Are all installed IDE drives properly identified by the BIOS and displayed on the start-up screen? Any modern PC should be able to identify the drive by model number, brand, capacity, and usually the transfer mode. Some brand name PCs may not display a start-up BIOS registration screen, so you'll have to enter CMOS Setup to view the information. If the key stroke required to enter CMOS Setup isn't displayed on the screen as the PC begins to boot, you'll need to look it up in the documentation or on the Internet. Common keys used to access CMOS Setup at boot are, DEL, F1 and F2.
Any time two IDE drives share a single cable, the computer needs a way to tell them apart. This can be accomplished by using jumpers on the drives to set one to "Master drive" and the other to "Slave drive" or through selection by the cable. The Master/Slave setting is fixed by a single jumper, usually on the back end of the drive between the power socket and the IDE connector. The labeling for the jumpers is usually in shorthand, "M" for Master and "S" for Slave. Some older drives include a jumper for "Single" when the drive is the only drive installed on the ribbon. Since all modern computers support both a primary and a secondary IDE interface, it's not necessary with a two drive system to hang them both on the same cable. The boot hard drive should always be the Master on the primary IDE interface. If the CD, DVD, or any other IDE drive is to share the same cable, it should be set to Slave.
Most new IDE drives support Cable Select (CS) which means the pin 28 connection in the cable will determine which drive is Master and which is Slave. The 80 wire ribbon cables that should come with all new motherboards and drives support cables select and have color coded connectors: Motherboard IDE Connector - Blue, Slave IDE connector (middle connector on cable) - Grey, Master - Black. Cable select is supported by custom 40 wire ribbon cable and older drives; these are usually found in brand-name systems. The jumpers on both drives should be set to cable select if you aren't setting one as Master and the other as Slave.
If the drives still don't load up properly, make sure the power cable is seated in the drive's power socket, which can take a bit of force. The ribbon cable connectors must also be seated all the way into the IDE port on both the drives and the motherboard, or adapter card if you're are using a RAID adapter. The most common reason for a cabling failure of this sort is that the connection was partially dislodged when you were working in the case on something else. Try a new ribbon cable. While cable failures are rare, it can happen, and it's a favorite trick of investigative reporters writing articles about computer repair rip-offs to intentionally introduce a bad IDE cable into a PC just to see how many parts a shop will sell them.
Does the hard drive spin up? I blog it lately this in the power supply diagnostics, but I'll repeat it here. When the PC powers up, you should hear the hard drive motor spinning up the drive and the gentle clunking sound of the read/wrote head seeking. If I can't tell whether or not the drive is spinning up, even with my fingers on the drive's top cover. A spun up drive resists a slow twisting movement just like a gyroscope. Don't flip it quickly or play with it or you may damage the drive, not to mention touching the circuitry against a conductor can cause a short. Just power down, put the drive back in and continue with the diagnostics. If it's a SCSI drive, you're on the wrong diagnostics page, but maybe some new IDE hard drive will adopt the SCSI practice of a jumper to delay spin up. SCSI drives offer this option since you can install up to 15 on a single controller, and spinning them all up at once would cause the hardiest power supply to droop. Try swapping the power lead or running the drive on another power supply. Try the hard drive in another PC before you conclude that it's dead. USB enclosures are the easiest way to test hard drives, and I just put up a page for recovering laptop hard drive data with a USB enclosure.
Are the ribbon cable connectors and the IDE ports on the drives and the motherboard keyed such that the cable can only go one way? Check the pin 1 location on all of the connectors and ports. On IDE drives, pin 1 is traditionally located next to the power cord, but it's not a 100% rule for all time. Motherboards can be pretty strange about cable ports. The pin 1 location on the motherboard is normally marked with an arrow, a dot, a white square, anything to show one end of the interface as different from the other. If the motherboard won't register any drive you attach, even on new cables, and if those drives are spinning up, it indicates that either the IDE controller is bad or all the drives you've tried are bad. You can try running on the secondary IDE controller if you've only been working with the primary, but the next stop is installing an add-in IDE adapter or replacing the motherboard.
