Before HCT testing can be run on a test System, it is necessary to setup the system with the appropriate Operating System (OS) and hard disk drive partitions. The test system will also need to meet some additional hardware requirements to pass specific tests. Video cards will also need to be set to their highest available resolution. Microsoft uses these procedures for in-house HCT testing. Follow the steps below to setup your system for HCT testing.

Step 1: Partitioning Hard Disk Drives

Partitioning your hard disk drives with appropriately sized and formatted partitions is essential to preparing your machine for HCT testing. You can partition your hard disk drives during OS setup, or afterward. Follow the instructions below to partition the Hard Disk Drives on your system:

Only one FAT16 or FAT32 partition is required for Windows 95 & 98 testing. If you are planning to use the same machine for Windows NT® or Windows® 2000 testing, you should set aside enough partition space on the hard disk drives for Windows NT® or Windows® 2000 testing when you first set up Windows 95 & 98.

To Set Up Partitions on Your System:

1. FAT16 - Create a FAT16 partition of 2 Gigabytes using FDISK and FORMAT under MS-DOS version 6.22.

   Preview: For PC99 Windows 95 and 98 testing, your hard disk drive will need one FAT32 partition of 4 Gigabytes. Systems that ship with Windows NT 4.0 will not recognize a FAT32 partition, so you will need to reformat the entire drive as mentioned above.

2. cNTFS - After installing Windows 2000 or Windows NT 4.0, create a Compressed NTFS (cNTFS) partition, using ¼ of the combined remaining space on the hard disk drives.
3. NTFS - After setting up the other two partitions, create a NTFS partition using all remaining space on the hard disk drives.

Step 2: Enabling ACPI Mode

If you are setting up a test machine for Windows® 98 compatibility testing, you will need a machine with ACPI compliant BIOS. You should also enable ACPI on your machine during setup.

To enable ACPI during setup of Windows 98

1. Format the hard disk drive using MS-DOS FORMAT.
2. You will need to boot from your floppy drive with appropriate CD-ROM drivers to gain CD-ROM access.
3. Navigate to the CD-ROM drive from the MS-DOS Command Prompt and enter the following from the Win98 directory on the CD:

   setup /pj

   Windows 98 will be installed with ACPI enabled.

Windows 2000: systems must enable ACPI during OS setup

Note: Systems must go into ACPI mode during installation of Windows 2000 without user intervention. If a system does not go into ACPI mode during Windows 2000 installation, the system will fail WHQL testing.

Step 3: Setting Power Options

Before you begin HCT testing, you should set your power management or power options settings to prevent your system from going into sleep or hibernation during HCT testing. If your system goes to sleep during a test run, your test results may be invalid.

Setting Power Options: Windows 98

1. On the Start Menu, select Settings -> Control Panel -> Power Management.

   The Power Management Properties dialog will appear.

2. On the Power Schemes tab, set "System standby", "Turn off monitor" and "Turn off hard disks" to "Never".

   By setting these to "never", you will prevent the system from interfering with HCT testing.

3. Click "OK" to accept these settings.

Windows 2000

Before you begin HCT testing, you should set your Power Options settings to prevent your system from going into sleep or hibernation during HCT testing.

1. On the Start Menu, select Settings -> Control Panel -> Power Options.

   The Power Options Properties dialog will appear.

2. On the Power Schemes tab, set "System standby", "System hibernates", "Turn off monitor" and "Turn off hard disks" to "Never".

   By setting these options to "never", you will prevent the system from interfering with HCT testing.

3. On the Hibernate tab, ensure that the "Enable Hibernate Support" check box is not selected.
4. Click "OK" to accept these settings.

Step 4: Meeting Additional Hardware Requirements

To pass HCT testing the test system must meet the hardware requirements listed below. The specific hardware requirements for the test system depend on the OS that the system will run. The following testing requirements for RAM apply to all x86 and Alpha based systems regardless of the OS they will test with:

• x86 based systems must be equipped with 64 Megabytes of RAM for HCT testing.

Note: These are memory requirements for HCT testing, not logo program requirements. The intention is to insure that no system fails HCT testing as a result of insufficient memory, not to increase the RAM required by the Windows Logo Program for Hardware.

Step 5: Set Video Card to Maximum Resolution

The video card and driver installed in the system must be configured to display the maximum number of colors at the highest available resolution. Testing with 16 colors is not allowed. Systems are stress-tested at WHQL after they have had the color depth setting of the video card set to the maximum, and then had the video resolution of the video card set to maximum.