nmX.Memnoch

My guess would be that the chipset doesn't support the proper FSB for the CPU. It won't necessarily keep it from working. For example, if the motherboard supports Northwood P4's at 400MHz, you can put a 533FSB Northwood P4 on the board but it'll still run at 400FSB. No amount of BIOS updates will fix that. The only option would be to "overclock" the chipset but that's usually out of the question on OEM systems...which he has.

I gotta throw my vote in there for hardware RAID as well...even if it's a hardware/software controller that's basically controlling things through the driver but still using the system CPU. Read on... You're right. You won't find a true hardware RAID controller that supports RAID5 in a PCIe x1 card. The lowest those come in is x4 and the price tag is significantly higher. You can however, get yourself some higher throughput than using a PCI card by getting this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?...N82E16816115029 It's not "cheap" as quasi-hardware RAID controllers go, but it's still better than using the OS features. And what I mean by quasi-hardware is that it doesn't have a dedicated processor on the card for doing the RAID5 XOR operations...it'll still use the system CPU. BUT, it'll make the array more portable (i.e. upgrading your motherboard will be MUCH easier) as well as provide some custom management utilities. Personally, I'm not a big fan of HighPoint products (haven't been since the old Abit BX6-2 days), but you may be able to find another PCIe x1 controller that'll do the same thing. I just found that one on a quick search. I haven't been purchasing anything but 3ware controllers for the last few years...at least for my PATA/SATA setups. They're easy to configure and offer very good performance.

Actually, one of the cases I'm getting pictures of was originally a 400MHz PII Xeon box...which came out way before the PIII Xeon 700. The fastest PIII Xeon with 2MB L2 is 900MHz. I have two servers at work that are quad PIII Xeon 900/100/2MB. You have to be careful with those though...there are two different versions; one that is low voltage and one that's "regular". We got the "regular" ones when we upgraded the server and ended up returning them for the low-voltage models. The "fastest" PIII Xeon that was released was a 1GHz with a 133MHz FSB and 256K cache. All of the PIII Xeon's that have a 133MHz FSB only have 256K cache. Additionally, if I'm not mistaken those can only be run in dual configurations, not quad. Personally, I'd take a pair of 900/100/2MB Xeons over the 1GHz model though. To be honest, I'm not sure what made those PIII Xeon 133MHz FSB 256K L2 versions any better than a regular PIII with a 133MHz FSB and 256K L2. I know they sure were a lot more expensive when they first came out. Also, there were significantly more changes to the Xeon going from the Slot 2 PIII models to the socketed NetBurst (P4) based models than just moving to the socket. It is true, however, than the PII (and of course the PIII) CPUs and their Xeon variants were evolutions of the Pentium Pro CPUs. The Pentium Pro, in my opinion, was one of the most highly under rated CPUs ever. Those things were a lot better than people gave them credit for. BTW, if you're looking for cheap CPU upgrades for your Xeon box, StarMicro carries pulls fairly cheap. "Pulls" sounds like what it is...the CPUs were pulled from old workstations or servers before they were recycled/destroyed/etc. They carry the PIII Xeon 550/100/2MB for $24US each! http://www.starmicro.net/SearchResult.aspx?CategoryID=54 Just be sure to check your motherboard for compatibility. Since you're currently running PII Xeon 400's they do have the PII Xeon 450/100/512K for $13US each. They do carry heatsinks for them as well...but you never know which model heatsink you're getting from them until it arrives. I've had to take a Dremel to a few of my older test/development servers to make the heatsinks fit! Nothing major...just some plastic trimming, but still.

Also not necessarily true - if the BIOS reports the 4GB memory address boundary as somewhere lower than 4GB, only a 64bit OS or a 32bit OS with PAE support will see most (but likely still not all) of the RAM. It has nothing to do with the OS, and everything to do with the underlying system hardware without regard to either a 32bit or 64bit processor. This issue is ENTIRELY a hardware issue - mostly BIOS, but also video RAM shadowing (we'll see more of this in Vista with higher-end cards becoming the norm) will cause RAM to not be available to the OS as well. I wasn't entirely sure of that. The x64 capable machines that I've worked on that have 4GB RAM but 32-bit XP have all shown the full 4GB of RAM in System Properties. My experience with that has been pretty limited though...

