Upgrading and Configuring Your PC

Overview

A PC is designed with an open architecture. This means that you can add hardware and software components to your computer to give it more capabilities than it had when you bought it. This course is designed to help you add hardware components such as additional memory, a second hard drive, and expansion boards such as network interface cards.

The PC is designed to be worked with, but its components may be damaged if you aren't careful. We cover several of commonsense guidelines that help you work safely with your hardware to achieve the desired results. We cover a variety of topics to help you configure and tune your PC for optimum performance. These topics include better managing memory, improving disk performance, and improving the performance of MS Windows.

The course is highly interactive with many chances to test your knowledge and communicate with fellow students and subject experts. The average study time to complete the course is 6 to 8 hours.

Objectives

Upon successful conclusion of the course, the student should be able to:

• Work safely on a PC to perform all common upgrades.
• Understand how expansion boards use system resources and be able to configure expansion boards to avoid conflicts.
• Understand how device drivers extend the capabilities of your operating system and how they are loaded with CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT
• Understand how memory managers such as HIMEM.SYS and EMM386.EXE work.
• Optimize the system's use of memory by loading device drivers, TSRs, and DOS into upper or high memory.
• Configure Windows 3.1 for optimum performance.

Course Outline

Lesson 1: Working With Your PC
Essential Tips for Working With Your PC Proper Tools

Lesson 2: Expansion Boards and System Resources
Installing Expansion Boards System Resources (IRQ, I/O Ports, Memory Addresses, DMA Channels) Configuring Expansion Boards Plug and Play

Lesson 3: CMOS and Common Upgrades
CMOS Memory and SETUP Upgrading Memory Adding a New Disk Drive Adding and Configuring SCSI Devices

Lesson 4: Starting MS-DOS On Your PC
The Bootstrap Process Power On Self Test Loading the Operating System Controlling the Boot Process Creating a System Diskette

Lesson 5: Configuring Your MS-DOS System
The CONFIG.SYS File The AUTOEXEC.BAT File

Lesson 6: Terminate and Stay Resident Programs
What Is a TSR? MS-DOS Device Drivers and TSRs

Lesson 7: Optimizing Memory Usage
Memory Mapping (Addressing) Optimize Memory Location of Expansion Cards Drivers and Commands to Tune Memory (DEVICEHIGH, LOADHIGH, etc.)

Lesson 8: Microsoft Windows Configuration
Windows Modes and Versions Booting Windows Windows Configuration Files (SYSTEM.INI, WIN.INI, etc.) Using the Windows Setup Utility Using the Windows Control Panel Windows Utility Programs

Lesson 9: Optimizing Windows 3.1
Windows Memory Management Disk Optimization

Note: All web based training courses are Y2K (Year 2000) compliant.