P4C800E Deluxe First Time BIOS Setup

  • Thread starter Thread starter Peter
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Peter

I just turned my PC on for the first time. P4C800E Deluxe. 1 SATA hard
drive (more later). 1 CD/DVD drive. 1 Floppy. 4 USB Devices (flash card
readers). I flashed the BIOS to the latest version. No problem. I have
some questions about a few things I saw in the BIOS setup:

1. The CD/DVD drive was listed as Primary IDE Master. The hard drive was
listed as the Third IDE Master. Shouldn't the hard drive be Primary and
shouldn't the CD/DVD come after it (secondary or third)? Why did it
happen this way? Is it OK to keep it this way? If not, how do I change
it?

2. 32 bit data transfer was Disabled for the hard drive. It's a Western
Digital WD740GD which I *thought* could support anything/everything.
Should I enable 32 bit data transfer in the BIOS?

3. What's the difference between the Supervisor Password and a User
Password? What does one control and what does the other control?

4. This is somewhat of an OS question but I think it may be related to my
question #1 above. When I got around to installing WinXP Pro SP1, I
noticed that it automatically made my four USB devices drives C, D, E & F.
The CD/DVD drive got G. The hard drive got H.

As I asked in #1 above, shouldn't the hard drive come first (C), followed
by the CD/DVD, followed by the USB devices. Is there something about my
hardware of BIOS setup that caused it to happen this way? If so, what
should I change to get a more normal configuration?

Peter
 
1. The order of Intel SATA is third IDE, SATA 1 Primary, SATA 2 Secondary.
2. Actual transfers to the disk are always done 16 bits at a time, but
enabling this option will cause a small performance improvement on the
transfer from the bus to the processor, if your disk supports this, enable
it for a performance increase. Disable it if you encounter any difficulty or
if your disk doesn't support it.
3. I never use passwords, my computer is my bedroom.
4. I had the same problem on my first OS install (2 weeks ago). I had to
disable all other storage devices in the bios and reinstall the OS to get it
to assign my boot drive as the C: drive. Windows XP will allow you to change
all drive letters except the boot drive. Better do the reinstall before you
go any further.

Al
 
No problem disabling the four USB devices before I do a re-install of the
OS but how can I disable the CD/DVD drive? Without it I can not install
Windows.

Peter
 
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