Hehe...no, what I mean is that these are servers. Basically the motherboard layout was decided on and then the case, along with cooling solution, were designed around that layout. There are plastic shrouds, metal guides, multiple hot-swappable fans, etc built into the case around the CPU and RAM. Even the PCI/PCI-X slots in those systems have plastic dividers between them forcing airflow over those cards.Plus the fact that we keep them in an environmentally controlled room that stays about 65F doesn't hurt.

Actually.... The cases are purpose built so the cooling solutions are designed specifically for the CPU and RAM arrangement. I got some of the pictures today and I need to try to get a few more tomorrow. Hopefully I can post them tomorrow night...along with some pictures of some new systems I'm installing.

The horizontal ones were a more efficient design because the air could be blown in from the front, across the heatsinks and then out the back of the case. With the vertical design you're just pushing warm air back down on the CPUs. Your cooling solution still isn't cooling the front CPU that much. We have several retired dual and quad PIII Xeon systems at work...I'll try to get some pictures today so you can see how they were intended to be setup.

You have to get them installed on a machine first, but once you do then all you need to do is copy the %SystemRoot%\Resources\Themes\ directory. It can then be incorporated onto a CD using the $OEM$ structure putting all of the directories/files from %SystemRoot%\Resources\Themes\ into $OEM$\$$\Resources\Themes\ on the CD. Some of those may require that either StyleXP or the hacked uxtheme.dll be applied for them to work though. I use this method (minus StyleXP or uxtheme.dll) for including the Royale and Zune themes in my installs. The reason I don't need StyleXP/uxtheme.dll is because those are both signed themes that can be used with a default install of WinXP. To make them work on any other machine all you have to do is copy %SystemRoot%\Resources\Themes to the same location on your machine. But you'll also need either StyleXP or the hacked uxtheme.dll.

How are you remotely connecting to the domain?

Yeah, but wouldn't it not work if they were in mixed mode but still forced the LM Auth to v1 or v2? I'm just asking for my own personal education.

Holy Java versions Batman! Uninstall all of the Java2 runtimes and then only put back on 5.0 Update 10. 6.0 is actually out now so if you can just install that. Also, dump all of the screensavers. You've also got Office version on top of Office version. You've got some software cleanup that really needs to be done...but getting a good schedule for routine maintenance is the first step. As has been mentioned, you really need at least 512MB to run WinXP at a reasonable speed. 512MB is the very minimum I would recommend, 1GB would be better.

Yeah, the Slot1 SECC2's are a major PITA. They usually have plastic clips that end up breaking when you try to get them out. SECC stands for Single-Edge Cartridge Connector in case anyone was wondering.

Those are Slot2 SECC. Five or six screws and it should pull off. The pains are the Slot1 and Slot2 SECC 2 variant. SECC2 is when they decided to take the metal plate off of the front so the heatsink attached directly to the chip. Fortunately, there weren't very many Slot2 SECC2 Xeons. The problem with SECC is that there was very poor heat transfer from the CPU to the heatsink, because of the metal plate that was supposed to be a heat spreader. That's why they eventually went to SECC2, and finally back to socketed CPUs. One thing I noticed with your fan configuration is that you don't have any air flow going over CPU0 (the front one). All of the air flow is concentrated between the back of CPU0 and the front of CPU1...so you're only putting additional cooling on CPU1. Also, as Zxian mentioned, those heatsinks are designed for air to be blown across from the side, not from the top. The fins are turned the wrong way for air to be blown down like that. Besides, all you're doing blowing from the top is pushing the hot air back down. Figure out a way to have it blow from the side and straight into the rear case exhaust fan. You'll get much better results. Remember, it's not all about getting fresh air in...you gotta get the warm air out too or else you're just circulating it.

What about LAN Manager authentication level as well?

It's been renamed to Unreal Tournament 3.

