BIOS Upgrade for Win2000 3

[Crustyoldbloke]

I am about to upgrade a home PC from Win98 to Win2000. It's an old machine with an Award ver 1.2a BIOS on a P5ss-me motherboard.

During install of new OS, I get taken to the Microsoft site for upgrades, but I am unable to find an upgrade to this BIOS for the ACPI, that I am told is necessary.

Am I OK to just go ahead without the upgrade? Will it have any detrimental effect on the PC? Is there a site I can get a BIOS upgrade?

Your comments are esteemed.



Kind regards

COB

 

[carrr]

Have you tried the link off of this page (almost at the bottom)?

http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/server/howtobuy/upgrading/compat/biosissue.asp

"'Tis an ill wind that blows no minds." - Malaclypse the Younger

 

[Crustyoldbloke]

Hi Carr

Yes tried that, couldn't find anything of any use there at all.

There must be people who have upgraded and come across this problem.

Kind regards

COB

 

[wolluf]

Hi Crusty,

Are you doing an actual upgrade - or wiping 98 and clean installing 2k? (overwhelming opinion is - clean install if you can).

What I was thinking was if its a clean install situation, you can just try it and see (put 98 back on if 2k not happy).

As to the bios upgrade - have you tried the board manufacturer's site or just typing the ID you see at POST into Google? (there may be no upgrade for what you want of course).

Hope you're well!

 

[Lemon13]

u dont need acpi to install w2k (esp. on a desktop, it only f... your irq´s). during installation u get ask if you have other scsi host controllers to provide driver you should press F6 (alir), instead press F5 and choose standard computer instead of acpi system.
cheers

 

[Crustyoldbloke]

Hi Wolluf

Thanx for your reply. Health is still a problem, question mark over either hydrops or menieres disease at present, and thanx for asking. I was thinking of an upgrade without wiping, but if it isn't as good as it should be, I will wipe and start over.

Lemon13, just the info I was after. Thanx very much. I'm not bothered about ACPI at all.

Kind regards

COB

 

[Crustyoldbloke]

The deed wsas done on 25 March and initially I was disappointed with the overlay upgrade, however, it does appear to have improved since. The only thing I'm not happy about is the lack of speed - will it improve if I upgrdae again to XP ? I am on NTFS.



Kind regards

COB

 

[happyabc]

Whats was that about Meniere's Disease?

 

[wolluf]

Crusty,

Old machine - probably cause of lack of speed (2k needs more resources than 98 - XP needs even more, so no, XP won't help here). What may help is extra RAM - don't know what your machine has, but 98 for example will run very well with 128MB (or even 64). For 2k, 128 is really minimum (and only if you run virtually nothing). 256 or 512 is much better. You can't really do much about speed of processor.

Also - you say 'overlay upgrade' - does that mean you didn't do a clean install? If so, this may have some impact on speed - though the machine components are likely to be major cause.

PS. Have you turned off the 'eye candy' - not as much as XP, but enough to slow it down. Tweakui is good for this - (general tab - untick most or all the boxes), and display properties, effects tab - anything that tweakui has left (same tweakui as runs on 98 -

http://www.microsoft.com/ntworkstation/downloads/PowerToys/Networking/NTTweakUI.asp

if you've mislaid yours).
also - make pagefile fixed size (not much gain there - the old 'stops it fragmenting' trick).

 

[Crustyoldbloke]

Thanx wolluf, I may now do a clean install, but MOBO is at limit CPU wise, I can upgrade RAM but probably won't bother. I have elected to use NTFS, which I thought was meant to be quicker than FAT32. All eye candy is turned off and TWEAKUI has virtually nothing ticked or checked.
I can probably live with the speed, it's not as disasterous as some machines I've been out to.

Kind regards

COB