Hey guys hows it going?. ... Been a while since i posted but thought i would throw out a question or 2 as everyone was so helpful last time. By the way, was great to meet up and have a chat with all you CPC writers (all of whom made themselves very approachable and were interesting to talk to) at the LITS back in October my son and I had a good afternoon out that day. Just hope my son didn't damage any of your loaned display systems through angry button bashing....My only regret was not be given the chance to smash the "pro" CSS player taking on challenges all day, who seemed to be smashing young kids every time i walked past... Anyway, back to topic...... I currently have a 2 disk setup SSD / HDD, with my Windows 7 installation on the SSD along with graphics/sound and a few other system related programs then rest of my other programs sit partitioned off on my HDD. I made a mess of the original install and although it works it is really messy, with what looks like conflicting system folders between x86 and x64 amongst other things...I wont go into the boring details... So I have a bit of spare time at the moment and thought i would do a fresh install and get it right this time round. Where i think things started getting messy for me last time was the order in which i installed things. I think last time i just installed windows then installed motherboard drivers etc etc, but i think maybe i should have installed those pre windows install??... What is my correct order of install?...Should i run with the cd i got with the Asus Sabertooth board first and pre load drivers (if that is possible) or just run with the windows cd installation? Also, i have a fair amount of games downloaded with Steam sitting on my HDD amongst other programs. Do i really need to delete these as well or is there some way to leave them and restore links to a new windows install? I have an OEM copy of windows, are there issues re-installing when there has been no change to hardware? Any words of advice welcome, or things to note as potential pitfalls.... Thanks in advance
Drivers have to be installed after the Windows install is complete as it's Windows which needs them. As for the Steam games, you can copy the entire folder onto another drive, copy them back after the reinstall, and reinstall Steam in the same directory and it'll pick the games up again (plenty of Google info on doing this). Don't bother with the backup built into Steam, it's slow, clunky, and unreliable. Hope that helps a little, about to have dinner so didn't have much time
There is no driver order needed in Win7 (and Vista), and things are better done (OS and hardware wise) since the old old days. Windows will already find most of the drivers. Your GPU drivers will be found (after Windows update), so it would seam working, but these drivers won't have the Nvidia Control Panel, PhysiX and if you use 3D glasses thing from Nvidia, you won't have that support. Just the barebone drivers.. and not the latest. Be sure to update these drivers form Nvidia website. While you are it of re-installing Windows, be sure, BEFORE you start the Windows 7 install process, that you have your SATA Controller (in the BIOS), set to AHCI and not IDE. AHCI mode uses the fully SATA, with the following features: -> eSATA support -> Hot swappable drive -> Native Command Queue (NCQ), which HDD benefit greatly in (performance increase): -> TRIM support (keeps SSD's fast and not deteriorate performance). As mention by Fantus,: Before you re-install Windows, Move your steam folder (entirely) from the SSD to the HDD. Once Windows is installed, Install Steam, close Steam (make sure it's not running on the back), and take your HDD Steam folder that you previously mved and override every file of where it is installed (some files might not be overadable, that's ok, skip them). Once done, run Steam... might do an update, and voila. If the games don't appear as installed, and like you need to download them, then don't worry. When you'll run the installed game, Steam will make sure that every file is there, install anything that is missing (DRM), and your done. The game will run. The big download (the actual game) won't/should not be occurring. Also note, that "Program Files" and "Program Files (x86)" are JUST FOLDERS. They have nothing special. You can install stuff anywhere, any place, you can install 32-bit stuff in "Program Files", or the reverse. The folders don't determine anything. The ONLY reason why you have both folders, is to separate Windows Media Player/Center, etc... form the 32-bit and 64-bit versions. Both are needed for applications that uses them, plug-ins, and compatibility (eg: When vista was out, there was no 64-bit codecs for Windows Media Player 64-bit, beside Microsoft excellent ones, including DVD (MPEG-2), DivX, WMA, WMV, MP3, and others). Take your time, if you have any questions, feel free to ask. And happy re-install.
Thanks for the lengthy response... Been rather distracted the last couple of days, coupled with the issue of my Windows 7 cd going missing, it hasn't been too productive. Think i will have to trawl through my kids Bob the Builder dvd cases to find the bloody disk : / I do have a few niggling queries not covered but i will collate them into something easy to read first...Thanks again