Either they're wrong or you misunderstood them. ALL Core 2 processors have a shared L2 cache. In fact, even the The Core 2 Quad has shared L2 cache. The difference in the Core 2 Quad is that it has two shared L2 caches (one for one set of cores and another for the other set of cores). The Core Duo, on the other hand, does not have a shared L2. This was only intended for mobile applications though. Thats going to cost more! Yes, it will. Better to spend a little extra now than to have a cheap power supply fry your hardware don't ya think?

Might even have to drop back to an E4300 and 1GB RAM.

ALL Core 2 Duo's have a shared L2 cache. It actually helps instead of hurts. The second CPU just has double the cache (and a faster clock speed). Personally, I would spend the extra for the 4MB cache. Not true, see above. It's 4MB shared as opposed to 2MB shared. Either one will be fine. If you plan on playing UT3 and C&C3 you should be looking at something with at least a 7600GT, not a GS. As was mentioned, you want to make sure whatever you look at has GDDR3 instead of GDDR2. I think there are a few people here who will tell you not to get the cheapest PSU you can find. You really need to look for a quality PSU. People always do this..."Oh, I'll just get a cheap one, it'll be OK". Something you really don't want to do is trust all of these expensive, high-quality parts to a cheap power supply. It's the one thing that if it flakes out has the chance of taking everything with it. Look for something from Antec, OCZ, Thermaltake or Ultra. There's probably a few that I missed...but definitely stay away from the cheapie ones. That's an awesome hard drive. I have two of the 250GB and two of the 400GB from 7200.10 series. I don't care too much for Sony's optical drives. I had a Sony CD-RW drive a while back that was suppposed to be 52X but would only burn at 40X unless you held the eject button for 5 seconds while the disk was in...and I only found that out after doing some Google searches looking for the reason it was doing that. Turns out Sony decided that the drive was too loud at 52X so they hindered it to 40X unless you knew the trick to bypass it.

I haven't forgotten about this but it's going to be this weekend before I can get back to it. I've got some high-priority stuff going on at work right now.

One step at a time man... That's what I'm trying to figure out if he's done already. Because if he has and still presses F6 then the install will bomb.

Haha...I almost said the same thing...

Can I asks, whats wrong with onboard LAN?Maybe nothing...I never used it. The onboard NIC is made by a company I've never heard of before so I opted to go with what I know. I can remember the day when 400MHz was the fastest. (the last time I built a PC!) ... Im right in thinking that its for the mobo to support faster RAM not the CPU? Yes, the motherboard has to support the faster RAM. All of the Asus boards mentioned so far support DDR2 800. Your RAM speed can definitely be a performance bottleneck though, which is why I said that you should definitely go with DDR2 800 vs. 667. This is the part I hate buying! Im not a gamer, but due to vista looks like im going to have to spend more money that I usally do!!! ATI X1600 is looking this best so far to me.... You don't HAVE to purchase an high-end video card just to run the full Vista interface. We just installed Vista Enterprise on a Dell OptiPlex GX520 small-form factor tower. The video in it can't be upgraded so we're just using the onboard video and it's running the full Aero interface just fine.Everyone has gotten this misconception that you have to have some high-dollar video card to run the interface, but it simply isn't true.

Is your CD nLited or are you trying to do any sort of Unattended Setup?

The case is really a matter of your preference. We can all recommend other cases, but it all comes down to you. You may want to look at something with a bit more wattage. 380W may be enough to power what you are getting, but you don't want to have to replace the power supply just because you're adding a new component. There's also the chance that if you add a component, the component will get blamed for unexplained crashes when it may simply be that your power supply doesn't provide enough juice. I recently upgraded my system with a C2D and went for the Asus P5B-E. It's an awesome board. The only thing I didn't like about it was the included onboard NIC. I opted to disable it and purchased an Intel PRO/1000 PT PCI Express x1 NIC. It was a fairly cheap upgrade. Definitely go with the DDR2 800 at a minimum. You'll get a bazillion different suggestions on this...and mine would be to look for at least a 7600GT based card instead of a 7600GS based card. There are rumors that 8600Gx based cards will be hitting the shelves soon.

Were you loading custom HDD controller drivers during the install? Even so...it didn't kill the drive itself.