Hi guys...been struggling for a week putting W2K on an older box...PII233 to PII600, 128meg, 10 gig, Award Bios...yes, I know upgrading the BIOS is the right answer...but right now that is not THE answer... I can get W2K installed and running just fine...have done about 10-15 of these boxes so far...about 25 more to do... Here's the problem...When W2K starts to copy files...I get a message that the copy process would be faster if I install Smartdrv...it then gives me the option of continueing or stop... If I continue, the copy process takes over an hour...plus the setup time etc...about 3-4 hours to finish the load and get everything set up right... I use a W98 boot disk to set up the CD drive...(no, these boses won't boot from the CD and install W2K)... I copied the smartdrv.exe to my W98 boot floppy and am trying to set up the autoexec.bat file to get smartdrv running... Pulled out all my old DOS books, reading, trying various things, but no joy!!!... The box will either freeze up or I will get an error..."Your program caused a divide overflow error"... All I want to do is get the smartdrv running correctly so I can load W2K on these boxes quicker... Any ideas??? Thanx Steve

Go to another computer and use the Makeboot.exe utility on the CD to create 4 bootable floppies to start the installation. Don't use the Windows 98 boot disk.....

What kind of mobo are we talking here and what version of award are they running? with the newer versions you should be able to select S.M.A.R.T. (enabled) from one of the bios settings. Why is upgrading the bios not the answer in this case? If they all have the same mobo this should not take very long and should help you out considerably. Sorry if I am being niave, but it can't hurt and more than likely will help.

Lucid & Mark...thanx... What I did NOT tell you is that during the install process, with a BIOS that is not fully ACPI compliant, I have to hit the F7 key repeatedly for about 60 seconds to get thru the section of the install that ACPI has control over... I just assumed from my subject line with the reference to the "not ACPI compliant", you would know that...my fault... Therefore, using the boot floppies slows it down even more... As for the BIOS upgrade?...boss is cheap!!! Thanx for the help... Steve

Ok, I'd just go get the FREE bios updates and install them, overall it's worth the return in time and money cause you may have to spend twice as long fixing things later on (which someone has to pay for). And if things are still slow for you... well there seem to be a few other things to try if you REALLY wanna go that route... try copying the files to the hard drive (either in their own FAT partition or else on the single one with FAT, and don't format when installing), haven't used Smartdrive, but try adding the .exe into the autoexec file on your 98 boot disk, try setting up one machine, then use something like Ghost to create a CD or network image of it, then you can just load that instead of Windows on your machines. But, I'd advise you to upgrade the BIOS, cause if you do it later, you'll have to REinstall Windows 2000 (either fresh or as an Upgrade over your existing version). Good luck.......

LUCID...ARE YOU STILL OUT THERE??? Where do you get FREE bios updates??? When I talk to Award, i get a price of $70 per machine!!! Thanx Steve

Hmm I don't like Award all that much, but everything else usually have free updates.... I'll go wander to Award and see where the cash is from.... (boring day at work anyways)