This applies for any Windoze actually. Get all this stuff together and on a flash drive before you ditch your current OS.

First thing: Find out what MOBO you have and what it uses. Chances are its either Nvidia, VIa or Intel. For Nvidia and VIA you need to get the lastest board drivers from (Here or Here. If its Intel it doesn't matter.
Whatever board you have the chances are you have a Realtek HD soundcard. If you have a discreet soundcard then go to the manufacturers site and get teh driver. If it is onboard then go Here.
Final Driver is GFX. You have Nvidia so just grab the latest display driver from the above link.
After that you want to get DirectX. Don't fuck about - just download the redist from Here.

After all that is downloaded and on a drive, make sure you've backed everything up and go ahead and install Win 7. Delete all partitions and let the util install to the unpartitioned space (its quicker).

Once everything is done and you have a desktop, first thing you do is turn of UAC. Open the Start Bar and left click on your icon in the top left. When the window opens you want to the bottom option in the middle of the screen: Turn User Account Control on or off.

Reboot.

Now install your Mobo drivers (if you aren't using an Intel board). If you have an Nvidia board, when it asks you if you want to install the networking control thingumy, say no. Fucking thing is useless.

Reboot (even if it doesn't ask!)

Now install Direct X.

Reboot (even if it doesn't ask!)

Now install your GFX Driver.

Guess what? Reboot! (even if it doesn't ask!)

Now install your Sound Card driver, whatever flavour it may be.

Reboot (even if it doesn't ask!)

More or less done. That is the basics in the right order. At this point make a System restore point so you can always undo shit when you cock up later
After this I always recommend going back to the MS website and downloading all the C++ redists as a stupid amount of games use them.
They are:

2005
2005 SP1
2008
2008 SP1
2010

You cannot get away with just installing the latest one because, well, MS are idiots.

After that all you need is Chrome and Media Monkey and you are good to go

Yell if you need any more details and good luck.

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"Fire rained from the sky on the day I was born: 10,000 lives I ended before drawing first breath. Do not speak to me of guilt or regret, Jonathan.” - Brayan, The Keepers of the Fire

awwwww sounds like an absolute ball ache... but i appreciate the help... *grumbles* sounds like a whole Saturday setting up this shit...

not really sure what my sound card is :S

awwwww :< BF3 better be good...

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-"You've really worked out your banter, haven't you?"
-"No, not really. This is a different thing, it's spontaneous and it's called wit."

Nah, its straight forward, honestly. Just prepare well and do things in teh right order. Installing the OS will not take long. Its about 20 mins on my machine but I use a RAID array so your mileage will vary. Just get to the point that that you are running the install and go play on a console or something.

After that installing drivers is no big issue - its installing games that takes time. This is why I installed everything on my Steam account then backed it all up to my server. Transferring it in from the network is WAY quicker.

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"Fire rained from the sky on the day I was born: 10,000 lives I ended before drawing first breath. Do not speak to me of guilt or regret, Jonathan.” - Brayan, The Keepers of the Fire

Cool thanks mate.

Please dont cremate me...

I run my OS on a 120GB Raptor, and I don't have an partitions :S

you can hate me now :<

Can i just chuck all my steam games onto my backup drive and just fill the folders when im up and running again?

_________________
-"You've really worked out your banter, haven't you?"
-"No, not really. This is a different thing, it's spontaneous and it's called wit."

No, that's good! Partitions are bad - they slow things down. Raptors are about as good as HDDs get so no complaints their either. As for backing up, use the Steam backup and stick the files on your 2nd HD (or external or whatever it is). This will take time - a lot of it - but its still quicker than downloading them again.

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"Fire rained from the sky on the day I was born: 10,000 lives I ended before drawing first breath. Do not speak to me of guilt or regret, Jonathan.” - Brayan, The Keepers of the Fire

Especially on my parents shiternet, need to get off my ass and get my new place sorted...

Cheers for the help buddy! I very much appreciate your time!

_________________
-"You've really worked out your banter, haven't you?"
-"No, not really. This is a different thing, it's spontaneous and it's called wit."

You can just copy all of the .gcf's from Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps then steam will just unpack the games from them when you copy them back into the respective folder on your new install. I had a steam back up which went faulty, plus it takes longer, so I just prefer the gcf method.

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a bird in a bird in a bird in a bird in a bird in a pig

thanks mini!

