New computer

[Hans_Petter 1]

My wife bought me a new computer for my birthday. The specs should suffice for most of my simming and movie / image editing. However, it comes with Vista pre-installed and I'd appreciate your opinion -- should I accept this OS or install XP instead? There will be weeks spent porting my old stuff to this PC and I need to decide on the OS before I move on.My new PC has SATA disks. This is a step forward but it poses a problem in moving files from my old PC -- I can't hook up my old drive to the new PC since the connectors are different. I will use a portable USB disk to get the files across and my various FU3 regions and my FS9 require a data transfer of several 10s of GB. The complicating fact is that my old PC doesn't support USB 2. It has been tranferring files to my portable drive for about 30 hours now...Is there a faster way to transfer files from a standard drive to a SATA drive? Anyway, my hardest decision is the choice of OS. I'm posting this from a Vista laptop. I had serious problems logging on to Avsim with this PC until I set the security way down. It then complained that I'd put myself at extreme risk but it finally did log on to Avsim. Further, I see all kinds of "helpful" windows popping up as I intend to do something quite simple and straightforward. Will I get used to Vista or should I revert to the OS that does it all with less overhead?Hans Petter

[Roger Over 0]

Hi Hans,You can get SATA-IDE converters fairly cheaply (approx. $10), these allow you to connect an IDE drive to a SATA port or vise-versa depending on which type you get.Check your favorite online auction site.As to OS, I guess we will all have to get used to Vista at some point. For me, every time a new OS comes along, I want to hang on to the old one because I know my way around it. I'm still on XP, but have played with Vista, I believe it's OK so long as you have the horse power under the bonnet to drive it. Security settings can be changed to an extent to lessen the constant barrage of messages.Cheers :-wave Bruce H

[Guest Seadog]

Hans -I set up both computers in the same workgroup, and set sharing permissions on the folders I want to move. They will both appear in My Network when I connect both to the same wired ethernet router. Then I can transfer away at very high speed by using Copy and Paste commands. When I observe the process in action, it appears to be as fast as from one disk to another in the same computer, certainly not slow.As for Vista, it will be on my next computer, assuming Windows 7 isn't yet out when I build it. I'm just finishing up my final XP machine right now. XP is great, but DirectX 11 is coming soon. It will be backward compatible with Vista, but, as with Direct X 10, not compatible with XP. I don't feel a need to move up to Vista just yet. Everything I have works well with XP and I know there would be some driver issues for peripherals if I moved now to Vista. I want to put off as long as I reasonably can having to replace expensive and lightly used peripherals like scanners and printers. When I do make the move, I'll be wanting to go with a 64 bit OS, making the drivers issue even more important.Microsoft makes a utility called Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor that you can run on an XP box and it will tell you a lot about what is or is not going to be compatible. You could Google that name to find it.Hope that helps - Doug

[Roger Over 0]

BTW,Happy birthday! :-beerchug

[Hans_Petter 1]

Thanks for the advice but networking will hardly work since my old PC runs Windows 2000. I'm quite sure that they all have to run the same OS. Anyway, the USB 1 transfer works albeit slowly. I have about 30 GB moved to my portable disk now. It will be faster to transfer it to my new PC since it'll be USB 2 speed. An overnight transfer will get most of my stuff over while I sleep.Most people don't understand why it's such a hassle to set up a new computer. They just fire it up and move directly to the standard applications. With a Hotmail account there's not even a need to configure the email. "Allright, you're into flight simulators. Why don't you just reinstall the game"? I am moving a workshop. There are tweaks and projects and applications as FU3 that are developed way beyond what Looking Glass provided :-hmmm Regarding the OS I was certain I'd go for XP yesterday. I simply see no point in wasting 1 GB of memory on translucent desktop fluff and lotsa OS interference every time I want to browse a directory, move a file or (the big no-no :-eek ) run an EXE that isn't MS certified!Win 2000 has served me well -- an XP-light with most of the XP functionality and all XP drivers. Actually, I could install Win 2000 on the new PC. How about that -- a sleek OS and a powerful computer!Today I'm inclined to install Vista anyway. I hope to be able to deselect the resource-hungry features that I don't appreciate. That is, go for a basic "classic" look and full administrator rights. I'm not sure whether my printer will work though.

