Setup & Formating

Now you are ready to test your machine. Remember to ground yourself to the metal parts of the computer with a wrist strap etc. You can now begin to remove or adjust your parts! First you have to make sure the video card, CPU and RAM are working ok. Then plug in the power and the monitor and then turn it on! If its successful you can now go on to install the rest of the components.

Here we have the Hard Drive and the CD RW mounted on top of each other. You can also see the four pin socket of the power supplies at the rear of the drives. The IDE sockets and the Primary/slave/cable select/auto selection switches can also be seen. Normally the IDE cables has a red line on pin one which aligns with the power socket end of the plug.

Once you have the computer's monitor showing a startup you can think about setting up your computer for the first time. Go ahead and make sure all the devices are plugged in correctly and are tight in their sockets. Also go over the connection diagram that came with the Mother Board and check all connections again. You may find some of the connectors to the board are not quite the same as on the diagram but you will just have to work it out!

Install your boot disk in the drive, either the floppy for pre Windows xp operating system or a CD ROM for Win xp.

With the boot disk floppy in its drive and the Win 9- in the CD ROM start the computer up. When the computer has found the boot up program it will run and then give you a A:> you then type format and press enter...When it has finished this sequence you will then get another prompt. Type in the drive letter for the D: (If that is the drive that the CD is in) Hit enter, type in Setup C . It should look like this......D: setup C

It will ask you various questions and be prepared to be downloading Windows for an hour or so.