_________________
-"You've really worked out your banter, haven't you?"
-"No, not really. This is a different thing, it's spontaneous and it's called wit."

Well that only works for Source games and as the Steam backup utility compresses the data it is actually faster at transferring the files due to them being reduced in size.

Having backed up over 100 games at a time using both methods I can assure you that the Backup utility is far, far faster.

_________________
"Fire rained from the sky on the day I was born: 10,000 lives I ended before drawing first breath. Do not speak to me of guilt or regret, Jonathan.” - Brayan, The Keepers of the Fire

conflict! well ill only be back up what is currently installed, source wise, so thats tf2 and l4d2. (though i shud grab all the custom maps i have for l4d1)

_________________
-"You've really worked out your banter, haven't you?"
-"No, not really. This is a different thing, it's spontaneous and it's called wit."

I copied my steam folder onto another drive, then once I had installed win7 I just copied it back. There are some instructions on steam. Hang on let me see if I can find it.

I'll be back....

There you go Moving a Steam Installation and Games

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Classy is when a woman has everything to flaunt, but chooses not to show it!

That is for relocating Steam, which is not what balls wants to do. He needs to back his stuff up then move it back once the OS is replaced. Moving or copying the files directly is slower than using the backup process

_________________
"Fire rained from the sky on the day I was born: 10,000 lives I ended before drawing first breath. Do not speak to me of guilt or regret, Jonathan.” - Brayan, The Keepers of the Fire

Oh...

I'll just get back in my box then...


On another note, I just re-installed everything. No point putting stuff back on there that you don't use. If you need it install it - tip from ditch btw

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Classy is when a woman has everything to flaunt, but chooses not to show it!

I've done what anna has said before, but i think ill try howards thing out, if its quicker.
Need to wait till pay day before I can purchase Win7... oh wait
crysis 2 is out in a week :<
shit...

may have to get it sooner!

_________________
-"You've really worked out your banter, haven't you?"
-"No, not really. This is a different thing, it's spontaneous and it's called wit."

Shouldn't fret - with that GFX of yours you wont be running Crysis 2 at high detail anyway

_________________
"Fire rained from the sky on the day I was born: 10,000 lives I ended before drawing first breath. Do not speak to me of guilt or regret, Jonathan.” - Brayan, The Keepers of the Fire

_________________
Classy is when a woman has everything to flaunt, but chooses not to show it!

You know, I think I actually understood about 5% of that.

*turns around and caresses Windows XP*

Oh fuck, not another one.... Jesus, are you breeding?

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"Fire rained from the sky on the day I was born: 10,000 lives I ended before drawing first breath. Do not speak to me of guilt or regret, Jonathan.” - Brayan, The Keepers of the Fire

its not that funny, i ran crysis 1 and 1.5 at high res with most of the dx10 stuff (used an adjusted cfg) just fine... and that was on my old card. My gtx295 is pretty fucking good tbh and when i ran warhead recently on it got 60fps and had it on the top spec.

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-"You've really worked out your banter, haven't you?"
-"No, not really. This is a different thing, it's spontaneous and it's called wit."

Well it made me lol

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Classy is when a woman has everything to flaunt, but chooses not to show it!

Gonna say this slowly:

NO

YOU

DIDN'T!


Sick and tired of this pap. DX9, no matter what you do, no matter what you tweak, no matter how you hold your head or how much you squint, does NOT look anywhere near as good as DX10

IT. JUST. DOESN'T.


XP is slower, less secure, cannot use multi-core CPUs properly, cannot access over 2.5 gigs of ram and is running 2 whole versions of DX behind the times.

Anyone still using it for gaming, ESPECIALLY if their system is actually fully DX10 capable, should have their PC taken away from them.


I am so bored silly by people lecturing me about XP and how fucking wonderful it is. You people seem to conveniently forget that XP was utterly and totally reviled by the PC community upon launch. It was a complete pile of garbage that took over 2 years to make serviceable. All you remember is that your mate told you about an article that his cat read about 9 years ago telling him that "VISTA IS EVIL". Simple, plain fact: vista ran faster and better than XP in EVERY instance and Windows 7 runs faster and better than Vista. Beyond that, why have you lot gone out and bought DX10/11 hardware and stuffed your PC full of ram that you will simply never be able to use? Its just insanity.