The troubleshooting procedures for IDE drives that aren't recognized by the BIOS are identical, whether they are hard drives, CDs, DVDs, tapes or any other IDE device. If the BIOS registers the installed IDE drives correctly and the drive you're having problems with is a CD or DVD, proceed to the CD or DVD Failure diagnostics.Does the BIOS report the transfer mode correctly, ie, UDMA/100, ATA/66? UDMA must be enabled in CMOS, or set on "Auto," for high speed transfers. All new IDE hard drives require the 80 wire ribbon cable, at least for high speed operation. You can check CMOS Setup to see if there's a manual override to select the higher speed transfers, though the automatic settings should pick it up. Also try isolating the hard drive as the sole device on the primary controller. If you're adding a new hard drive to an older system, it's possible that motherboard / BIOS simply doesn't support the faster transfer, even with the new cable. I'd be leery of flashing the BIOS to try to get the speed up, even if the motherboard manufacturer supplies it. Check the settings in CMOS and make sure the drive transfer rate isn't being turned down to some ancient PIO mode. CMOS may allow you to set both the PIO mode and the UDMA mode for each individual drive. The default setting should be "Auto" for all of these. Check all of the operating system related drive settings. Make sure you have enough RAM installed for the applications you are running. If the system bogs every time you open a new window or scroll down a page and you hear the hard drive seeking itself silly, you're probably swapping out to virtual memory on the hard drive too often. RAM is cheap, 256 MB isn't a bad investment in your sanity.
Can you install an operating system, or access the drive with any generation of FDISK to create or view partitions? Check again that the ribbon cable is fully and evenly seated and there aren't any "read only" jumpers set on the drive (normally only found on SCSI's). Try a new ribbon cable. If this doesn't do it, it sounds like either the drive's MBR is messed up, or there's a problem with the way the software is communicating with the BIOS, which really shouldn't happen. If you don't mind losing whatever info is on the drive, you can try FDISK/MBR and see if it helps
Sunday, August 10, 2008
Installation & Driver Signing
To ensure the best possible user experience, installation of both a hardware device and its software driver should run as seamlessly as possible with minimal user intervention. This article will provide tools and guidelines to help you create installation packages that meet this goal.
Installation of drivers
Create a temporary file and call it "Drivers" (for example). You will put the downloaded files from the manufacturer’s website in this file.
Usually, the a file is downloaded with the extension "EXE" that installs the drivers automatically. Run this program and follow the instructions.
If you do not receive the program with the "EXE" extension but receive a set of files, install the controller as follows:
Open the Control Panel.
System.
Device Manager.
Or
Right click on “my computer”
Click “properties” it will launch “system”
Click “hardware tab” then click on “device manager”
This will then load the device manager as shown.
Right click on Unknown Device and the select install driver
When prompt to access the internet, choose “No, not this time”
At the next window, choose “Install from a list of specific locations (advance)”
A list of hardware will be listed. Select “sound, video and game controllers”
Then select “have disk.”
Browse to the folder where (".EXE") was extracted for ex.(C:\SWSetup\SP36090) and select CpV30D5a.inf, then click OK
In the next dialogue box, you should see Conexant High Definition Audio-Venice 5045 if you are going to install a Conexant High Definition Audio-Venice 5045. Select it and click “OK”.
You’ll then receive a warning that Windows cannot verify compatibility with this driver, select “Ignore” to continue with the installation of the driver.
Installation of drivers
Create a temporary file and call it "Drivers" (for example). You will put the downloaded files from the manufacturer’s website in this file.
Usually, the a file is downloaded with the extension "EXE" that installs the drivers automatically. Run this program and follow the instructions.
If you do not receive the program with the "EXE" extension but receive a set of files, install the controller as follows:
Open the Control Panel.
System.
Device Manager.
