Gateway OEM, XP Home SP2 retail?

[JustinC939]

OK, most of you might already know I'm leaving the old WinXP Pro install on her old work computer and running with that for now. I have a few more questions not already asked in other threads, but in the meantime here's the system specs as best as I can figure:

COMPUTER: Gateway Midway Plus EA E4100 Deluxe PC
CPU: P4 2.4GHz (P4 HT)
MOTHERBOARD: Intel LaCrosse D865PESO Springdale-G i865G (AMI Bios)
RAM: Infineon PC3200 DDR 400Mhz (2x256MB) 512MB
VIDEO: NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200 (says PCI in some places and AGP in others)
(also has unactivated on-board video, Intel Extreme Graphics 2)
HD: Maxtor 6Y080L0 80GB 7200rpm Ultra-ATA/133
DVD/CD: HL-DT-ST RW/DVD GCC-4480B (whatever that is)
MONITOR: 17-in. LCD (Gateway Model No. FPD1730)
AUDIO: Intel 82801ED ICH5 - AC'97 audio controller (SoundMAX)
NIC: on-board
PSU: 250W

Here's a few questions not already asked:
1. why does it ask me "Please select the operating system to start." on bootup and how do I stop this?

2. In the bios under bootup, there is a setting called "Display Setup Prompt". What the heck is this and what should it be set to? It was enabled and I disabled it and don't notice any difference.

3. In the bios, the video configuration for primary video adapter is set to PCI, but it looks like the monitor is plugged into an AGP card on the motherboard (FX 5200?). What's up with that?

4. I got the SoundMAX sound working now through my 2.1 speakers. But with the sound all the way down on my speakers and volume in volume control on the computer set to around 4 out of 10, I still hear a little sound coming from my speakers. Is there any way to change this so that I don't hear anything with the sound on the speakers all the way down?

Thank you.

1. I've had to do this before, but I don't recall the extact steps I took. But go the the run cmd and type "C:/boot.ini", and post what comes up, and we'll take it from there.

2. Not sure, but my guess is it's the screen that briefly appears that allows you to select BIOS setting, and boot options. I'd just leave it alone.

3. That's probably to enable onboard video when not using the AGP.

4. Unsure exactly what to do for this, it't probably the onboard sound device itself. I recall having that problem with older sound cards.

[MrNovi]

OK, most of you might already know I'm leaving the old WinXP Pro install on her old work computer and running with that for now. I have a few more questions not already asked in other threads, but in the meantime here's the system specs as best as I can figure:

COMPUTER: Gateway Midway Plus EA E4100 Deluxe PC
CPU: P4 2.4GHz (P4 HT)
MOTHERBOARD: Intel LaCrosse D865PESO Springdale-G i865G (AMI Bios)
RAM: Infineon PC3200 DDR 400Mhz (2x256MB) 512MB
VIDEO: NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200 (says PCI in some places and AGP in others)
(also has unactivated on-board video, Intel Extreme Graphics 2)
HD: Maxtor 6Y080L0 80GB 7200rpm Ultra-ATA/133
DVD/CD: HL-DT-ST RW/DVD GCC-4480B (whatever that is)
MONITOR: 17-in. LCD (Gateway Model No. FPD1730)
AUDIO: Intel 82801ED ICH5 - AC'97 audio controller (SoundMAX)
NIC: on-board
PSU: 250W

Here's a few questions not already asked:
1. why does it ask me "Please select the operating system to start." on bootup and how do I stop this?

2. In the bios under bootup, there is a setting called "Display Setup Prompt". What the heck is this and what should it be set to? It was enabled and I disabled it and don't notice any difference.

3. In the bios, the video configuration for primary video adapter is set to PCI, but it looks like the monitor is plugged into an AGP card on the motherboard (FX 5200?). What's up with that?

4. I got the SoundMAX sound working now through my 2.1 speakers. But with the sound all the way down on my speakers and volume in volume control on the computer set to around 4 out of 10, I still hear a little sound coming from my speakers. Is there any way to change this so that I don't hear anything with the sound on the speakers all the way down?

Thank you.

1: If it's what I think it is, Right Click on My Computer, select the ADVANCED tab, click on the Statup and Recover Settings Button, Uncheck Time To Display list of operating systems or change the time in the box to a shorter number.

2: Like Justin said, I would leave that alone. If you changed it I would Enable it as that is more than likely the default setting.

3: That only comes into play if you have two video cards installed. It selects which is the default or primary display adapter. If the FX 5200 is an AGP card I would dhange it to AGP. Otherwise I would leave it alone if the system is working properly.

4: Yes, Check Mute in sound properties.

