get it to detetc the optical drive? I won't need a floppy disk will I?

If anyone can help me and if anyone sees any potential problems I would be grateful.
 
Provided you connected everything properly to the motherboard and have you master / slave settings correct on your IDE devices it should automatically detect the cd drive. So after that you should be able to pop in a copy of windows xp and it should take off. If it doest check to make sure your boot order is set to look for a bootable device on your optical drive before it looks at the hard drive. You shouldn't need a floppy disk drive.
 
thats correct, its pretty easy to find. Usually computers are setup by default to look at removable disk drives first before they look at the hard drive in case you need to boot from a cd or floppy. So you probably won't have to mess with it. Just thought i'd mention it though just in case.
 
you'll have to get drivers for anything windows doesn't automatically detect when you get it running. Just make sure that you know what all hardware is in the pc, video card, modem, network adapter ect... If you can't figure it you can use a program like Everest Home to check and see whats in ur computer. Also it's always a good idea to install the drivers that came with the video card or the most recent ones downloaded from the manufacturer website so that you can insure smooth video performance. I know that ATI cards don't run properly with windows default drivers. Although you're using an Nvidia card in that setup. Other than drivers though there shouldn't be any problems. Report back if there are.
 
Thanks very much; most of those problems might crop up once I've got the OS installed, right? If that's the case then I can sort them no problem, it's just all the Pre-OS stuff I have trouble with!
Thanks.
 
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