New AMD system, need some advice please.

[GMJim]

I'm putting a new AMD system together for a friend. I am NO PRO at this but have built a few systems with great success in the past. That's the problem, the past was a while ago! I'm using a ASUS M5A97 R 2.0 board and a FX 6300 CPU (I think the cpu is overkill for a home non gaming system but this is what recommended by the sales guy and it was on sale). To save some money my friend wants to use his WIN XP 32 bit OS from his old computer. I'm almost ready to plug it in but am a bit confused about the instructions regarding AHCI. I'm not hookup my two 500 GB drives in a RAID configuration but the instructions are saying "For Windows XP OS, load the AMD AHCI 32/64 bit WinXP driver with a USB floppy disc drive during the OS installation. Refer to the section CREATING A RAID DRIVER DISC in your MB manual". The part where it says refer to you manual to create a raid disc almost answers my own question (AHCI is for a RAID or SSD setup) but I wanted to make sure.

If anybody can help me out on this I'd appreciate it.
Thanks
Jim

[LHN91]

.... I REALLY don't recommend using XP 32bit on any modern system. ANY. It renders the system essentially crippled.

That said, if you are completely set in using it, the driver disk is needed because XP doesn't include drivers to access the drives in that configuration, and that's why you need the drivers at install time.

[Bond007]

Seconded to not use XP. I know it saves money, but its not worth it. My current computer was initially on XP and I had a lot of throttling issues that I couldn't resolve unless I turned amd cool and quiet off (I tried EVERYTHING). Once windows 7 was installed all the glitches went away.

If you are using a sata hard drive you will likely to install the drivers for it during the install. I used a USB stick to do it on my last xp install.

[fortkentdad]

Been thinking us setting up an XP PC as a FTP Server? I've got some spare parts at home I was thinking of assembling into a functional computer - I'm thinking of using it as an FTP server to allow access to a hard drive with images for family & friends, and for the experience of building another PC. I have an AMD Dual Core CPU - will have to dig out the parts and list the other components. It has 4 GB of DDR2 RAM. I was thinking of using XP because I have an unutilized XP license. As I understand it you can't use the same OS license on more than one machine. I do have a Vista license somewhere - from a laptop no long utilized. That laptop is older than the PC components so maybe a better candidate for the XP license? I could also experiment even a bit more and try out this Linux OS - never tried that before. Could do for an FTP server.

[greenbackz]

XP is way too old, the 64-bit version is attrocious.. not to mention 32-bit OS limits your system to 3GB ram tops no matter how much u have installed... and won't take advantage of a 64-bit CPU (which is pretty much all of them now) add that to the fact the OS is over 10 years old, GUI is ugly as hell by todays standards.. i could go on and on lol. just get a copy of win7 and use windows loader to activate it ;) or win8 which i am running and find very responsive and have never seen a "blue screen" once since launch

[frontier204]

Originally Posted by GMJim

*snip*

You're going to have to slipstream the AHCI drivers in or use "legacy" IDE mode.
AHCI is not only for a SSD or RAID (actually RAID is another setting that needs a different set of drivers) - it also has better performance, although maybe not noticeable, than IDE mode.

I used to slipstream drivers in with nLite, because IIRC Windows XP (at least SP2's) installer wanted a FLOPPY disk to contain the drivers.
nLite - Deployment Tool for the bootable Unattended Windows installation

That said, you'd be better off running a Linux distro, like Ubuntu, Mint, or OpenSUSE than Windows XP because next year MS is ceasing ALL support, making the laughable security and lack of functionality even worse.

Originally Posted by fortkentdad

Been thinking us setting up an XP PC as a FTP Server?

Again this is a great place for Linux to be used rather than XP. OpenSUSE has a very nice user interface to set up FTP servers (or any other type of home server except for media streaming):
openSUSE 12.3: Chapter*21.*Setting up an FTP server with YaST

I set up a home FTP server in a few minutes after the OS install by disabling the firewall, creating some accounts, and feeding the user interface what it needed. It would take less time than installing XP and restarting the computer 20 times over for the updates anyway

[Chris]

I have an old AMD pc with xp. It was so slow in boot up that I installed Linux to dual boot. Then I upgraded to WIN8 since the upgrade was about half price and it was worth it. Everything is fast now. If win8 upgrade is still on sale, I suggest you do that, and do not have to worry about raid and AHCI.

[Masteroderus]

If you can't afford an OS you can download Ubuntu for free.

Now with steam!

[KaptCrunch]

XP got till june 2014 then DOA by MS

for raid drivers need to go to MB, model site an get raid drivers that will go on a usb stick

to have when OS set-up ask for driver load....hit F6 to load them from usb stick

[Reaper2794]

Hey bro. I see you’re looking for help with your PC. I can help you out with picking parts, putting it together, etc. Pretty much from start to finish. Just a friendly offer, it’s a hobby for me :) I can personally work with you and give you info so you don’t get confused with the mixed feedback on forums.

If you want help just lemme know :D