BluBear

Morning Gents! I've been trying to find an opportunity to chat to some of you about a new rig build on comms, but it's been a bit busy lately and by the time co-ops start fizzling out i've clean forgotten about mentioning it! I'm sure the old man won't mind me posting this here on his behalf. Long and short of it is, now the Tiger Moth is done, the next project at long last is a brand spanking new rig to run everything we fly. The way it'll be funded means, he'd like to amass the components steadily throughout the year with the ultimate aim of it being ready to run by next winter. It needs to be relatively future proof but not break-the-bank expensive, it needs to run DCS and CloD comfortably with a high graphics setting. (I imagine that would include an Nvidia 980 GPU or equivalent when the time comes?) First on the list that can be purchased almost immediately, would be CPU+Mobo. I see things have moved on somewhat since I built my 'new' rig two years ago, but the i5 is still the way to go right? I've found this combo on ebuyer: Intel Core i5 4690K 3.5GHz Socket 1150 6MB L3 Cache Retail Boxed Processor 645547 £189.99 MSI Z97 GAMING 3 Socket 1150 VGA DVI HDMI DisplayPort 7.1 Channel Audio ATX Motherboard 641278 £95.99 Total: £285.98 Open to suggestions / direction Thanks in advance Dogz!

How dare they! Thanks for the heads up Arther

Yes I particularly enjoyed that! Colour footage like this always amazes me, it really makes the events of the era feel more real and recent.

Some fantastic colour footage here chaps. Really like the Hurricane colour schemes in the open minutes, I feel a co-op mission set being built around it... I've not yet sat through the whole 40+ minutes, but it was enough to make want to post it here for sure.

Yes, count me in! Happy B-day DDz forum!

Sadly, another pilot and their passenger did not have as much luck yesterday. https://aviation-safety.net/wikibase/wiki.php?id=184260 This was the 'other' Big Beautiful Doll flying in the states. Not a great start to the aviation year already...

Was just thinking about starting as I mean to go on with a scheduled program. I am trying EaseUS now, seems to be well received. Backing up everything from the win7 SSD as well just in case. If this doesn't work out I will go back to basics for sure. Thanks FT.

Gents, I've just spent the best part of 6 hours running Windows 7 backup, only for it to fail due to some random error at the last few %. It's a trifle frustrating, that's for sure! I'm now 6 hours behind on my upgrade to Win10... Anyway, should I be using a different backup facility other than Windows? I've used other programs in the past, but that was a long time ago. Can anyone recommend a free program that they use? I've googled it and a few crop up quite a bit: AOMEI, EaseUS, Macrium...

Cheers FT

Cheers matey! I'll be sure to check that.

That leads me to my next question... What to back-up, save and the order of which to do things? Here was my plan: 1. Use new 2TB external drive to back up everything from current Win7 system SSD and Data HDD. 2. Take particular note of any controller assignments, profiles etc, especially in DCS and CLOD. 3. Update Bios 4. Remove existing Win7 SSD (keep in safe place just in case) 5. Replace with new SSD and install Win10 6. Establish link to Data HDD for User data etc. 7. Install all games to new SSD copying what I can across from back-up made at point 1. 8. Fliegen! Have I missed anything? Is there anything you guys would do differently?

Aha! I understand now, thanks old chap.

Is it not the case of installing games into another folder on another drive and avoiding the 'C' drive default installation altogether? I believe this has always been a standard operation for Win7 and 10 users as it increases C drive capacity and avoids the pesky windows UAC (user account control) having access to games and other programmes that it has an effect on. But then you don't get the benefit of booting games super quick on the SSD? IL2 has to be installed in a separate folder away from Program Files, but the drive is up to you isn't it? Unless i'm totally misunderstanding you Uncle Sidly! (Entirely possible). Well, I bit the bullet! Amazon came up trumps on price: Samsung 2.5 inch 250 GB 850 EVO Solid State Drive Sold by: Amazon EU S.a.r.L. £65.99 Microsoft Window's 10 Professional 64 Bit OEM DVD Sold by: Zero Group £89.99 Booking in Saturday to do the work, hoping to be back up and running for fliegening Sunday evening 'on 10'.

Cheers all, very informative feedback indeed. Now, this worries me slightly. My current configuration is as follows: Boot SSD (128GB) = Windows, most game installations, program files Data HDD (1TB) = User files, docs, pics etc and a spill over of some steam games that would not fit in the SSD I think I will go for a new larger capacity SSD and do a fresh Win10 installation on that along with all games hopefully. But would that mean I can't then allocate my Data HDD for User files?

Wonderful video, thank you!

Oh, another question... I seem to always be battling with capacity on my leading 128Gb SSD (I have a standard 1Tb data HDD). Would it be prudent to spend an extra £60 ish and replace the SSD with one double the capacity? Is there anyway I could utilise the existing SSD or just keep it packed up as a back-up Win7 install?

Hmm ok thanks gents, maybe I misunderstood? I got the impression that whenever 10 was mentioned on TS it was a gripe over it messing something up again. I don't run any saitek software but I do have the pedals. Other than that as far as peripherals go it's just an MSFF2, G940 throttle and TrackIR. My IT buddies all love 10, best OS ever apparently. And one of them is a keen gamer, who has experienced some issues. But I guess there's bound to be some at the beginning. So, perhaps I should just bite the bullet and go 10 then!

Gents, a quick question if you please! I've had licencing trouble with my Win7 64 Ultimate install now for a while and wish to upgrade to ensure i'm fully secure and updated. Long story short, it was installed by a friend and there's no way I can obtain a genuine license unless I pay for a new one. I don't really see the point in getting 7 again (although i'm more than happy with it) and 10 seems to be a sore subject at the moment. So, should I just grab myself 8.1 Pro instead? Presumably, i'll still be entitled to a 10 upgrade later? Are there any inherent problems running our old games on 8.1 or is it much like 7? Many thanks in advance!