next »

[Please Support Us!]

Please Support Us!

Please help keep (=WDG=) alive

• Server rules
• Forum rules
• Join us
  
• Clan members
• About the clan
• Server stats
• WDG YouTube Channel
• WDG Downloads
• IRC Webchat

Steam groups:

• WDG community
• WDG clan group
• WDG Battlelog Platoon

Our allies:

• [NuB] TF2 clan
• Velocity Gamers Hub
• Destination Gamer

GoG Links:

• Wix Discord
• Wix IRC channel

TF2 Links:

• Official TF2 Blog
• TF2 Steam Forum
• The Fort 2

April 2024

Mo	Tu	We	Th	Fr	Sa	Su
1	2	3	4	5	6	7
8	9	10	11	12	13	14
15	16	17	18	19	20	21
22	23	24	25	26	27	28
29	30
	Birthdays
Leftism (35), Power (43), Mr Chug (35), Cheez (34)
	Upcoming Events
Earth Day Upcoming Birthdays: Leftism (35), Power (43), Mr Chug (35), Cheez (34)

[Teatime]

New stuff arrived.
Shiny new i5, an ASUS P7P55D and tons of RAM.

But before I can enjoy my new toys I'll have to make some preparations first.

I want to prepare my system to create a dualboot system for XP and Win7 (which I will get in 2 weeks).
I want to enable AHCI for both systems and since XP doesn't support it natively I want to create a slipstream installation disk which already contains the driver.
I guess the way to go would be either nlite or XP ISO Builder.

So which driver would I need?
Intel shows me two drivers for the P55 chipset:
    * Intel® Chipset Software Installation Utility
    * Intel® Matrix Storage Manager
I assume I won't need the first the way I'm proceeding, so I'm going with the MSM.
Would somebody be so nice to confirm that I'll have to use the MSM 8.​9.​0.​1023 of 7/17/2009?

Any other pieces of advice?

[Finaldeath]

You might as well slipstream both sets of drivers, but the RAID one is Intel Matrix Storage Manager. You also will want to get the drivers off your motherboard website - basically, I am sure there is already a few driver versions (Intel has had "Matrix Storage Managers" for software RAID for years), and you want to be entirely sure yours will work with your motherboard.

nLite is dead easy to work with once you extract the XP ISO properly, make sure to get SP3 in there too.

(I personally am not going to bother with XP unless I really, really need it in the end - I'm going to use Windows 7's visualised XP instead).

Install XP first too, although you could pre-partition your drive if you want the Windows 7 partition first.

What kit did you go for in the end? I'm going to post a thread on my system I'm planning, and groaning at the cost of relative future-proofing, heh

[CruelCow]

Doesn't XP allow you to load the driver during installation? Sounds easier to me than creating a new cd

[Finaldeath]

Only using the old floppy disk method. Even I'm not bothering with a floppy drive on my new PC (although I have enough old ones to make it trivial to attach one I guess ).

nLite is great though, you can remove a ton of cruft and install all the updates making it much more secure to connect to the internet (even behind a firewall) before you begin. Driver slip streaming just makes it nice to install

[Teatime]

@FD
For one I still have a little more than 2 weeks before Win7 arrives, but also I intend to have XP as a contingency. Can't hurt
PS: I get Win7 Home, so no XP Mode

@Cruel: Yes, via Floppy.
And while I have still a floppy drive I'm not sure I still have a floppy disk which still works.
Slipstream appears to be easy enough, and seeing what those programs offer (using XP ISO Builder) it's interesting enough for future uses.

[Zarf]

Tea, you can install XP under IDE mode, install the intel drivers, make a registry change to enable AHCI, then reboot, change the bios setting to AHCI and your done. All the details are googleable and it's really easy. Easier than slipstreaming anyway.

[Teatime]

Tea, you can install XP under IDE mode, install the intel drivers, make a registry change to enable AHCI, then reboot, change the bios setting to AHCI and your done. All the details are googleable and it's really easy. Easier than slipstreaming anyway.

Did that once, and it was not easier than 2 minutes with a good slipstream program which additionally can already do some stuff in advance.

[scroggage]

Tea, why not just wait for Win7 pro, and use the XP virtual machine it has? If you've got a fast system and tonnes of RAM, as you said, this shouldn't impact your performance and makes everything a lot easier.

[Finaldeath]

He already said he's purchased the home edition (which I'd have done if I didn't get the Pro one on a special, £100 deal instead of £150. The pro edition is criminally expensive). I'd agree to his methodology in this case. And as he said, it's so that he can use the system today rather then in 2 or 3 weeks when he gets his Win7 copy

I also doubt the virtual XP machine will have game support. I'm a little worried I'll be reinstalling XP just to play some old games I have...hmm....

[Junta]

Virtual machines could only run older legacy games tbh (i.e. Doom probably) .. they emulate standard hardware and you're not going to get a perfect emulation of a high end graphics card (yet).

Also, for Windows 7, you need the more expensive edition to get the Virtual WinXP capability.

As someone who uses Virtual Server, HyperV and Virtual PC, virtualisation technologies seem to be for business applications at the moment. MS could make a killing by creating a "gaming" virtual WinXP edition but we're not there yet.

[Teatime]

Yes, I purchased the home edition during the pre-order promotion.
And it's not a big deal after all. I can afford to sacrifice some disk space for XP and should I ever run into a problem I know it's just a reboot away.

I'll wait for reports how well the XP mode handles things. Like FD said: It's questionable how well it will handle games, I doubt it will run older hardware (like scanners), it probably won't work with system applications (e.g. my old Partition Magic or image software), so it's mainly for standard applications.
And before I consider upgrading to Pro I will first check out what programs will no longer run under Win7.

[Teatime]

Virtual machines could only run older legacy games tbh (i.e. Doom probably) .. they emulate standard hardware and you're not going to get a perfect emulation of a high end graphics card (yet).

Also, for Windows 7, you need the more expensive edition to get the Virtual WinXP capability.

As someone who uses Virtual Server, HyperV and Virtual PC, virtualisation technologies seem to be for business applications at the moment. MS could make a killing by creating a "gaming" virtual WinXP edition but we're not there yet.

Yes, apparently the philosophy behind the XP mode is to encourage companies to invest into Win7 Pro and being able to run older yet established software.

[Finaldeath]

XP mode is going to run on a virtulization layer, you specifically need a CPU that supports it, but I am not sure how deep the hardware side goes - this is Microsoft, who could just have the kind of support needed, but it probably isn't that deep.

Facinating stuff to check out when it's released anyway, I'll put a report up when I've tried it out

[Junta]

Facinating stuff to check out when it's released anyway, I'll put a report up when I've tried it out

Please do

I wonder if they've tarted it up in the new Win7 version?

[Teatime]

BTW, anybody interested into an ASUS P5B with a Core2Duo E6600 (2.40GHz) and 4GB DDR2 RAM?