Oh, the fear will be there. Installing a processor is terrifying, as is installing memory and your graphics card. They *click* and *clunk*.
Also make sure your memory is compatible with your processor. Mine wasn't.
Hmm, also, build it yourself so you know what you've done and learn more, but it's probably good to have somone who know's what they're doing looking over your shoulder and telling you that the memory is meant to click into place.
Hmm, one thing I found a little tricky was getting the computer to initially recognise my disc drive - I got a Maxtor SATA-II drive, in the BIOS I had (with much help from Tsuki) to tell it to regocnise the drive as the boot device, then make sure it wasn't running RAID as I had only one drive. Then it was the happy happy fun fun joy of formatting 150gigs, formatting it again because I pressed the wrong button at 1am and then installing windows, realising I'd messed up the partitioning, reformatting the drive again, reinstalling windows... oh it went on, but I am happy now. POA - unless you can think of a *really* good reason you need to partition your drive, I'd advise against it.
Hmm, you can also save money by cannibalising your old machien for such things as CD drives, monitors, mouse, keyboard, speakers etc.
Speaking of sound, unless you're majorly in to making music with the computer getting a motherboard with onboard sound is a good plan, otherwise you'd need a separate sound card.
This is inspiring me to get to writing up exactly what I did. Maybe I'll get to that this weekend.
> unless you can think of a *really* good reason you need to partition your drive, I'd advise against it.
I tend to advise partitioning so that the OS and programs are in one partition and your stuff is in another - that way, you can format your system drive should you need to without disturbing your stuff. However, this does rely on you being able to guess the ratio of sizes to assign the partitions in before you start. If that sounds scary, don't worry about partitioning!
Speaking of sound, unless you're majorly in to making music with the computer getting a motherboard with onboard sound is a good plan, otherwise you'd need a separate sound card.
Pretty much all the motherboards I've seen in the last five years have onboard sound - hopefully it shouldn't be a problem! ^_^
Yes, I noticed the sound thing, heh, I do remember when you *had* to have a sound card though, ah back in the day.
With the advent of USB 2 backing up data onto an external disc or memory stick takes under a minute - if all your files (documents etc.) are in one place then backing them up is a case of copy/pasting and waiting a couple of minutes. Also, winXP is evil and puts, as default, all your games saves, email settings, program settings etc. in the documents and settings folder, which will be on your OS partition, if you partition, anyway. I think it depends a great deal on how you use your computer. WinXP does make partitioning problematic, I don't know much about Linux, but I'd imagine a machien running that, or possibly a mac would work better for partitioning.
Oh, when backing up your old data from your computer, don't forget to export your bookmarks from your favourites menu, export your inbox if you're using outlook, and if you've made a lot of changes to it, your custom dictionary from Word. They're actually a little tricky to find, if you need them you can add me on MSN (acetoorion @hotmail.com). I could be telling you stuff you already know, sorry if that's the case, I don't know how computer savvy you are :).
True, Windows does put all your settings on the drive the OS is on by default. If you fancy a bit of fiddling, though, programs like the TweakUI Power Toy (an official Microsoft jobby) will let you change it.
While other OSes do have nice free partitioning tools, my favourite is still PartitionMagic. (Used to be by a company called PowerQuest, I think Norton may have bought them up now.) It'll cost you either money, or some bandwidth and some innocence =p
I think I've got that already (partition magic). I looked into changing the directory, but decided on just not partitioning in the end. If I had mroe spare time I might look into it again, but it works at the moment so I'm happy and it's a system I'm used to.
Also make sure your memory is compatible with your processor. Mine wasn't.
Hmm, also, build it yourself so you know what you've done and learn more, but it's probably good to have somone who know's what they're doing looking over your shoulder and telling you that the memory is meant to click into place.
Hmm, one thing I found a little tricky was getting the computer to initially recognise my disc drive - I got a Maxtor SATA-II drive, in the BIOS I had (with much help from Tsuki) to tell it to regocnise the drive as the boot device, then make sure it wasn't running RAID as I had only one drive. Then it was the happy happy fun fun joy of formatting 150gigs, formatting it again because I pressed the wrong button at 1am and then installing windows, realising I'd messed up the partitioning, reformatting the drive again, reinstalling windows... oh it went on, but I am happy now. POA - unless you can think of a *really* good reason you need to partition your drive, I'd advise against it.
Hmm, you can also save money by cannibalising your old machien for such things as CD drives, monitors, mouse, keyboard, speakers etc.
Speaking of sound, unless you're majorly in to making music with the computer getting a motherboard with onboard sound is a good plan, otherwise you'd need a separate sound card.
This is inspiring me to get to writing up exactly what I did. Maybe I'll get to that this weekend.
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I tend to advise partitioning so that the OS and programs are in one partition and your stuff is in another - that way, you can format your system drive should you need to without disturbing your stuff. However, this does rely on you being able to guess the ratio of sizes to assign the partitions in before you start. If that sounds scary, don't worry about partitioning!
Speaking of sound, unless you're majorly in to making music with the computer getting a motherboard with onboard sound is a good plan, otherwise you'd need a separate sound card.
Pretty much all the motherboards I've seen in the last five years have onboard sound - hopefully it shouldn't be a problem! ^_^
Reply
With the advent of USB 2 backing up data onto an external disc or memory stick takes under a minute - if all your files (documents etc.) are in one place then backing them up is a case of copy/pasting and waiting a couple of minutes. Also, winXP is evil and puts, as default, all your games saves, email settings, program settings etc. in the documents and settings folder, which will be on your OS partition, if you partition, anyway. I think it depends a great deal on how you use your computer. WinXP does make partitioning problematic, I don't know much about Linux, but I'd imagine a machien running that, or possibly a mac would work better for partitioning.
Oh, when backing up your old data from your computer, don't forget to export your bookmarks from your favourites menu, export your inbox if you're using outlook, and if you've made a lot of changes to it, your custom dictionary from Word. They're actually a little tricky to find, if you need them you can add me on MSN (acetoorion @hotmail.com). I could be telling you stuff you already know, sorry if that's the case, I don't know how computer savvy you are :).
Reply
While other OSes do have nice free partitioning tools, my favourite is still PartitionMagic. (Used to be by a company called PowerQuest, I think Norton may have bought them up now.) It'll cost you either money, or some bandwidth and some innocence =p
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