Dell OptiPlex GXi Reference And Installation Manual

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Dell OptiPlex GXi Reference And Installation Manual Manual pdf 54 page image

3-10 Dell OptiPlex GXiLow-Profile Systems Reference and Installation GuideExiting From the ICUAt the ICU window, select EXIT from the File menu toexit the utility. If you have made any changes to the sys-tem configuration, you are asked whether you want tosave the changes.If you click Yes, the ICU saves the updated system con-figuration information into NVRAM. If you click No,you exit the ICU without saving any of your configura-tion changes. If you click Cancel, nothing is saved andthe utility continues to operate.Advanced Features of the ICUThe ICU provides the following advanced features:• Locking cards and resources, which allows you toforce specific resource assignments every time thesystem boots rather than allowing certain resourcesto be assigned dynamically• Modifying the Configuration Manager, which allowsyou to reduce the amount of memory used by theICUEach of these advanced features is described in moredetail in the following subsections.Locking and Unlocking CardsThe ICU includes a locking mechanism that enables youto allocate the system resources for all or for some func-tions of a Plug and Play expansion card. Plug and Playexpansion cards are dynamic, which means that they areallocated resources at system boot. Some device driverssupport this dynamic card configuration, but some donot. Device drivers that do not support dynamic card con-figuration are referred to as static device drivers.To determine whether your expansion card has staticdevice drivers, check the documentation that came withyour device driver. If you are using a static device driver,you need to permanently associate resources with a Plugand Play expansion card, instead of relying on the defaultPlug and Play behavior. Otherwise, the device drivermight not be able to find the card the next time the sys-tem boots. This procedure is referred to as locking a card.NOTE: The locking feature of the ICU is valid only forPlug and Play and PCI expansion cards.To lock the card resources or particular functions of thecard, you must first enable the locking feature. You mustalso select a Plug and Play or PCI expansion card fromthe list of cards installed.Locking and Unlocking All ResourcesTo lock or unlock all the resources and configurations fora Plug and Play or PCI expansion card, perform the fol-lowing steps:1. If it is not already installed, install the Plug andPlay or PCI expansion card. Then turn on thesystem.Complete steps 2 through 9 in “Installing an Expan-sion Card” in Chapter 6. The Plug and Play expansioncard should be configured automatically by thesystem.2. Start the ICU.See “Starting the ICU” found earlier in this chapter.3. Select LOCKING ENABLED from the Advanced menuin the ICU window.A check mark next to LOCKING ENABLED signifiesthat the feature is active; a Lock button appears onthe tool bar.4. Select the Plug and Play expansion card that youwant to lock or unlock from the Cards Config-ured in System list.5. Click Lock or select LOCK/UNLOCK CARD from theAdvanced menu.Both options toggle the lock state of the selectedcard.CAUTION: The ICU also contains an advancedfeature called an image file, which allows you tosave a particular configuration and then replicatethe configuration on multiple systems. However,configuration information stored in an image file isactually saved to the system’s RAM drive, which isthen erased the next time the system is restarted.For this reason, Dell does not recommend usingimage files.