Switching to Windows 64-bit

[kranz]

Originally Posted by Castout

What do you mean arranged how?

You could chnage the icon if you like or set them not to be fixed to grid.

there are several ways of sorting like: name, date, size, type. in xp you could first sort them, turn off the "snap to grid" and move them as you wished anywhere in the opened window. in "seven" and in vista you have to stick to those sorting arrangements which means you cannot place icons where you wish. That sux hard. Plus there are several issues with the "bar", I mean some programs do not want to stick there after they are minimized, you don't have the right button options if you click them etc. If windows 7 was so great there wouldn't be so many "non-microsoft" tweaks changing the UI. I use the windows xp one that goes inside the "seven" but still this template lacks many ideas that were used in XP.

@Frau: I'm REALLY impressed(almost shocked)with your PC skills.

[frau kaleun]

Originally Posted by kranz

and that's all what windows 7 is. It took me 2 months to figure out that you cannot arrange the icons on your own like in xp. At least it's better than vista.

The main reason I decided to upgrade was to switch from 32-bit to 64-bit, and Win7 is what's available now. I expect there will be some things that are missing or different from what I was used to with XP, but that's always the case... I remember when I first got XP, I hated the Start menu for a while until I got used to it, then when I did and switched back and forth between it and the Classic style I found I actually preferred the new one. At work some people have theirs set to the old view and it drives me crazy when I'm on their PCs.

I'm REALLY impressed(almost shocked)with your PC skills.

I'm sure it pales in comparison to the experts we have here... anyway most of it is learned through making ginormous mistakes and having to fix them.

But I enjoy tinkering with stuff and at some point I decided to upgrade or add some hardware on my very first computer and once I did that successfully I realized there was nothing sacred or magical about the insides of one, at the end of the day it's just another machine.

[Gerald]

Frau Valkyrie! How has it been for you, is everything all right with W7?

[stoppro]

Congrats,frau I probably would have thrown the machine out the window,glad you got it going!

[frau kaleun]

Everything is going well, I am reinstalling all the programs I need for "everyday" stuff like email and paying bills and whatnot. And of course going through the process of getting them set up the way I want them, which is a pain but necessary.

I've let Windows Update download and install everything that it wants to, all the hardware drivers check out as up-to-date. I've rebooted several times and so far, no problems.

Still have to format and partition that second HDD and that will probably be the last thing that qualifies as a "nail biter" just because I had such a bad experience when I tried to add it after the initial OS installation. But since it's connected and showing up in Disk Management and I'm not having any problems I think it will be okay.

[Gerald]

Great,party tonight

[frau kaleun]

Actually I was wondering about the possibility of installing my games on that second drive, since I'm not going to put them in the Programs folder.

Would that be a problem in terms of performance when loading and running them?

I know that on an older computer I had games installed on a "D" drive but now that I think about it that might have been a second partition on one internal HDD, not a second HDD.

[Gerald]

Is the primary hdd partition (C)?

Great to hear you got it going!


I'm very happy with Win 7 Ultimate so far.
A few issues with some programs tick me off, but I can work around them.
PS CS5 64 bit - no dds support! (Adobe says it's not a standard format? WTF!!!)
Tried Gimp with the plug in and can't see the dds files for SH?

My SH5 Exporter don't work on this system........... YET!
But over all?
I'm happy as a pig in mud!

[frau kaleun]

Originally Posted by Vendor

Is the primary hdd partition (C)?

I only have one partition per disk, C is the boot drive and first internal HDD. The D drive is the second internal HDD, E is the external drive where I keep all my docs and music and backups.

Originally Posted by privateer

Great to hear you got it going!


I'm very happy with Win 7 Ultimate so far.

The thing I'm really liking is the "library" setup, where you can add any folder to your Documents, Music, etc. and make it the default save location. I was using Tweak UI on XP to "redirect" My Music to an external drive, since that's where all my music files were. Never got around to it with Pics and Docs but now there's no need for it.

EDIT: Oh I meant to ask... is it safe to delete that "Public" user folder and subfolders? If that's only for other users to save stuff, there's never going to be anything in there. I remember going through XP at one point and getting rid of all the "sample" files that it installed in My Pictures and My Music, but I can't remember if I deleted any "extra" user folders that seemed unnecessary.

[Gerald]

it can be removed, but I think this is unnecessary, one day you may want to have the W7/folders,works a little differently an XP,

[stoppro]

All my games are run on the second drive,I just made a folder \Games and then put them in . the only game on c drive is SH5

[Arclight]

Might boost performance a bit; Windows can load from one HD without interfering with game-activity.

