Computer Setup
Hard Drive Partitioning and OS Installation
The plan is to have a dual-booting system on all computers except the G3s. That means having two Operating Systems (Windows XP Professional and Ubuntu) on all computers. This will ensure longer up-time for the computers in an environment where there is limited technical support. It will also spice-up the computer experience of those Window centric computer users. Especially, when the alternative OS; Ubuntu has sooo much to offer for free.
Partitioning of the Hard Drive
- Remove the PSWD jumper on the Motherboard to reset the BIOS setting password.
- Reboot the computer and press F2 at boot-up to enter the BIOS setting. Change the boot-up sequence by enabling the CD-ROM as the first boot device.
- Use GParted-3.9-4 or a later version to make two equal partitions on the 20GB hard disk.
- Make the first partition to the right of MBR the primary NTFS partition and the other an extended partition.
Windows will be installed on the NTFS partition while Xubuntu/Edubuntu will be installed on the extended partition. Windows XP Professional on DELL Optiplex GX260 Systems
Installing Windows
- Reboot the system and quickly put a WIN XP Prof. installation CD into the CD-ROM drive. The installation of WIN XP Prof. will begin. Grab a cup of coffee or tea for it will take sometime to complete.
- Using the following parameters during the installation.
- LOCATION: SIERRA LEONE
- LANGUAGE: ENGLISH(United Kingdom)
- NAME: WEYONEPLACE
- USERNAME:weyone
- PASSWORD:weyone
- ORGANIZATION: WE-YONE SERVICES GROUP
Update Device Drivers
- Use the Dell Driver CD to install all necessary device drivers on Dell Optiplex GX260 for the following;
- Network Card Driver:Network:Intel Gigabit LOM Driver
- Video Card Driver: Intel Chipset
- CD-ROM Driver
- BIOS Update
- Multimedia Audio Controller:Analog Devices Inc. SoundMAX(R) Windows(R) WDM Driver
Ubuntu on DELL Optiplex GX260 Systems
- Put the Ubuntu-8.04.1 Live Alternate CD into the CD-ROM drive and restart the computer.
- When asked what you would like to upon booting from the Live Alternate CD, choose to Install Ubuntu.
- Use the parameters above to describe the user.