Do we have any computer building experts here?

[sean126]

I'm looking for someone on here who knows how to build computers and install the drivers the correct way.

Yes, I've did hundreds of searches and asked on some forums....but getting an answer takes forever. 

I had two different people who were coming over to help me, but apparently taking 2 seconds to call and cancel was more than they could bare to give me....so needless to say, they are M.I.A. still.

[daytrader]

....There's two components to PC drivers
[1] the motherboard/3rd party video card (specialized drivers on a CD or enclosed in Windeers)
[2] the operating system  (I assume Vista or XP/2 Windeers)


How to build your own PC 
[1] buy PC case
[2] buy hard drive, CDROM/DVD etc
[3] buy RAM
[4] assemble the components
[5] plug PC into electrical outlet
[6] turn on & PC will boot off bootable CDROM (configured in the BIOS)
[6b] Bootable Windeers (in CDROM) will install s/w on hard drive (most hard drives are preformatted)
[7] any other drivers needed should be on the motherboard CDROM
[8] call motherboard tech support go to forum supporting said motherboard & get any drivers that Windeers doesn't already have preinstalled. 

Additionally, if you are installing a high speed graphics card, then repeat steps [7] & [8] if needed. 

Oh, you will need a few screwdrivers to accomplish this entire task.   Mounting the motherboard in the case is the biggest pain along with connecting the power supply to the mother board IF you are colorblind!  If you can get the case & motherboard already mounted (with CD/DVD drive) you are home free.  Installing the Hard Drive/CD/DVD drives require one Phillips screw driver and hooking up one cable to each drive.  After physically installing the drives then do the CDROM/Windeers Shuffle. 

....so easy a caveman can do it! 

Or even easier, go to Office Depot and get a Gateway laptop for $599 ($150 more for 2 Gig) with a Gig of RAM and the finest monitor connected to a keyboard on the planet. 

DayTrader

[RJS]

If DayTrader hasn't answered your questions then shoot. Installing drivers really isn't difficult. You just download the appropriate ones and click the install button.

Do you have everything already?

[sean126]

RJS,

Actually....I can get a gazillion responses like that, but there's a little more too it than A,B, and then do C if you've never done it before.

My biggest question is drivers and updating them.  I've already got it built, up and running.  Now for the updating.  

question....  I guess the big thing is updating the motherboard and video card drivers...since theres more than one.  Is it better to :

download the latest driver and put it to your desktop, get into the device manager and click on the motherboard or video card, click on "properties" and then uninstall the old one first, click "update driver" and have it look where you put it at for the new one?  I heard it's best to uninstall the old one rather just clicking on "update driver".

Here comes the part where a new person don't understand....

if you uninstall the old driver before installing the latest one from the website.  You install the new one and have problems with it....then you won't be able to "roll back" the driver to the one that worked. correct? Since you've only got one driver in your system.

Also, if you don't uninstall the old one and just click on "update driver", will it automatically get rid of the old one for you or no?

If you got an expensive computer...you tend to get nervous about messing it up.  

[daytrader]

...always have the original driver (compressed or uncompressed) on a flash drive or archived on some other media.  If you think the upgrade won't work, find the original driver on the forum site and download it BEFORE upgrading.  Put the older driver on another pc or flash drive so if the PC is unusable after installing the upgrade you can turn the clock back without having to access the PC drive you just messed up. 

If things REALLY blow up after the upgrade, you can wipe clean the hard drive and reinstall good drivers from your flash drive.   A few minutes of prevention saves hours and days of headache.

I use web based email as archival storage for all kinds of files (gmail/yahoo are the best), so if my laptop blows up in SA, I can just download the drivers and back up files and presto, I am good to go! 

DayTrader

[jm21-2]

Windows should have some basic drivers for everything. If a new driver fails just go into safe mode (keep hitting F8 while the computer is booting up if the boot menu doesn't automatically come up), uninstall the new driver, and re-install the driver from the manufacturer's CD or the basic windows driver, or an older drive you have on your hard drive. You should also be able to boot up in safe mode with networking, so you can download a different driver (I believe...never had to get that far).

