HARD-DRIVES, MEMORY, CPUs SUPPORT

To better serve our great customers, we deliberately include this product support section to help you, especially for those who needs basic help installing or trouble-shooting parts, which you purchase from Upgrade Solution. Following are specific support information for the 3 main components: Hard-drives, Memory, and CPUs.

A. HARD-DRIVES

I. JUMPER SETTING

To view the jumper settings for your hard drives, please click here.

****We strongly suggest our customers to not set the jumper as Cable Select (CS) due to many errors that we received from our previous customers. The reasons are CABLE SELECT setting only works for some motherboards, and it might not work with every ribbon cables. Therefore, the drive definitely will not recognize in the system.

1. Before installing a drive, make sure you check the jumper setting of the drive. All of the drives that you purchased from Upgrade Solution, the jumper setting is already set up at Single. If it will be the only drive in your system, do not adjust the original jumper setting. It can be installed as Primary Master or Secondary Master.
   
2. If you want it to be slave or master, please follow the jumper setting instructions on top of the drives and the jumper section locates between hard-drive power cable and ribbon cable.

   ***If you want the new drive to be Slave, make sure your original drive is set at Master (not Single) .
   ***If you want the new drive to be Master, make sure your original drive is set at Slave .

3. After setting up the jumper correctly, set your Primary and Secondary drive in CMOS as AUTO.
   
4. Lastly, now your drive should be recognized in CMOS or when it first boot up on the screen. Remember, sometimes it will recognize slightly lesser than the actual size.

II. FORMATTING DRIVE

Drives purchase from Upgrade Solution has never been formatted. Therefore, you have to format the drive before using it.

There are many ways to format a drive, below are our recommendations of formatting a single drive in a system. You can use more than one drive in a system, but the new drive has to be formatted first. You can change the configuration after the new drive is formatted:

***Format a drive using a Bootable CD-Rom (Window 98 & Later Versions)

1. Unplug your original hard-drive and replace the new drive in the system. the new drive is now become Primary Master and your Bootable CD-Rom drive is Secondary master.

2. Turn on your computer, make sure your operator CD disk is in the CD-Rom drive. It now will boot up from your CD-Rom and you can format the drive. For more information of how to format a drive using Window software, please read the software instructions.

***Format a drive using a Start Up floppy disk:

1. Unplug your original hard-drive and replace the new drive in the system. The new drive is now become Primary Master.

2. Put a Start up boot disk into the floppy drive. Turn on your computer, it should be in the A:\ when booting up on the screen, then type in Fdisk, and now you can begin to partition then format the drive using Start Up Disk.

***Format a drive using your existing hard-drive:

1. Existing drive has to be set as Secondary Master and it has to have operating system (OS). The new drive has to be set as Primary Master.

2. The system will recognize two hard-drives. Operating System (OS) will be boot up from the existing drive and now you can use it to format the new drive.

---Make sure you know which drive to format, existing drive will be deleted if you format the wrong drive.

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FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

1. Why does the system recognize the drive as 20 GB, but when I formatted, it only shows 8 GB?

---- You have an old Bios which does not support more than 8 GB, so you need to upgrade your Bios.
---- In order to use the full capacity, you have to partition the drive into three parts.

2. How come it does not recognize when it first boot up on the screen?

---Check the cable and power source to see if they are connected to the drive.
---Jumper setting is correct according to the instruction above.
---Go to CMOS set up and set the drive as AUTO.

3. Can my computer support the 7200 rpm drive, even though the manual does not listed?

--Yes, you can use the 7200rpm, because 7200rpm is only the rotation speed of the drive. It will rotate faster if you have higher rotation speed drive.

4. My computer only support ATA/100, can I purchase an ATA/133 drive?

---Yes, you may run an ATA/133 drive; however, it will only transfer 100mhz not 133mhz. If you want it to run at the 133mhz, you have to purchase an external controller card that support ATA/133.

***If all of the elements are correct and the drive still does not recognize; please follow the returning instructions in the RMA section (Home Page).

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B. MEMORY

1. Before purchasing memory from Upgrade Solution, make sure you check the manual for compatibilities and appropriate memory for your computer. There are many kinds of memory. Below is basic information for several kinds:

a. Simm (72 pin)

---There are three kinds: EDO, Fast Page, and Parity

b. Dimm (168 pin)

---There are three kinds: PC-66, PC-100, and PC-133
---They are compatible with Pentium II and higher.
---Most of the speeds are backward compatible.
For Example: PC-133 is backward compatible with PC-100

c. DDR (184 pin)

---DDR memory includes: 200Mhz (PC1600); 266(PC2100); 333 MHz (PC 2700)
---They are compatible with Pentium III, Pentium IV, and AMD.

d. Rambus (RDRam 184 pin)

---It includes: PC-600, PC-800, PC1066 non-ECC or ECC
---Requires running in pairs for most motherboards
---Mixed-match speeds are not recommended.

II. REGISTERED MEMORY

1. Registered memory is only working for most of computers that running dual processors, or for servers only. There are different sizes of registered memory: 128 MB, 256 MB, 512 MB, and 1 GB. Most of them are compatible with machines requiring registered memory, but make sure you check the motherboard manuals before purchasing.

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FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

1. Why does my machine only recognize my original memory?

---The machine might not be compatible with the systems.
---To trouble shoot the memory, take out your original memory, try
to run with just the new memory. If it boots up fine, then the original and the new memory are not compatible. If it beeps 3 times when turning on the computer, then the memory is defective.

2. Why my computer does not boot up when I put a new stick of Rambus in?

---Check to see if your computer requires to run 2 at a time.
---If you already have two in your computer, then you have to purchase two more, not just one stick.
---Check the speed of the memory, check to see if they have the same speed.

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C. CPUs

**CPUs are central processing of a computer. Most of the CPUs will automatically recognize when installing it in a system. However, check the motherboard manual for the compatible speed of cpus is required.

**If when installing a new cpu in a system and it does not boot up or recognize the correct size, then again check the manual to find out the jumper setting and compatible speeds of cpus for the system. In addition, check the fan and heatsink to see if its interface with the cpu is firmly.