I for a long time have been struggling with figuring out the best way to setup my system to run FS and I am finally sick of it. I figured I'd come to those who know way more than me and lay it all out there so here goes...I'm running Windows XP on an Intel P4 3.0 GHz, a gig of RAM, and a Radeon X850 card. I have never been satisfied with my frames or my blurries. I have tweaked to the point I can tweak no more. I have a dual boot Windows XP system. A screen pops up at boot that lets me choose which OS to launch...the one for everyday use, or the one for FS.I have 2 hard drives. One is a 100 GB SATA drive, which also is number 1 for boot priority in my BIOS. The other HD is an UATA drive that I use for everyday use. FS only is installed on the SATA drive. Should I have not evem installed an OS on the SATA drive, just partitioned enough space for FS and another partition for the pagefile?I reach this point because I was having some problems with the XP installtion on the SATA drive so I ran a repair installation. Now the "Windows is starting up" screen hangs for about 5 minutes on startup!Thank you for any advice you can give me.

XP doesn't like to be setup on SATA, Generaly you set it up on IDE and use Copy commander or anyother utility to Copy it over...I'll defer to others that have had to deal with this more recently than myself....

>XP doesn't like to be setup on SATA, Generaly you set it up>on IDE and use Copy commander or anyother utility to Copy it>over...I'll defer to others that have had to deal with this>more recently than myself....Uh oh... If that's true I'm in trouble, because I've purchased my system with 2 SATA II hdd's which I'll be running in a RAID 0 array :S

>>XP doesn't like to be setup on SATA, Generaly you set it up>>on IDE and use Copy commander or anyother utility to Copy it>>over...I'll defer to others that have had to deal with this>>more recently than myself....>>Uh oh... If that's true I'm in trouble, because I've purchased>my system with 2 SATA II hdd's which I'll be running in a RAID>0 array :SDon't worry, it shouldn't be a problem. Just make sure jou have SATA / RAID drivers on floppy and press F6 when asked for it. The problems are generally that windows doesn't have the proper drivers for new technology, so you have to provide these during setup.Allard.

>>>XP doesn't like to be setup on SATA, Generaly you set it>up>>>on IDE and use Copy commander or anyother utility to Copy>it>>>over...I'll defer to others that have had to deal with this>>>more recently than myself....>>>>Uh oh... If that's true I'm in trouble, because I've>purchased>>my system with 2 SATA II hdd's which I'll be running in a>RAID>>0 array :S>>Don't worry, it shouldn't be a problem. Just make sure jou>have SATA / RAID drivers on floppy and press F6 when asked for>it. The problems are generally that windows doesn't have the>proper drivers for new technology, so you have to provide>these during setup.>>Allard.>Ahh yes, well if that's all then there's no worries because I knew I had to do that. Got me goin' there for a minute :)Thanks for reassuring me Allard :)

No Problem setting WindowsXP up on a SATA Drive...As mentioned above just have the SATA/Raid Drivers copied to a floppy before hand...If your copy of WindowsXP contains SPII..You will not need to install the sata/raid drivers manually(F6)...SPII includes SATA support...If you don't have a copy of windowsXP with SPII...You will "Press F6" when prompted at the bottom of the screen with a comment similar to: "press F6 if you need to install SCSI or Raid controllers"...Should be one of the first steps after accepting the "License Agreement"...It is easy to miss...If you do miss...Windows will copy all the base drivers ect...But it will halt stating it can not find the hard drive...If that happens...Just "Do Over" and be sure to catch F6 next go around..If your so inclined..You can slipstream SPII onto your existing copy of WindowsXP...It is a fun little process..You can use "nLite" to slipstream the SPII pretty easy...Or the Elder Geek has a manuel method of slipstreaming the SP...Either way I have been successful...Then I used The Elder Geeks burning instructions to create the new CD...There are probably other ways to accomplish the slipstreaming process...These are just a couple I know of and they have worked for me...Here are some Related Links:nLite:http://www.nliteos.com/The Elder Geek:http://www.theeldergeek.com/(Notice: upper left corner for slipstreaming how-to info)Have Fun!!

I have only SATA drives on my new sytem. I needed to format them using Partition Magic in DOS mode before I could install XP. Having done that, XP installed with no problem.George

Thanks for the great info, Chuck!