Installing WinXP for my first time, have some questions.

[Ethereal]

OK I have all my hardware for my new computer and I'll be building it soon. I don't think I'll have much of a problem with assembling it(if I do I know where to go :)) . When I get to installing XP, though, I wanna know if theres any thing I should customize or change during the installation to increase performance of the computer. Like the cluster size for example, the default is at 512 right?, should I(or can I even) change that during installation? Basically I just want my installation of xp optimized for performance and is there any settings I can change during the install to do that?

I'm also a bit leary on the whole partition thing, being this is my first time installing an OS. Should I even make a partition? Should I make a seperate partition for windows? Format the drive in NTFS, correct?

Another thing I want to ask about is the pagefile. Seeing as I have 1GB of ram I dont really want it and if theres anything I can do during install(formating,partioning, swap partion?) that would get rid of it or decrease it, that'd be great.


My rig info:

AMD 2500xp
Abit NF7-S
1GB Mushkin Black Level 2 3500
WD Raptor 36.7GB
GeForce4 Ti4200 128
Fortron 530w


Any input is greatly appreciated and thanks in advance.

[pyssdogg]

pop the cd in and let it start the system

when the blue setup screen comes up it will need to install drivers for the raptor

load the drivers

let setup run, partition the drive

xp pretty much doesn't need you after that point except for the eula, cd key, and whatnot

it's best imo to leave out any firewire/usb 2.0 or intel network addon pci cards add on cards while it's installing

only install with the video card

install any service packs if you dont have the latest windows disc

once everthing works power off the system and put the rest of the add on cards in and let windows install em

what i do first is delete/uninstall all the **** programs i don't need disable all the garbage services and run the policy editor, disable alot of the eye candy, etc

adjust anything else with tweakui and ieak

i have xp installed on a 5 year old p233 w/160mb and it runs fine, so u should have no problem with your system

[pyssdogg]

oh yeah, don't worry about the pagefile, you can have 20gb of memory and windows will still use a pagefile

[Ethereal]

Thanks for replying pyssdogg.

[Eric Legge]

If you don't know how to do it manually, you can use Cacheman from http://www.outertech.com to set the system so that it uses all of the RAM before it uses the swap file.

You can set Cacheman to show the amount of swap file being used in the System Tray.

Eric,
http://www.legge40.freeserve.co.uk/BuyerBeware.htm

[Ethereal]

Thanks for your reply Eric.

I set my paging file size to 2-2 minimum allowed, in system properties. But it says it has 1535 MB currently allocated of paging file. Is it designating all that space on my HDD? Can't I allocate just 2MB?

[Johnny Fist]

Stop fooling around with the page file and start enjoying your new computer. People obsess about it for no good reason. The only thing that would really improve performance concerning the page file is creating a small partition for it on a seperate hard on a different cable. Even that will be a marginal gain with that type of system you just put together.

[BipolarBill]

If you defrag the hard drive and then set the page file to a fixed size, it will never be fragmented.

Frankly, at 1GB RAM, you don't even need a page file. Try disabling it.

[comp_nut]

just after you install xp and is activated install your drivers for
your motherboard than do what pyssdogg said


cheers