Or
Right click on “my computer”
Click “properties” it will launch “system”
Click “hardware tab” then click on “device manager”
This will then load the device manager as shown.
Right click on Unknown Device and the select install driver
When prompt to access the internet, choose “No, not this time”
At the next window, choose “Install from a list of specific locations (advance)”
A list of hardware will be listed. Select “sound, video and game controllers”
Then select “have disk.”
Browse to the folder where (".EXE") was extracted for ex.(C:\SWSetup\SP36090) and select CpV30D5a.inf, then click OK
In the next dialogue box, you should see Conexant High Definition Audio-Venice 5045 if you are going to install a Conexant High Definition Audio-Venice 5045. Select it and click “OK”.
You’ll then receive a warning that Windows cannot verify compatibility with this driver, select “Ignore” to continue with the installation of the driver.
How to install Windows ex. VISTA
In this article describes how to install Windows Vista. Windows Vista is the latest version of operating system launched by Microsoft. This article lists methods to perform the Windows Vista installation on a system.
In the first method start the setup of windows vista by using the current operating system.
First of all start your PC with the current operating system.
* Now insert the Windows Vista DVD in the drive.
* If the operating system has automatically detected the DVD/CD then the install now screen will be displayed. If not, double click the DVD/CD drive icon and open the setup.exe file.
When the installation wizard is open choose the custom (advanced) and follow the instructions.
In this method start the system by using Windows Vista DVD.
first,Insert the Windows Vista DVD in the drive and restart the system.
second,Make sure that your first boot device is DVD.
third, Select the option “boot from DVD ROM”.
fourth, A gray strip with the message “Windows is loading files” will be displayed
at the bottom of the screen.
fifth, A blank splash screen with silver bar will be displayed. It is the INSTALL
NOW screen with a big install now button in the center.
sixth, After pressing the install now button, user will be asked to enter the
product key. Enter the product key carefully and press next
a. License Agreement is displayed select the “Accept the license agreement” and press next.
b.
When booting from DVD on the custom (advanced) choice is available.
The operations that are performed during the Windows Vista installation are
1. Copying Windows files.
2. Installing features and necessary updates.
3. Final installation reboots the machine.
4. User will be asked to wait for a few moments.
5. Enter the country and region.
6. Choose your username password and picture.
7. Provide computer name and date settings.
8. After the completion of setup you are ready to start windows.
Some notes about installation
- Obtain the only that version of Windows Vista that meets your needs
- The size of partition of Windows Vista installation depends whether you
want to you use it as a main OS or just for testing purpose
- To choose which version of Windows is exactly according to your needs,
run Windows Vista upgrade advisor beta.
- Your primary partition should be of NTFS format. If not format it with
NTFS because it has been found that Windows Vista runs satisfactory on
NTFS drive.
- Using Windows Vista as a primary operating system it is recommended to
have volume 40 GB or greater.
In the first method start the setup of windows vista by using the current operating system.
First of all start your PC with the current operating system.
* Now insert the Windows Vista DVD in the drive.
* If the operating system has automatically detected the DVD/CD then the install now screen will be displayed. If not, double click the DVD/CD drive icon and open the setup.exe file.
When the installation wizard is open choose the custom (advanced) and follow the instructions.
In this method start the system by using Windows Vista DVD.
first,Insert the Windows Vista DVD in the drive and restart the system.
second,Make sure that your first boot device is DVD.
third, Select the option “boot from DVD ROM”.
fourth, A gray strip with the message “Windows is loading files” will be displayed
at the bottom of the screen.
fifth, A blank splash screen with silver bar will be displayed. It is the INSTALL
NOW screen with a big install now button in the center.
sixth, After pressing the install now button, user will be asked to enter the
product key. Enter the product key carefully and press next
a. License Agreement is displayed select the “Accept the license agreement” and press next.
b.
When booting from DVD on the custom (advanced) choice is available.