Don

[SkaarjMaster]

1. I'll have to see what it shows on my main home computer for Startup and Recovery settings, but at work I don't have this problem either and XP Pro is installed. Under the System Startup section in Startup and Recovery at work it shows this:
"Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn
as a line in the boot.ini and "Time to Display OS..." is set at 5 seconds and "Time to display recovery options..." is set to 30 seconds
- the boot.ini in msconfig shows the same line and the timeout is 5 seconds. Nothing is checked in boot options or advanced options.
- I'll check settings on my home computers tonight

2. I'm going to keep this disabled until someone tells me what it does and why it should be enabled. I tried search online and can't find anything even under AMI bios. I wonder if it's a Gateway-specific option?

3. Well, apparently the system is working but I'm not sure if it's working as efficiently as it could be if that was set to AGP. Of course, she's not going to be playing any intensive games like I do either. Under Device Manager it shows PCI for all the driver info and stuff for Display options and Nvidia FX5200 listed, but it shows AGP when I run Aida32. Since this card is in the AGP slot, it would be nice to make sure it is running as an AGP card and not is some strange PCI simulation mode. Just not sure if I changed it to AGP in the bios how that would mess things up or not. I don't even know what DirectX version she has installed.

4. Well, the mute would be a temporary fix obviously. I may just turn the volume down more for the main volume and just leave it like that if there is no other fix. I know when I plug these speakers into the Win98SE computer, you can't hear anything hardly at all (extremely faint late at night with no noise) with the volume all the way down but I don't know what the volume is set at for that computer either.

and another question:
5. I'm getting a second hard drive for backup only and was wondering if the PSU can even take a second hard drive? If so, then I'm looking at getting one of these two (making sure that just getting an 80GB one doesn't screw up the backup because capacity is slightly smaller so getting a larger capacity one):
Western Digital
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822136112
Seagate
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822148247

If not, then I might try an external from either one of those brands. I would prefer an internal one though.

[MrNovi]

3. Well, apparently the system is working but I'm not sure if it's working as efficiently as it could be if that was set to AGP. Of course, she's not going to be playing any intensive games like I do either. Under Device Manager it shows PCI for all the driver info and stuff for Display options and Nvidia FX5200 listed, but it shows AGP when I run Aida32. Since this card is in the AGP slot, it would be nice to make sure it is running as an AGP card and not is some strange PCI simulation mode. Just not sure if I changed it to AGP in the bios how that would mess things up or not. I don't even know what DirectX version she has installed.

Changing this will have absolutely NO impact on performance. All it does is control which of the two is initialized first if both are hooked up at the same time. From what I can tell, this is like my daughter's Gateway and when you insert a Vid card in the AGP slot it disables the onboard graphics so it won't make any difference. Set it to AGP if you want, but don't sweat about it.

My daughter's came with a 120G hard drive and she added a 200 gig without any problems. She's been running it with both for close to three years. Gateway's systems have enough of a PSU to handle extra drives okay. Where they tend to have a problem is when you add a high end Vid Card and that 5200 wouldn't be a problem either. WD and Seagate both make good drives and either would suit your needs quite well.

[SkaarjMaster]

3. OK, I won't mess with this bios setting.

5. OK, looks like I'll go ahead and get the internal HD.

I'll check more into 1. tonight.

[MrNovi]

For 1:, if it's the screen I think it is, most installs won't have it. Normally you only have it if you upgrade a system, do a Repair Install, or something to that effect which adds a second entry to the Startup Menu. Many times both entries will point to the same install and both will work correctly. Try each one to see what happens. If both work correctly, then just delete one of them. If only one does, then figure out which one is the correct one and delete the other. If both have the same name such as "Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn, then add a 02 within the quotation marks of one of them to differentiate between them to find out which one to delete.

Don

[SkaarjMaster]

1. yep, 2 entries in the boot.ini, so I put a semicolon in front of the second entry and everything works fine now. One had WINDOWS and the NoExecute and the other said WINNT with no NoExecute command but everything else you said.

[SkaarjMaster]

6. All right, now she doesn't have internet this morning. The two computers in my sig and her computer are connected to the router, but only one or two of these is ever running at the same time. I cloned the MAC address way back when on my XP Home computer (Dragonslayer in my sig) for the router and then got the Win98SE computer (Dragon1 in my sig) working as well. When I first hooked up her WinXP Pro computer (Gateway OEM) the other day, she had internet and everything was great. Should I have done something with the router settings through her computer to make sure she continued to have internet? Am I missing anything here?

[MrNovi]

Do you have DHCP enabled in the Router or are you assigning IP addresses manually? Is it wireless or wired? What router? Are you using a Domain? Does each computer have a distinct name on the network? Can the Gateway see the other computers on your network?

