Initial System Test

Your system now has a properly configured BIOS utility and has rebooted. Now it's time to do an initial system test to be sure things are in order.

Do the following:

1. Ground yourself to the case.

2. Make sure the hard drive is actually spinning.

3. Check all the fans you may have in your case. At most, this might include a rear case fan, a front case fan, a power supply fan, a processor heatsink fan, and a video graphics card heatsink fan. But cases fan needs vary. Make sure each fan is free of wires, that it is spinning, and that it is blowing in, not out.

4. Check the LEDs on the front of the case. If connected properly to the mobo, HDD LED should light up during boot-up. Also check the power LED light and the turbo LED light. If any of them doesn't light up, try reversing the leads on the LED plug or just turn it around.

5. Check the CD-ROM by pressing the eject button and see if it opens.

6. If your computer can be locked by key, might as well test it now.

7. Make sure your O/S Installation Disk with System Boot is in the CD-ROM drive, (or the floppy System Boot Disk is in Drive A:.), then reboot the PC by pressing the restart button. Read the data on the BIOS page to make sure the information displayed is correct for your system.

8. Run the computer for 15 minutes.

9. At the end of 15 minutes turn it off and immediately do the following:

   • Ground yourself to the case.

   • Carefully touch the processor and the hard drive. Both will be warm, especially the processor. But both should not be too hot to touch. If it is, don't turn on the computer again without installing a better fan.

   • If you haven't done so already, go into the PC Health section in BIOS and set the monitoring of the temperature.

Now you are through. Later, after the hard drive is partitioned and formatted and the operating system is installed, you can perform a major testing of the system, the 24-Hour Burn-In Test. But for now, on to the next step.

[ Step 16: Hard Drive Partitioning & Formatting ]