Jabo

Welcome to the pound Hollywood - Bear in mind that the Sisters of St Oleg (a local convent) are always on hand to offer...erm...'spiritual' guidance if necessary... ~S~ Jabo

As I understand it, the IL2-1946 game is also available as a paid download directly from ubisoft if you have a rapid connection. Bear in mind that you will also need to download the 352nd mod package which you can find in the Vault. Welcome to the pound Eraser - I think you'll like it here... ~S~ Jabo

Possible confusion there Rog, my pre-SP1 copy of XP could not sort out my shiny new PCI-E gfx card, so I slipstreamed it with SP2 in desperation and hey presto! Everything went back to normal (still dazed and confused, but at least I could get Bill's finest installed). The next steps for me are to slipstream SP3 into the mix which will save me lots of time when I next have to do a 'Quazi' on my system (new verb for the Oxford boys there - I quazi, you quazi etc etc). ~S~ Jabo

OK, I think I understand that. I think I need to find a copy of XP 64bit if I want to push the envelope as far as memory is concerned. Thanks for the clarification m8, much appreciated. ~S~ Jabo

Yep, that could be it...

Eh? You're spot on about Oleg overdoing the ground clutter though. Despite the fact that I spend quite a bit of my online time on the ground, I don't spend a lot of time looking around. Hopefully the production team are doing a good job on the programming so (like IL2) it will run on machines that aren't at the cutting edge. I remember being staggered by Forgotten Battles in comparison to FS 2004. ~S~ Jabo

Hi Dep, been doing some googling, there is no point in putting 16Gb of RAM in that Xeon unit of yours. 8Gb is all that Vista is capable of detecting (64 bit), and going above that will probably make matters worse as Vista will try and address the additional but make a hash of it and will wind up slowing the machine down. I suggest you go to 8Gb if you must, but save the cash on the additional memory and put it towards your graphics card. ~S~ Jabo P.S. Need to look into overclocking now as must find a way to beat Jim...

Given that your monitor was causing the problem, I suspect the default refresh rate was set to a level your monitor could not support, and therefore the monitor was shutting down, giving you the Black Screen of Death ie monitor in power save mode. ~S~ Jabo

My approach is slightly different to Rico's in that I have two HDDs in my PC, one for 'data' (the junk I collect - A bit like Rico's multitude of CD spools) and the other for 'system' files (ie windows). The advantage of this is that I can reformat the system drive any time I like without affecting the data I have on the PC. You can do this with a single drive too by partitioning it into 2 'logical' drives, and using c: for your system, and d: for your data. Obviously, whichever route you choose, you should always ensure that you have your data backed-up on a remote device (like an external hard drive) in case something major should befall your PC. For example, my airshow photos (of which there are many) are on my second drive in the PC where I can get at them quickly, on an external hard drive at home (which is not kept with the PC) and on another which I keep at my parents place, and is updated periodically. ~S~ Jabo

OK, here's mine to start the ball rolling - ~S~ Jabo

Steady on JP, we might one day run out of booze... Incidentally, is anyone bothered that in SOW you'll be able to count the bolts holding the radar towers together? And as for electricity generators for searchlights - sheesh. I'll still buy it though

Nah m8 sticking with what I already have as it's XP Pro Enterprise Edition with a legitimate corporate licence key

Thanks for all the suggestions, I've found the problem - XP pre SP1 doesn't understand PCI-E! I slipstreamed my copy with SP2 and oh yes, by the way, IT'S WORKING!!!!! By thunder this is quick compared to the old machine. 20 seconds from power on to Windows! Will have the game loaded shortly followed by Fraps and I'll do a frame count on Black Death... Thanks to everyone who's offered suggestions, I was really hitting a bad patch there for a while.

I'm wondering if it's due to my XP cd (legit) being pre-SP1. I'm in the process of building a slipstreamed XP installation disk with SP2 which might be worth a try. I will also get the latest BIOS files. Thanks Falcon On a positive note, before it crashes, it's bloody quick

How does 'the whole thing's fubar' sound? Grrr. Getting a blue screen of death while installing windows XP - reporting a fault with 'pci.sys' - gfx card? I dunno. Lost and not happy. Any help gratefully received. ~S~ Jabo

Landed at our local ParcelForce depot at 2.57 this morning and is booked out for delivery! Pace...Pace...Pace...Pace ...Pace...Pa - hang on, is that the front door bell? IT IS!!! And the bits are here - WOOHOO!!! To hell with work, I'm calling in sick...

Already have a nice SATA HDD Dep, so I'm cool for that. The processor is complete with stock HS&F, which will be consigned directly to the junk heap as I have a rather nifty Zalman cooler to bolt on top of the CPU. Just a few hours to go! ~S~ Jabo

OK, I've just pushed the order button. Here's the poop; Gigabyte GA-EP45-DS3 P45 Socket 775 8 channel audio ATX Motherboard Intel Core 2 Duo E7300 2.66GHz Socket 775 (1066FSB) 3MB L2 Cache Retail Boxed Processor BFG 9800GTX+ OC Edition 512MB Dual DVI HDTV Out PCI-E Graphics Card Coolermaster eXtreme Power 650W PSU - ATX 12V V2.01 120mm Fan 20+4pin Kingston 2GB (2x1GB) DDR2 1066MHz/PC2-8500 Hyperx Memory not bad for £415 including delivery! Oh and it'll be here Tuesday - and I've got a day off on Wednesday - guess what I'll be doing! ~S~ Jabo

Sounds interesting Trout - I'll be keeping an eye on this thread for certain. Who wants to fly Hoe?

Happy holidays to you and yours Mick - We have the same curtains! ~S~ Jabo

Nice work as always Enforcer. ~S~ to your father also ~S~ Jabo I got a book about Whitleys - The bomber, not the place.

Happy Chrimbo to you and yours Kelly. ~S~ Jabo

Have the option to go either way with that board Jim, it has 8ch sound on-board, and I also have a creative 6ch PCI card. Probably go with the on-board sound in this case so there's less gubbins inside. ~S~ Jabo Not sure about the PSU, I've got an Antec 550W lump which has been fantastic, and I'm kinda loath to sling it out. I'm sticking with the 9800GTX though, OCC say it's the best thing since sliced bread, and I've yet to find a negative review. OK, bitten the bullet - and opted for a Thermaltake Toughpower 750W - I've already got a Thermaltake case, so I like the symmetry

but I wanna play with quad-core processors - sniff. I know IL2 won't use QC technology Gec, but I've got half an eye on the future (and I don't play IL2 exclusively - please don't tell Jim)