Hi all.
This is my first post here.  The subject matter was prompted by a post I saw a few days back, while I was still getting the digest version.

I build computers, and for the last 20 or so, I've adopted a new system to save a bit of effort.

Instead of assembling the computer and then programming it, I've started pre-programming the HDD in my main office W98SE machine. (This is mainly inspired by laziness, as I can do it sitting down in my soft office chair, instead of in my less comfortable workshop :--)))

My main machine runs in the nude (no sides on the case) so I just switch off, pull the ribbon cable out of the main HDD and connect up the new, unformatted drive. Then reboot, go to the BIOS and do an autodetect of the new drive.

My boot floppy has universal CD drive software, as well as fdisk and all the usual stuff, so I set up the drive with that, then use xcopy32 to copy the entire Windows CD to a new c: folder I call 'Winstart'.  Then I set up Windows from there.

When I've finished, I disconnect the drive, throw it into the new computer case and let it recognise all of it's new hardware, which usually takes about 5 minutes.  I've never bothered to remove the existing hardware configurations before relocating it, maybe it'd be a good idea to do so.  However, I've never had any problems using this method.

There is a way of removing the entire hardware configuration, via an 'enum' key, but I've not used it - maybe someone else might be able to comment. 

Cheers
Ian

Ian Porter
Computer Guys
Arrowtown
New Zealand
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