Win 7 64bit and Hard Drive questions.

[McTrainGuy]

Good Evening,

i was curious about my future upgrades in my computer.

1. Is it possible to have 3 hard drives (1. win 7 2. steam 3. extra stuff)
2. After looking at alot of bugs and whatnot with win 7 64bit and raildriver...should i stay at xp sp3?? until everything is stable?

Thanks Guys
~Nick C.
(da Drum Major)

[arizonachris]

1) yes, it is, but I'm not sure if the power supply in that Compaq can handle it. I looked at the specs in your other Topic about Raildriver.

My , you need to upgrade that entire PC. Socket 939 is really, really old now, your Athlon 64 is only 2.2Ghz, I'm surprised TS runs. You will need Win 7 64 bit to use 8Gb of RAM, you 4Gb now only shows 3.4Gb used because that's what 32 but Windows' limit is. ( Compaq specs: http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/docu ... =c00609389 )

2) from what I read, most issues with Raildriver have not been with Win 7 64 bit (Win 7 being a very mature operating system by now), but with each update to Train Simulator. eg: 2012 to 2013, 2013 to 2014.

Hope this helps some.

[Ericmopar]

I second what Chris is telling you, plus, XP is really outdated now and will no longer be supported in the near future. Believe me when I tell you, that windows XP will be malfunctioning and a huge security risk within 6 months without support.
The best bang for the buck is going to be a new home built. I came from the Bay Area, so I know there are tons of people and resources for a PC build.
Just keep in mind, that going for more than 4 cores on the CPU is pointless in a gaming rig, unless you edit movies and/or do muti threading programs like engineering stuff.

[arizonachris]

oops, my mistake........again

[buzz456]

This is from the Micro Soft web site.
As a result, after April 8, 2014, technical assistance for Windows XP will no longer be available, including automatic updates that help protect your PC. Microsoft will also stop providing Microsoft Security Essentials for download on Windows XP on this date. (If you already have Microsoft Security Essentials installed, you will continue to receive anti-malware signature updates for a limited time, but this does not mean that your PC will be secure because Microsoft will no longer be providing security updates to protect your PC.)

[Ericmopar]

The Windows XP thing is pretty serious. I wonder if a temp bulletin warning our members its time to bite the bullet and pick a new OS is in order?
Give them some tips, like a person can buy the "OEM" disks for half the price.

[buzz456]

We need to buy 24 new computers this year to go to windows 7 from XP. Of course the IT professionals are recommending HP/Compaq. Any thoughts by you geeks?

[arizonachris]

HP. Compaq are fine for office work. As long as you don't intend to game on them. Try and specify Win 7, unless you want to guniea pig test your existing software on Win 8.

[Ericmopar]

Dell has really great commercial support these days. That's why you see so many Dells in the commercial environments.
Like Chris says "As long as you don't intend to game on them"
None of the OEM manufacturers are good at keeping things like the BIOS up to date.

My only thing with HP Compaq, is that they keep saying they'd really like to get out of the PC game, that and I keep hearing there customer support is terrible.

Here's some search results from Newegg to give you an idea. I don't necessarily support buying from them, their return policy is less than desirable.

You can get great deals from Dell's Outlet.

[buzz456]

Pricey.

[Bananarama]

For biz, nothing beats the reliability and support from HP. Too bad their rep doesn't translate to the home market.

[buzz456]

We don't really need much support. In the good old days I bought Gateways and never had any problems. This is mainly an exercise based on the fact that the XP support is going away and we are being forced into the upgrade and buying new computers is little more than the darn licensees and the fact that many of our older computers won't handle Win7.

[McTrainGuy]

shoot. @buzz are you saying that win xp is going to fall apart and my pc wont work after a few months?

[Ericmopar]

shoot. @buzz are you saying that win xp is going to fall apart and my pc wont work after a few months?

After 6 months or so, you will start getting strange behavior, like images not showing in web pages, more and more uncontrolled adware/malware etc.
Things like graphics drivers and newer hardware won't work correctly with the old XP drivers etc.
It will be a slow lingering death for a XP powered machine.

[arizonachris]

Nah, I see XP being viable for two to three more years. But it's like Eric and Buzz say, when the official MS support is gone, vendors are not gonna need to (or want to) keep making XP drivers for their products. Same as with Win 98 and ME. Try and find device drivers for those versions.

This is the way the industry makes it's money. New version of Windows, vendors want you to buy new hardware, not create drivers for their "old" stuff. (Creative was one that really got the public mad when Win 7 came out and they didn't write new drivers for their existing sound cards) Motherboards still support XP but that will go away, too. None of the new boards support 98 or ME anymore. Best bet for now is a dual boot like you already asked. XP on one drive, Win 7 on another drive. You'll slowly see how nice Win 7 is, and that probably 99% of your current "stuff" still runs just fine.