National Instruments NI PXI-8183 Hard Drive Recovery, Installing an OS

Chapter 2 Installation and Configuration

Hard Drive Recovery

NI PXI-8183 controllers include Phoenix Technologies Ltd. Firstware

tools, either Recover or Vault, or both. These tools allow you to recover the

original factory condition of the hard disk from a small protected area of

your hard drive. This protected area contains an image of the hard disk

provided to you at the time of shipment. Should you need to restore your

software to its original condition, you can access that image by pressing a

hot key during the initial boot process. For more information regarding

these tools, refer to the documentation on your hard drive in the

c:\Images\Firstware directory.

Note Your system hot key is <Alt>. To access the Phoenix Firstware Recover tool,

press and hold <Alt> when video first appears during the boot process.

If you need to recover your factory-installed operating system from a CD,

you can use the included OS installation CD with an external CD-ROM

drive such as a USB CD-ROM drive. Boot the PXI controller using the

OSinstallation CD to recover the OS. You also may need to reinstall other

software after using the CD to recover the OS.

Note Recovering the OS using Firstware or the recovery CD erases the contents of your

hard disk. Back up any files you want to keep.

Installing an OS

NI PXI-8183 controllers include a preinstalled OS. In some cases, you may

want to reinstall the OS or install a different OS. When doing so, consider

the following guidelines.

The NI PXI-8183 supports the installation of Windows XP from a USB

CD-ROM. However, many other operating systems do not support

installation from a USB CD-ROM. For example, Windows 2000 aborts

during the install process because it does not have drivers for the CD-ROM

device.

With DOS drivers, you can install Windows 9x operating systems.

However, only a few USB CD-ROM drives have DOS drivers.

As an alternative to a USB CD-ROM drive, you can use an external SCSI

CD-ROM with a PXI-SCSI adapter.