reinstalling pc, hardware problems

[1MoInput]

Im reinstalling my pc and run into a few problems things.

First, I took out my cdrom and leave only the dvd. Its the only drive on the primary. Somehow on boot up, it would take so long to detect my dvd drive either I set it to slave or master or cable select. Please help. Im running xp and an old p3bf

Second, on my p3bf, i still not sure wheres the best slot for what card. The irq tables is like this.

AGP share with slot 1
slot 2 unshared
Slot 3 share with slot 6
slot 4 adn 5 share with USB

Right now I got a promise card 100, a NiC, a audigy sound card, and a modem. If I want to avoid problems and for best performance, where should I place these?

[rraehal]

I would install the Hard disk drive as Primary Master, the DVD as secondary Master, and the CD ROM as secondary slave.

Go into the BIOS and autodetect your IDE drives. Make sure the BIOS is set to boot from CDROM first, floppy second, and Hard Drive Last.

I would do the cards this way:
Graphics in AGP Slot
Avoid slot 1 to keep graphics alone
Promise Controller Slot 2 - no other devices to interrupt performance
NIC Slot 3 - I have sound and NIC together and have no issues with either.
Modem Slot 4 - You should not see a performance issue here as the modem and USB are both slow devices and the mobo bus can handle this
Sound Slot 6 - NIC should not interfere with sound

[Eric Legge]

If there is no drive on one of the options on the two cables, make sure that it is disabled in the BIOS, because the computer will search the whole system for the missing drive - and it can take ages.

It is best to leave the PCI slot next to the AGP slot empty because the two slots usually share an IRQ.


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