Upgrade Part II

This is Part 2 - Click here for Part 1
So I have all the parts put back together (rush, rush cause hockey is coming on) and the final layout is quite clean and rather open. Much better airflow from last time. I attribute this to less PCI boards being installed and less power cables due to the modular design of the Thermaltake PSU. Have a look at the before on the left and the after on the right.


The moment of truth - Here running the unit with the cover off to see if all is going to work the first time.One of my main concerns was if the OS would recognize everything and boot correctly the first time.  The first thing I did was of course boot into the BIOS and check/setup the options.  Upon review everything is looking good so far as all the parts I have installed are recognized by the BIOS. The OS is on a 250gb EIDE drive so I have to set the boot drive order as it defaults to SATA. Other than that its time to fire it up.  Success! a Windows XP boot screen so now it's time to wait and see (windows hardware wizard).

I wait and let Windows find all the new hardware then I load the drivers from the provided Asus CD. Remember I said I had two issues. Exception Number 2 - After all the drivers have been loaded and I reboot the computer I have video issues.  It's defaulting to VGA mode and HDMI video out is not working.  Note: I have the system connected via VGA input on my TV as well as via HDMI thru my 4x2 HDMI switcher.  A quick check in device manager reveals my fear.  Yellow exclamation points on the two G35 Intel Video devices.  I uninstall - reboot - and let the hardware wizard find them again.  This time I use the Intel video drivers provided by the OS.  That's the trick.  Now I'm seeing video over the HDMI port.  Now the rest of the time is just quick tests of the system (but only between periods of the hockey game).

Above you can see BeyondTV 4 starting which is the software I use as my DVR. This is about as far as I get last Saturday. Sunday I upgrade Windows XP Professional to Service Pack 3 and start doing a full check of the system to see if everything is working the way I want it.

To be continued...