In any case, you shouldn't have any problems with Windows XP. If you have Vista, you might consider just throwing it in the trash anyways haha. Sorry, personal prejudice there. I installed it on my comp and now it won't recognize my mp3 player or my cell phone, I can't use my digital camera as a webcam because it doesn't like the card I was using for that, and 3/4 times it won't boot up because of a driver incompatibility problem with my video card. Not to mention having to authorize it everytime you want to do ANYTHING. Sorry, had to go on a bit of a rant there. I just tried to move a folder to organize some new music I got, and apparently that is against the rules.

Tech problems are a real pain in the butt to explain over the phone, much less a forum. If you have a real problem, offer a friend who's good with computers a dinner out or something. Or to hook him up with a hot Latina or something, hahaha....

[RJS]

Sean, in 99% of cases, it really doesn't matter if you update or just install over the old ones. Some people are really anal. I'll do things the super-careful way on production servers, but I've never worried about it at home. I've never ever ever had a problem with just installing the new drivers over the old ones and I used to do a lot of gaming, which meant I upgraded both hardware and drivers a lot.

Just install the new ones and don't worry so much

On an unrelated note, you should always be backing up your important files. This is where most home-users go wrong until they lose their data and learn the hard way.

[sean126]

RJS,

No offense to anyone else who helped (it was appreciated), but RJS...you sound like my "go-to" man here since you was into gaming.

Yeah, I finally got it all built.  I wasn't sure if uninstalling was super important or not.

One question I got was about running memtest86.  I'm having trouble.

I downloaded the ISO image from the website onto my c drive, extracted it on my c drive, used nero essentials to "burn an image that was previously burned to my hard drive" (that was one of the options), made the cd.
I checked my bios screen...I have no idea what I'm doing here, but I think I looked at the right screen.  in the boot sequence, I think it was, it had my optical drive first and my hard drive second.  I assume it's set to boot from my optical if the appropriate cd is in there occording to these settings...correct?

Well, I put the cd in, restarted my computer...and nothing.  Up comes windows xp.  As I understand it...it was supposed to boot from that cd and start testing my ram, but nothing happened. 

What am I doing wrong?   

[jm21-2]

Usually (always?) you have to hit a key to boot from CD. When it's booting up it should say something like "press any key to boot from CD..." it will start with one dot, then once it hits 4 or so, boot up windows normally.

You might try enabling "floppy disk seek" or whatever it's called. It should be in the same BIOS section as the boot sequence. I'm not sure if it needs to be enabled for CDs or not, but worth a try.

Just some thoughts. If your ram's working fine, I wouldn't worry about all that testing. If your ram is screwed, you'll almost certainly know it. Your computer won't boot up, or it'll crash frequently. Ram's pretty hard to damage, so if you aren't having problems, there's about a 99% chance there aren't any. The only time I've fried my ram was when my whole computer went down in sparks and smoke.

It's RJS's certs (and presumably experience? Hopefully I'm remembering his credentials right) that give him an edge here. I used to be a gamer and have built over a dozen computers easy (I started building them when I was about 11 or 12), but I build them myself and never have the sorts of problems a typical user has. If a friend wants my help building a computer, I do it myself. They can watch if they want. Knowing how to work on computers is a completely different skill set from helping other people work on computers.

[daytrader]

Usually (always?) you have to hit a key to boot from CD. When it's booting up it should say something like "press any key to boot from CD..." it will start with one dot, then once it hits 4 or so, boot up windows normally.

You might try enabling "floppy disk seek" or whatever it's called. It should be in the same BIOS section as the boot sequence.  I'm not sure if it needs to be enabled for CDs or not, but worth a try.

When assembling a PC for the first time, always set the BIOS to boot off the CDROM first, hard disk 2nd.  It's wise to keep this configuration for the first week or so, in case your newly assembled PC/hard drive goes on the fritz.  If the hard drive is configured with the OS and no OS is in the CDROM, the PC will just boot normally off the hard drive after looking at the CDROM for a few seconds.

DayTrader