The operations that are performed during the Windows Vista installation are
1. Copying Windows files.
2. Installing features and necessary updates.
3. Final installation reboots the machine.
4. User will be asked to wait for a few moments.
5. Enter the country and region.
6. Choose your username password and picture.
7. Provide computer name and date settings.
8. After the completion of setup you are ready to start windows.
Some notes about installation
- Obtain the only that version of Windows Vista that meets your needs
- The size of partition of Windows Vista installation depends whether you
want to you use it as a main OS or just for testing purpose
- To choose which version of Windows is exactly according to your needs,
run Windows Vista upgrade advisor beta.
- Your primary partition should be of NTFS format. If not format it with
NTFS because it has been found that Windows Vista runs satisfactory on
NTFS drive.
- Using Windows Vista as a primary operating system it is recommended to
have volume 40 GB or greater.
Computer Tips
In this section you will find great computer tips and tricks that are related to Windows, computer hardware, computer networking, security related issues, databases, data communication, web browsers, computer performance, pc buying tips, network devices, TCP/IP protocols, outlook express, wireless communication and troubleshooting techniques.
Computer is problem solving machine. How you feel when the computer itself becomes a problem for you just because of slow speed, loss of data and you cannot help yourself to recover your lost data. When it turns out in any technical problem of hardware or software or when you feel lack of security. This article takes you out of your all problem and you will be able to speed up your PC, recover your lost data, secure your computer,
And other hardware and software problems like BIOS error. The following tips will help you to get the optimized performance from your computer.
Clean Environment
You should place your computer in dust free and clean environment. Dust can go in your casing for which you can use blower to wipe out that dust but make sure you do this process outside.
Good Ventilation
Place your computer system in cold and clean environment so that ventilation hole in monitor can let the monitor cool.
Proper Shutdown Process
Don’t switch off your computer from the main switch without proper process of shut down. Follow the correct shut down procedure other wise it may result in loss of data.
Use Antivirus program
Virus can be easily spread from one computer to another by use of flash drive, CD etc. To make your computer save from virus you can install anti-virus soft wares. The important thing about anti-virus is that it should be kept up to date.
Stable, Vibration free Surface
Computer should be placed on stable vibration free surface. Vibrating surface may result in bad performance of computer or it may haphazard other computer parts.
Avoid electromagnetic field
Don’t place magnetic mediums and floppy disks near computer. As monitor produce a strong electromagnetic field which can damage data stored on floppy disks or other magnetic mediums.
Drinking and Eating
Avoid eating and drinking over the keyboard as eatables and drinks liquidity can damage your keyboard.
Moisture
Avoid moisturized environment for computer. Moisture can damage your commuter hardware and its performance cab be degraded because moisture creates a Zink layer on silver made components of computer.
Don’t Move
Don’t move the system when it’s switched on, by moving your system could damage the hard disk inside the machine.
Computer Breaks Down
If your computer breaks down and you don’t have technical know how then don’t try to open your system especially monitor as monitor has very high voltage components operating in it.
Don’t place objects on monitor
Don’t place objects on the top of the monitor, doing so could block the ventilation holes and resulted in overheat.
those are some of tips that are available now!
please be update of some tips i will give and informations
Computer is problem solving machine. How you feel when the computer itself becomes a problem for you just because of slow speed, loss of data and you cannot help yourself to recover your lost data. When it turns out in any technical problem of hardware or software or when you feel lack of security. This article takes you out of your all problem and you will be able to speed up your PC, recover your lost data, secure your computer,
And other hardware and software problems like BIOS error. The following tips will help you to get the optimized performance from your computer.
Clean Environment
You should place your computer in dust free and clean environment. Dust can go in your casing for which you can use blower to wipe out that dust but make sure you do this process outside.
Good Ventilation
Place your computer system in cold and clean environment so that ventilation hole in monitor can let the monitor cool.
Proper Shutdown Process
Don’t switch off your computer from the main switch without proper process of shut down. Follow the correct shut down procedure other wise it may result in loss of data.
