Thinkpads Forum

Hi

This is the order that l clicked the icons into

1. CD 2. hard drive 3. hard drive 4. hard drive

even though it works after loading AOL it seemed to slow down.

What is the correct order?

FDD-floppy
HHD-1 hard drive
network-network
HHD-2 -hard drive#2
HDD-3-hard drive#3
HDD-4-hard drive#4
PCMCIA-Pcmcia
CDROM-CD?DVD drive

Thanks

Alan

What you are referring to is the Easy Setup boot menu. The order in which you select the devices from the given list, only controls the order of which devices are scanned for a bootable operating system. From your description, the CDROM/DVD drive is checked first, followed by hard disk drive 1 (I'm assuming), then two other hard drives. Most likely, you do not have more than one hard drive in your system so those last two are not necessary.

My recommendation for the boot order follows:

1 FDD - floppy disk
2 CDROM - CD or DVD drive
3 HDD1 - hard drive #1 (installed in the laptop's drive bay)
4 leave it blank

The reason for this order is that if you have a problem with your laptop, you can (if you have one) attach either a floppy drive or install a bootable CD and run some diagnostic programs. This is not to say that you MUST specify these device in this order; it just makes life easier later on when problems do appear. You then won't have to remember how to bypass the hard drive in order to boot from a floppy or CD. There is no "correct order"; it just depends upon how you want the system to respond when booting.

As to why your system is slowing down after AOL is running, that can depend on a whole lot of other things. Namely, how much memory you have, the CPU speed of your system (forgot what you have), your hard drive specifications (RPM speed, mainly), how full the drive is, and any other programs you may be running at the same time (antivirus and spyware scanners can suck up a lot of computing power). Also, AOL itself can be slow to respond if you are using its built-in browser.

Thanks

I will listen and change the order.

I just put in a new hard drive and O/S tonight and then loaded AOL,
so l really have nothing.
I replaced the hard drive with an IBM hard drive 5400rpm.

I will try it again tomorrow in my office, AOL is horrible to start with.

Alan

Actually Alan, I think you can just use the dial-up software in Win2K to call a local AOL server and just use Firefox/Opera/whatever rather than the horribly bloated AOL software.