here we go... I got a 1.8 P4 with 400FSB and 512MB of DDR200 RAM...

I got this because my frinds said that his system was crashing a lot so he got me to build him a new one for his old one.. I did a memtest86 on it because I thought it might have been the ram but the test came back ok.. I think it might have been his hard drive that had errors but it is in the trash so I there is no way to know ( I hope the system the rest of the system is ok it seems like it work.. sis 645 motherboard)

here are my three questions

1) does anyone know how I can make sure that the motherboard and CPU are good withought me having to buy a hard drive and installing an OS on it so as to try it out?

2)it needs a new video card as he kept his old one... how good should I go.. 9600xt?? I wanted somthing that is directX 9.0 and seeing as the motherboard is only 4x I don't want to go top of the line..

3) this system needs to have server 2003 on it as I am taking a class on it... should I duel boot with XP or can server run most games fine... mainly flight sim 2004...?

thanx for the help sorry about the long but what can I say I need help from some gamers and a lot of it...

may the force be with u...

p.m.s. I am thinking of upin the ram to 1 G?? thoughts?

1. you don't need a HDD to test a motherboard/CPU

2. get a Radeon 9550 128MB/128-bit card

3. not familiar with Server 2003 so I can't comment

P.S. 512MB of RAM is more than sufficient in most cases. 1GB is only necessary for hardcore gamers or those that run memory intensive apps such as video editting or CAD

Asus A7N8X-X
1800+ @ 8 x 210MHz
768MB PC3200
Asus A9550 128MB/128-bit
Gamer Edition
WinME/WinXP Pro

so how would I test the motherboard?

and also cpu and why not the 9600?

WinXP will run the games better because it doesn't have so many services running in the background. Otherwise, DX9 runs on 2003 fine.

Why do you need 2003 as the base OS? Virtual PC 2005!!! If you want to learn, virtual hardware is the way to go, trust me. You can build your whole networked environment (or multiple environments!) and run it on one PC. Just get 1 or 2 gigs of memory if you're gonna run it. For cost effective purchasing of Microsoft software for learning, google Microsoft Action Pack. $300 gets you an obscene amount of software - 10x XP Pro, Server 2003, Exchange, SQL, VIrtual PC 2005, Office Pro, Front Page, Small Business Server Premium, and much much much more.

For the video card, I would go 9550 or 9600 Pro. XT if you don't spend much more than $100. Over that price, and you're too close to an NVidia 6600, which is significantly faster.

About Jam's comments concerning 512M of RAM, if you're gonna run 2003 Server as a base OS, go ahead and get one gig of memory. Take it from an MCSE.

But again, I'd highly recommend you check out Virtual PC 2005 (or VMWare) if you need to learn. If you're gonna build a virtual network, again, 2 gigs of memory would be the best way to go.

"People! Take to the streets and scream, 'BE REASONABLE!!!'"

thanks for the tip... you see I took my MCSA classes about 6 months back and I am an MCP I just need to work on the two exam for server 2003... so I wanted a sep work system to do a review and at the same time I still wanted the functionality because this computer will be shared... my other system in running linux so the other user doesn't want to go near it... I do however want to know how to check a motherboard and cpu to see if they are working fine.. lol

thanx again for the tips..

To pass the exams, you need to know how to apply GPO's and what not onto clients, mess with volume shadow copy client, etc. That's why doing it on virtual hardware is so beneficial. You can set yourself up a 2003 Server and XP client as Virtual PC's and mess with that stuff without effecting your actual machine's OS. In fact, once you're done with your experimentation, you can choose to not even save what you changed in the exercise.

If you're serious about learning this stuff, trust me - Virtual PC or Server is more efficient for learning. I'm currently an MCSE 2000 upgrading to 2003.

How to test the motherboard and CPU without loading an OS, etc? I always used some type of troubleshooting utility like Troubleshooter when I did that kind of thing. Now I troubleshoot servers, and they come with that stuff.

"People! Take to the streets and scream, 'BE REASONABLE!!!'"