I just love the way the internet seems to give people the impression that their complete and utter lack of knowledge on a given subject should not impede them telling everyone else how wrong they are.

/rant


EDIT - I may have slightly missed what you were talking about, in that you think you can run Crysis 2 at high detail. You can't do that either. Your card is far from bad, mate, but to run it at full detail the recommended specs are a 3.0 gig i7, 4 gigs of RAm and a GTX 560 and that will only yield about 30fps. You will be running it at medium to high detail and expecting stutters I would wager.

That said I'm only jealous as my PC stands no effing chance now

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"Fire rained from the sky on the day I was born: 10,000 lives I ended before drawing first breath. Do not speak to me of guilt or regret, Jonathan.” - Brayan, The Keepers of the Fire

I miss my windows XP. It was good.

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Classy is when a woman has everything to flaunt, but chooses not to show it!

chill howard, as the thread indicates i'm getting W7 plus i didnt say XP was awesome or anything, i wasn't defending it either :S Just that, for what i had at the time and for the money, i got the most out of
I'll post a screenshot when im at home, the graphics quality i achieved was pretty damn good regardless. I know it wasnt the "very high" settings or what evs, because they were blanked out, the cfg just turned on some of the features that vista dx10 allowed over xp dx9, but i know it wasn't graphically superior; im not an xp fan boy anymore, because I've been using vista at work for about a year and half now; and crysis 2 demo looks sweet on it

And i really like my GPU. So it will be nice to see how stuff runs and looks when im using the new OS.

_________________
-"You've really worked out your banter, haven't you?"
-"No, not really. This is a different thing, it's spontaneous and it's called wit."

I know, I know - was mostly joking...mostly
Like I say you card is ok - better than mine (just) - but it has been left in the dust by the new generation (Fermi mark 2)

Lemme give you an example on performance difference:
http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/2011 ... ,2664.html

You can see your card wa-a-a-a-ay down the bottom there, right? Now keep in mind that Metro 2033 is an older game and then scale up how well you think you'll run Crysis 2....

_________________
"Fire rained from the sky on the day I was born: 10,000 lives I ended before drawing first breath. Do not speak to me of guilt or regret, Jonathan.” - Brayan, The Keepers of the Fire

lol, i cant even see it on the list ^^

hmm but i only bought it a year ago,.. the penny pincher in me cries if i have to buy a GTX 580 or something :S

_________________
-"You've really worked out your banter, haven't you?"
-"No, not really. This is a different thing, it's spontaneous and it's called wit."

Oh wait - do you have the 295?

_________________
"Fire rained from the sky on the day I was born: 10,000 lives I ended before drawing first breath. Do not speak to me of guilt or regret, Jonathan.” - Brayan, The Keepers of the Fire

yep... here it comes lol

Howard: "BALLS YOU NOOB! YOUR CARD ISNT WORTH TOILET PAPER! ID RATHER WIPE MY ARSE ON A FURNACE! YOU SHOULD USE YOUR DVI CABLE TO HANG YOURSELF! wait? you don't use dvi cables? YOU PLEB ASS! GO HANG YOURSELF WITH A SCART LEAD THEN YOU TECHNO FRED FLINSTONE BITCH!" ^^

i do use DVI cables...

_________________
-"You've really worked out your banter, haven't you?"
-"No, not really. This is a different thing, it's spontaneous and it's called wit."

Lol - no that is different then. I thought you had a 285, which is just a die-changed 280. A 295 is the same as SLI'd 275s - so multiply the performance of the 275 on the above chart by 1.8 and you've got your card. In other words you will do fine, but only in DX10, not 11 for Crysis 2.

Shit - your machine is a lot more powerful than mine then as I have the equivalent of a 275. Arse lol

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"Fire rained from the sky on the day I was born: 10,000 lives I ended before drawing first breath. Do not speak to me of guilt or regret, Jonathan.” - Brayan, The Keepers of the Fire

well, i've only got 4gb of ram atm, (though silly xp only recognises 3) so might need to get more.. but i hate buying hardware :< all the numbers confuse the shit out of me, and if im away from hardware sites for longer than a few months, i lose the plot :<

plus i can never remember what is in my pc is it ddrm 3 ddrmrmr 3, drtmdr t3, T2, T3 Rise of the machines etc

_________________
-"You've really worked out your banter, haven't you?"
-"No, not really. This is a different thing, it's spontaneous and it's called wit."