Motherboard Replacement Smooth Transition

I did have some heart-stopping moments along the way, but I have just swapped a dodgy motherboard for a "new" one (it's new, but it's 6 year old tech - LGA 1150/Haswell) and it has gone extremely well.

Windows 10 is, so I read, the only version where it's officially possible to renew the motherboard and not have to reinstall windows - and this has proved to be the case.

Things didn't go completely as planned - I had cloned my 120GB Windows SSD onto a new 480GB SSD, but it refused to work. When I cloned my old SATA 3 mechanical HDD to the 120GB SSD it went perfectly, so I don't know what happened this time around. I also bought a wrong M2 SSD to PCIe card, so I can't use a lot of my software until the correct one comes. Minor points, though.

When first booting on the new motherboard, I got the Windows 10 loading screen and the loading circle thing just went on and on for about half an hour - so I rebooted and that time I got a message that the relevant updates and drivers were being loaded, which took a couple of minutes and voila! Sorted.

Really pleased, but the big test will be when I run DCS World and VR (I can't run them until tomorrow as my saved games folder is on that drive which I ordered the wrong adapter for). I used my account info to find the low down on my activations left etc, but was a bit confused because most of the modules shown as requiring Starforce activation (i.e. with a number) I couldn't find any evidence of a protect file anywhere (such as the MiG-21) -so we'll see what happens.

I'll report back on how well that goes.

Short & simple = duff mobo? Don't worry about slapping a new one in. :)

Even if its possible I would never do it, installing WIN10 take about 10 minutes + 10 minutes for gpu/chipset/audio/usb devices drviers etc

Not all of us enjoy the internet speed you do....

As it happens, I only did this to check it was possible - yesterday I backed up all the necessaries and today I reinstalled from scratch. My Index is coming and I was contemplating doing a clean install anyway.

Just have to redownload 168GB of DCS World modules. Thankfully I have fibre these days - but even at 74Meg connection it takes a few hours. Think it was a whole afternoon last time.

Everything seemed to be working okay, but I wanted to clear out all traces of Oculus and related settings etc before installing the Index.

Even if its possible I would never do it, installing WIN10 take about 10 minutes + 10 minutes for gpu/chipset/audio/usb devices drviers etc

I have a gigabit service and it's more than a 10 minutes. Come on now. It's more like 30 minutes from start to finish for a fresh install, and maybe 45m-1hr for an upgrade. If you don't hit the "99%" stalling issue (easy enough to fix).

But in general, from start to finish, it's about 4 hours to have a completely working DCS PC. That's counting my usual apps like Camtasia, Ultraedit, SnagIt, O365, Vectric, and ShapeOko software.

Even if its possible I would never do it, installing WIN10 take about 10 minutes + 10 minutes for gpu/chipset/audio/usb devices drviers etc

10 minutes?:cry:

man i have VDSL 100 Mbps and took me 30 minutes the updates

what is your internet speed?WOW

I am just tallking about the win10 installation process, as to DCS download of course time depens on internet connection but you can simply copy the entire dcs folder to a backup hardisk before formattin/reinstalling windows and when installation is complete just copy/paste dcs folder to your desired drive.

Took around 6 hours today, to get a 165GB DCS 2.5.5 release installed. Just minus 5 of the aircraft modules, otherwise the full monty.

For the first time since it was introduced, I didn't get any security warnings during the torrent.

Clean install of Win 10 was a good idea.

No need to download DCS. You can just copy and paste as many DCS installs around your pc as you like if you have the space.

I have a backup on external drives. Just copy and paste - redo links from the bin folder.

Clean and repair is always good after a copy to make it "new again" and clean out the metashaders and FXO folders under the saved games folder every update.

I used to keep a back-up of 2.5, as well as those I have of 1.2.4, 1.5.6 and 1.5.8, but last time I tried a completely clean install from the newly downloaded web installer I got a really nice performance boost in VR, so I decided to do that again this time around.

It's no big hassle, just leave it for the afternoon, so not really an issue. Takes a long time to copy 160+ GB as well, so might as well have it directly from the server.

I used to keep a back-up of 2.5, as well as those I have of 1.2.4, 1.5.6 and 1.5.8, but last time I tried a completely clean install from the newly downloaded web installer I got a really nice performance boost in VR, so I decided to do that again this time around.

 

It's no big hassle, just leave it for the afternoon, so not really an issue. Takes a long time to copy 160+ GB as well, so might as well have it directly from the server.

Your sig say "all SSD drives".

How can it then be faster to download, extract and then finally install a brandnew copy of DCS.

Lets say you get mediocore 300MB/sec copy/paste...that is a fraction of the above, even at 500Mbit or 1Gbit ISP connections.

* the boost my come as well from a clean& repair, followed by deleting fxo & metashader folders :thumbup:

Well I didn't say it was quicker, did I? I said that copying takes a while anyway, and it's not an issue for me to download it - which it isn't. Oh - and all my back-ups are on an old 2TB SATA (1) mechanical HDD which I connect via USB. ;)