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What to do after 1st Boot Up?

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kimbahpnam

Member
Joined
Jan 12, 2003
Location
Seattle
nearly finished buying all my parts (mem left) and i wanna get everything perfect and not screw up something cuz i didn't do it in the right order......so after installing a fresh copy of XP prof. what do i do? (rig in sig)

this is what i'm guessing?

1. do windows critical updates
2. install mobo bios (which?)
3. vid card drivers (which to install these if i wanna do softmod?)
4. all other drivers
5. everything else
 
The order in which you install things isn't really a big deal, as long as you install all your drivers before installing lots of other programs. The order you posted looks good to me. Note that you don't really need to flash your BIOS unless your having a problem which the new BIOS claims to fix. Otherwise, its not necessary and there is a slight risk of a dead mobo if your flash goes bad.

Perhaps you ought to check in the ATI forum to find out which driver to install in order to softmod. A quick search will probably give you your answer.

edit: some people like to defrag in between driver installs. So it would be like this:
- install XP updates
- defrag
- vid card drivers
- defrag
- other drivers
- defrag
- other programs
- defrag

I don't really know how much a performance difference this gets you; I would think not much.
 
clash said:
defrag in windows used to take me like 5-6 hours... Is it not like that anymore?

Well, on a fresh drive, it shouldn't take too long.

Another thing I like to do is put the OS on the 4GB partition, and the rest of the stuff on a different partition. This way if you want to defrag your OS its faster, and if you need to reinstall your OS you won't lose all your data.

And as Kendan mentioned, make sure your hardware is working correctly before being the install of the OS.
 
I like to defrag myself between drivers ect...

OS
Mainboard drivers(including Lan driver)
Direct X 9
Video Drivers
Remaining drivers
Windows updates.
 
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