Can gain more by moving the page file to a separate HD, but in the end it's all minimal gains. In my case I have a small dedicated partition at the start of the 2nd HD containing the page file, and the second partition houses all game installs.

[frau kaleun]

Paging files and virtual memory was gonna be my next question, lol.

I have the 2 internal drives (1 TB and 160 GB) and the 1 external (1 TB), and 6 GB RAM installed.

So what would be recommended min/max size and location of my paging file(s)?

I know I had to go into XP at one point and do a custom setting to get just what Windows recommended, but I only had the one internal HDD then and I assumed putting it on the external drive would be a bad idea (if only because I have had occasions where I tried to pull up data from that drive only to find the cable had jiggled loose and then I'd have to remount it... didn't want to lose contact with the paging file indefinitely and unknowingly in that situation).

Right now I've got the paging file on the C (system/boot) drive, min 9216 MB and max 18432 MB. I was shooting for the RAM x1.5/x3 rule, don't know if that's optimal but I've seen it repeated just about every place I look for info.

There's nothing on the 160 GB HDD yet so dedicating a portion of it to a paging file would be a cinch.

[Arclight]

Wasn't the "rule" 1.5x to 2x RAM? can't remember now, but that's what I've been using.

The paging file (Pagefile.sys) is a hidden file on your computer's hard disk that Windows XP uses as if it were random access memory (RAM). The paging file and physical memory comprise virtual memory. By default, Windows stores the paging file on the boot partition (the partition that contains the operating system and its support files). The default, or recommended, paging file size is equal to 1.5 times the total amount of RAM. This article discusses how you can configure the paging file for system optimization and recovery.

I'd just plunk the page-file and game-installs on the fastest drive. In your case, I bet that's the 160GB one, especially if that happens to be a relatively new Western Digital.

In mine I have a 10GB partition at the start of the disk (which is the fastest part, it get's slower in finding and writing data towards the outer portions of the platters) set to 6GB min and 8GB max (would be 9GB/12GB or 9216MB/12288MB in your case).

To enhance performance, move the paging file to a different partition. When the paging file is on the boot partition, Windows must perform disk reading and writing requests on both the system folder and the paging file. When the paging file is moved to a different partition, there is less competition between reading and writing requests.

I can't tell you if it actually makes a difference; it's not like I did extensive benchmarking or something. It just seemed to make sense to separate the 2 things that load from HDs the most: the OS and games. And you want the page-file as fast as possible, so the inner part of a fast drive seems most appropriate. I made a separate partition for the page file to make sure it never fragments or the disk housing it runs out of space to let it function properly.

Some advice to never remove the page file from C: completely, to increase stability, but I've never had any issues with it. (though reading the next bit I'm gonna create a system-managed one on C: again)

However, if you completely remove the paging file from the boot partition, Windows cannot create a dump file (Memory.dmp) in which to write debugging information in the event that a kernel mode STOP error message occurs. This can lead to extended downtime if a debug procedure is necessary to troubleshoot the STOP error message.

The optimal solution is to create one paging file that is, by default, stored on the boot partition, and then create one paging file on another, less frequently accessed partition. Additionally, it is optimal to create the second paging file so that it exists on its own partition, with no data or operating-system-specific files. By design, Windows uses the paging file on the less frequently accessed partition over the paging file on the more heavily accessed boot partition. An internal algorithm is used to determine which paging file to use for virtual memory management.

When you place a paging file on its own partition, the paging file does not become fragmented, and this counts as another definite advantage. If a paging file resides on a partition that contains other data, it may experience fragmentation as it expands to satisfy the extra virtual memory that is required. An unfragmented paging file leads to faster virtual memory access and greater likelihood of a dump-file capture that is free of significant errors.

In a system with plenty of RAM there isn't a whole lot of reason to have a large page file though. Only one I can think of is for suspend mode, so the whole RAM content can be written to disk. In that case a page-file equal to size of RAM would be enough, especially considering it's highly unlikely that you would ever send the system into suspend with all it's RAM in use (while running memory intensive app). There are more valid methods to calculate the proper size, but I wouldn't get into it unless you're running a server.

Quotes from here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314482

NOTE : If your computer contains multiple hard disks, you can also create a paging file for each hard disk. When information is distributed across multiple paging files, the hard disk controller can simultaneously read from and write to multiple hard disks. As a result, system performance is enhanced.