I normally look here for answers to network problems.

[SkaarjMaster]

must have been a glitch with Brighthouse this morning, she got on no problem later but never told me.

OK, my next questions (extremely theoretical):

7. Let's say I wanted 1GB of RAM in this thing. Right now it has 2x256 sticks for 512MB, but it seems kinda slow and I'm pretty sure 1GB of RAM would do the trick. I believe I'm better off getting 2x512 sticks (all new RAM) rather than trying to match 2x256 sticks with the present (2x256) Infineon RAM in the system now and hope all four sticks work without any problems. The big problem is what RAM will work with this Gateway E-4100 system. If you can see it, here's my choices from newegg:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...nd&Order=PRICE

I'm looking at the Patriot, Corsair or Kingston, but I don't know if this board can take anything over CAS latency 3. Present timing are set at 3-3-3-8. Any ideas on this? Thank you.

Oh, this is important (I think):
"Double-sided DIMMS with x16 organization are not supported by this MB" I'm not sure if that eliminates any of those choices or not.

Also found this table (if you can read it from my cut and paste messed up):
Table 6. Supported Memory Configurations
DIMM
Capacity
Configuration
DDR SDRAM
Density
DDR SDRAM Organization
Front-side/Back-side
Number of DDR
SDRAM Devices
64 MB SS 64 Mbit 8 M x 8/empty 8
64 MB SS 128 Mbit 8 M x 16/empty 4
128 MB DS 64 Mbit 8 M x 8/8 M x 8 16
128 MB SS 128 Mbit 16 M x 8/empty 8
128 MB SS 256 Mbit 16 M x 16/empty 4
256 MB DS 128 Mbit 16 M x 8/16 M x 8 16
256 MB SS 256 Mbit 32 M x 8/empty 8
256 MB SS 512 Mbit 32 M x 16/empty 4
512 MB DS 256 Mbit 32 M x 8/32 M x 8 16
512 MB SS 512 Mbit 64 M x 8/empty 8
1024 MB DS 512 Mbit 64 M x 8/64 M x 8 16
Note: In the second column, “DS” refers to double-sided memory modules (containing two rows of DDR SDRAM) and “SS”
refers to single-sided memory modules (containing one row of DDR SDRAM).

EDIT YET AGAIN: according to a similar board's MB manual, the default timings may be 2.5-3-3-6

[SkaarjMaster]

Just checked the timings table in CPU-Z and it looks like I'll have to stick with 3-3-3-8 RAM to get the max non-overclocked performance out of this system. I've also read a few items from a google search and, apparently, this Gateway machine won't gain much performance at all upgrading from 512MB (2x256) RAM to 1GB (2x512) RAM. She doesn't game or do anything else that intensive on here, so I guess we won't get more RAM for now. Do you guys agree?

[Mjölnir]

2. In the bios under bootup, there is a setting called "Display Setup Prompt". What the heck is this and what should it be set to? It was enabled and I disabled it and don't notice any difference.
Thank you.

Most PC's have a line appear on screen that says "Press DEL to enter setup" or something along those lines. Are you sure it's not just to turn that off?

[SkaarjMaster]

2. that's the problem, I have no idea and google didn't help either. I already know to hold F1 down to get into the bios, so if it's that what it is then I can keep it disabled.

7. After checking newegg and various RAM manufacturer sites, it looks like I'll have to order directly from Crucial and if I get the 1GB kit or two 512MB sticks separately either way it'll cost around $60. Anyone have any idea if this upgrade would be worth it or not?

EDIT (4-8-08): just uninstalled Norton (wasn't easy, had to use utility, deleted dirs, deleted reg keys) and installed free AntiVir..........now her computer is all set.

[Mjölnir]

"Double-sided DIMMS with x16 organization are not supported by this MB" I'm not sure if that eliminates any of those choices or not.

512 MB DS 256 Mbit 32 M x 8/32 M x 8 16
512 MB SS 512 Mbit 64 M x 8/empty 8
1024 MB DS 512 Mbit 64 M x 8/64 M x 8 16

IIRC, that means it can't support DS sticks with 16 chips on either side. So you couldn't have something like:

1024 MB DS 512 Mbit 32 M x 8/32M x 8

Most DDR SDRAM these days tend to have only eight chips on one side or both sides.

If you want something less than C3, you might need to look into performance RAM, although some stuff does run 400MHz @ 2.5. I think some of Kingston's Value PC3200 does @ 512MB and 400MHz but don't quote me on that. Don't expect any significant performance difference in CAS latency alone though.