[Guest Seadog]

>Thanks for the advice but networking will hardly work since>my old PC runs Windows 2000. I'm quite sure that they all have>to run the same OS.Actually, it worked quite well for me moving files from a Win 98 box to my first XP box. XP provides a tool for installation on the other Microsoft OS that creates workgroup interoperability. But, it appears you have a solution that is already working for you. And the pace of implementing it has given you more time to consider which OS to use. That can't be bad, can it?-Doug

[Hans_Petter 1]

I went for Vista. I'm currently installing favorite tools and applications. It seems to work as long as I confirm my intention to run executing files. FU3 in all flavors will be copied over. I checked the driver status for my peripherals before I reached my decision and confirmed that Vista drivers were available. Before I fired up the PC for the first time I filled all the RAM slots. DDR2 ram is quite inexpensive, at least compared to what I've gotten used to paying for standard SD ram. With Vista it won't hurt to have 4 GB onboard. BTW, it registers as 3000-something MB of ram -- maybe I'm beyond the useable amount?By sticking to the same paths for flight simulators I can copy things over without having to change CFGs inside the root folder. For FS9 I install the standard sim to get the registry and the application data entries. Then I rename (and ultimately delete) the installed application and paste my old version in instead. Again, this is to avoid the hassle of reinstalling addons that get listed in CFGs. FU3 doesn't require any registry entries and puts no files outside of its root folder. Thus, no reinstalling -- just paste it in and create a shortcut to flight3.exe.I have set all folders to look as "classic" as possible and I elect to see all file extensions. I want to see bmp,jpg,txt,doc and so on in order to know what kind of file I'm dealing with. I'll soon be working on some humongous image files again and my hope is that copy, paste, adjust and save won't cause the 5 min pauses I have learned to accept.Hans Petter

[Guest Seadog]

Glad to hear the transition is going well, Hans. Regarding the reported amount of RAM, I have read pages and pages of highly technical discussion here in the Hardware forum that essentially say, yes, it is useful to have all 4 GB, and yes, Windows will report seeing less than that, but don't worry because there is a very technical reason for it.Some days I come close to understanding it. Other days, I don't care all that much and just rely on those who know much more than I do. As I recall, it has something to do with providing the possibility for increased virtual address space, but that's just a vague recollection.For applications to gain access to that expanded space they must be configured as aware of it. For example, FSX as originally released was not aware of more than 2 GB. One of the performance enhancements included in Service Pack 2 was to make it aware of more than 2 GB. It's something internal to what is called the header of the executable file, generally referred to as the 3 GB aware flag or the 3 GB switch. In effect, it pushes back the threshhold of when an application will crash with an out of memory error. Vista automatically provides the enhanced space to those programs which are aware, while Win XP must itself also be configured to be aware of the enhancement.I have too little knowledge about the needs of image programs to be able to comment on what you might see happen with those 5 minute pauses.See how complicated it quickly gets? Just be assured that 4 is better than 2 GB of RAM. Especially at the price today.-Doug

[Hans_Petter 1]

The mention of 5 min pauses referred to my old computer running out of memory. The larger the files the longer it takes to process the data. I've even seen a few CTDs. Here's today's challenge: I started putting flight simulator files on drive E to keep the old paths intact. I then noticed that I had a larger free drive and proceeded to reassign drive letters. I renamed drive E to W to free the E designation and then intended to use this designation for the large drive. Well, there were several options but E wasn't among them. I then figured that some other drive had picked up the E letter. As far as I can see E is not in use, yet it has become unavailable. I'll try a reboot and see what happens. As long as I don't mess with drive C it should be possible to assign any drive letter to the other ones.ADDED: A reboot gave me the option of choosing E as a drive letter again. I now have a 475 GB drive dedicated to flight simulators and anything pertaining to flight.Hans Petter

[Christopher Low 5,324]

Hans,The maximum amount of RAM that can be addressed by a PC with a 32bit operating system is 4GB. This figure includes the memory on your graphics card, so if you have a 512MB card, then the maximum possible amount of RAM that you will be able to use is 3.5GB.Actually, due to various reasons, that will probably be about 3GB in real world terms. You need to use a 64bit OS to address more than 4GB.

[Guest CaptRolo]

Hans;Get a IDE to SATA adapter from www.tigerdirect.com ,open case and plug in sata cable ,then transfer all files to new E drive.Then you'll have old hard drive for a backup.CaptRolo

[Hans_Petter 1]

Thanks!It was a quarter bicentennial actually. Please don't tell anyone I'm that old :-)

[Hans_Petter 1]

Thanks for the advice but the files are transferred already. My portable drive did the job nicely once it was hooked up to a computer supporting USB 2. While it took 24+ hours to load my largest files unto the drive from my old computer it took a couple of hours to transfer them to my new one. FU3 installations (Seattle/SanFran, UK, Channel Islands etc) took less than 10 min each. I'm all set!