Use Antivirus program
Virus can be easily spread from one computer to another by use of flash drive, CD etc. To make your computer save from virus you can install anti-virus soft wares. The important thing about anti-virus is that it should be kept up to date.
Stable, Vibration free Surface
Computer should be placed on stable vibration free surface. Vibrating surface may result in bad performance of computer or it may haphazard other computer parts.
Avoid electromagnetic field
Don’t place magnetic mediums and floppy disks near computer. As monitor produce a strong electromagnetic field which can damage data stored on floppy disks or other magnetic mediums.
Drinking and Eating
Avoid eating and drinking over the keyboard as eatables and drinks liquidity can damage your keyboard.
Moisture
Avoid moisturized environment for computer. Moisture can damage your commuter hardware and its performance cab be degraded because moisture creates a Zink layer on silver made components of computer.
Don’t Move
Don’t move the system when it’s switched on, by moving your system could damage the hard disk inside the machine.
Computer Breaks Down
If your computer breaks down and you don’t have technical know how then don’t try to open your system especially monitor as monitor has very high voltage components operating in it.
Don’t place objects on monitor
Don’t place objects on the top of the monitor, doing so could block the ventilation holes and resulted in overheat.
those are some of tips that are available now!
please be update of some tips i will give and informations
Introduction of Operating System
Introduction
When a computer starts up a small program loads the operating system. Operating system provides a platform for the computer users to operate the computer. OS is a software program that enables the computer hardware to operate and communicate with the software in the computer.Operating systems offer a number of services to application programs and users. Applications access these services through application programming interfaces (APIs) or system calls. By invoking these interfaces, the application can request a service from the operating system, pass parameters, and receive the results of the operation. Users may also interact with the operating system by typing commands or using a graphical user interface (GUI, commonly pronounced “gooey”). For hand-held and desktop computers, the GUI is generally considered part of the operating system. For large multi-user systems, the GUI is generally implemented as an application program that runs outside the operating system. Common types of the operating system include UNIX, Linux, OS/8, MS-DOS, Sun Solaris, MAC and Windows. There are different types of the Windows based operating systems that start from Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows NT, Windows ME, Windows 2000 Professional, Windows XP Professional, Windows 2000 Server, and Windows 2003 Server to Windows Vista. Microsoft’s Windows flavors are the most commonly used operating systems in the world due to the number of features such as user friendly interface, multitasking, security, reliability, entertainment, communication, performance and other features. In this section you will learn the Windows based operating system’s tips/tricks, configurations and different types of connectivity, performance, security and troubleshooting related techniques.
An operating system is build up of different settings and configurations that includes the COM objects, file system, drivers, processes, services, shares, storage, users, events, start menu and other settings etc. Operating systems set the standards for the application programs that run in the computer. There are different tasks that are performed by the operating system such as job management, security, task management, data management, devices management, user management, multitasking and application handling etc. Without an OS, a computer is a useless.
Types
There are different types of the operating systems that can be classified based on the following things.
Multitasking
Multi Threading
Multi User
Real Time
Networking
GUI
Security
Microsoft Windows Operating System
Windows 95
Microsoft launched an advanced Window in 1995 which was Windows 1995. It had 32-bit file system and could run programs that were written in MS-DOS.
Windows 98
An enhanced and highly developed version of Windows 95 was released in 1998 which is known as Windows 98.
Windows NT
Windows New Technology is powerful system with multitasking functionality. Windows NT was specially designed for computer networking and also called client/server operating system.
Windows 2000
Windows 2000 has four products each with specific functionality.
- Windows 2000 professional
- Windows 2000 Server
- Windows 2000 Advanced server
- Windows 2000 Data Center
Windows XP
Windows XP is more advance and high functionality window that is used in homes, offices and business places.
Windows Vista
Latest windows operating system introduced in 2006. Windows Vista required high level of hardware compatibility.
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