In order to be able to complete the installation
procedure smoothly, you should collect certain information about your
system before beginning the installation. Often the
installation utility will be able to determine your system
configuration automatically but when it fails to do so, you
must be prepared to supply the needed information. Otherwise,
you'll be forced to terminate the installation procedure,
obtain the information, and restart the installation.
Table 2.1 specifies the configuration
information you need. To obtain this information, you can
consult your system documentation and the documentation for
any devices installed by you. If your documentation is
missing or incomplete, you may need to contact your hardware
vendor or manufacturer. Alternatively, you may be able to find the
needed information on the manufacturer's web site; use a
search engine such as Yahoo! or AltaVista to discover the URL
of the web site.
Which adapter type (IDE or
SCSI) is used by each drive.
For
each IDE drive, whether or not the BIOS is set
for LBA mode
RAM memory
The amount of installed
RAM
CD-ROM
Drive(s)
Which adapter type (IDE,
SCSI, or other) is used by each
drive
For each drive using a
non-IDE, non-SCSI adapter, the make and model
of the drive
SCSI Adapter (if
any)
The make and model of the
card
Network Adapter (if
any)
The make and model of the
card
Mouse
The type (serial, PS/2, or
bus)
The protocol (Microsoft,
Logitech, MouseMan, etc.)
The
number of buttons
For a serial
mouse, the serial port to which it's
connected
Video Adapter
The make and model of the
card
The amount of video
RAM
To obtain the needed information, you may need to
examine your system's BIOS settings or open your system's
case and examine the installed hardware. Consult your system
documentation to learn how to do so.
If you run Microsoft Windows 95 or Windows 98, you can
obtain much of the needed information by using the Windows
System Properties dialog box, which you can launch by using
the Control Panel:
Click on the Start menu. A popup menu
appears.
Select Settings on the popup menu and click on
Control Panel in the submenu. The Control Panel
appears.
Double click on System. The System Properties dialog
box appears. If necessary, click on the General tab, so
that the dialog box resembles
Figure 2.1.
The General tab of the System Properties dialog box
shows the type of your system's processor and the amount
of installed RAM.
Click on the Device Manager tab. The appearance of
the dialog box changes to resemble
Figure 2.2.
You can double click on an icon (or single click on
the plus key adjacent to an icon) to obtain additional
information. For example, by double clicking on the Disk
Drives icon you can determine whether a disk drive uses
an IDE or SCSI interface.
If you have a printer, you can use the Print button
to print information about your system's devices.
From the Device Manager tab, you can learn the following
information:
The number and type (IDE or SCSI) of your system's
hard drives.
The make and model of CD-ROM drives.
Some installed CD-ROM drives do not appear in the
Device Manager tab of the System Properties dialog
box. Often the
CONFIG.SYS file will contain clues that
help you learn more about such drives.
The type of mouse installed.
The make and model of the video adapter.
The make and model of multimedia adapters, such as
sound cards, if any.
The make and model of network adapters, if
any.
The make and model of SCSI adapters, if any.
2.1 Minimum Hardware Requirements
2.3 Preparing Your Hard Disk
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