captinjohn

Question......are the use of flight simulators bad on the hard drive? If so, will doubling the RAM help make life for the hard drive better?

jhimmel

I wouldn't worry about it.

I have an HDVR2 DirecTiVo which buffers live TV to HD 24 hours a day 7 days a week. If that's not a problem, then I doubt a little flight sim activity is going to be an issue.

Jim H.

tukkus

My Feedback: (2)

running any game or sim doesn't put any more stress on your hardrive than turning your computer on. Once you click on a program to run, the harddrive loads the program, which usaully takes a matter of seconds, and then for the most part you're done with it.

Adding more ram to help the lifespan of the harddrive isn't cost effective.

In normal cases you would add more ram to help run ram hungry applications.

That's just a general answer to your question and technically yes adding more ram in some cases will help but all it will do is shave off a second or two of loading time which in the long run really won't extend your hardrive and it isn't worth the extra money.

STLPilot

My Feedback: (21)

You can have all the RAM in the world but if you don't assign it correctly you'll be chewing away at your hard drive moreso then you have too.

BUT

Hard drives have extremely long shelf lives.

Do you hear your HD grinding when you are using AFP?

captinjohn

S Pilot: The hard rive is so quiet I do not hear it at all. I do see the led flashing sometimes. I tell you what did happen though, I took someone,s advice and let the computer on all nite and jut turned off the monitor. The next day it would not start up and crashed for the first time. I had to call HP to walk me through the steps to get it going. I was lucky and got it going again. I then copied all photos to CD,s The computer,s start up time now is very long. Just a matter of time it will crash for its last time. Glad it is under warrenty. Capt,n

STLPilot

My Feedback: (21)

99% of the time it's not a hard drive issue, it's just need a reformat.

I format my computers at least once every 60 days.

tukkus

My Feedback: (2)

a slow startup is one sign that it might be that you have too many programs loading at startup....do you know how many you have running when your computer starts up?

r1derbike

Power supplies getting ready to take-a-dump cause some weird problems...

Charles

captinjohn

tukkus: I do not know on startup...but after its going there is 33 programs running. My sister,s computer has 45 programs running. She just got it a week ago!!! There is a lot of extra deals like do you want _ol online as you internet service...ect ...ect. I took a lot of that out of my machine. Thanks Capt,n

rajul

My Feedback: (58)

Captinjohn, try optimising the efficiency of your existing HDD first by partitioning (if it is a very large capacity) and defragmenting. Also, when you run the sim, disable all programs running in the background. That includes any spyware that you might not be aware of. They can eat into your processor performance

r1derbike

Gaming computer! Just OS and games! AND, a fast SCSI or SATA drive for fast game load times!

Charles

captinjohn

rajul: I do defrag drive c quite often. I have tried to get rid of extra files I do not use much. Tell you the truth I do not know how to patition hard drive. I have heard of doing that. That spywhare stuff is hard to find and disable...whish I knew more on that too. Thanks Capt,n

rajul

My Feedback: (58)

Captin, on spywares, I normally run both spybot and ad-aware. You can download for free here

http://www.lavasoft.de/news/product/info/

http://www.spybot.info/en/index.html

STLPilot

My Feedback: (21)

The only real way to get rid of spyware is format.

Most of the time when you get 1 piece of spyware ... you get 10 more right behind it. They have all kind of new tricks now to hide in the registry on multiple levels.

tukkus

My Feedback: (2)

Stlpilot..formatting isn't going to help capnjohn if he doesn't know how to disable or stop programs on startup....he'll just get himself back to the same situation.

Captnjohn, basically what you need to understand is that when you either download from the net or install a program from a cd, is that there is a option during the installation process that allows you to choose whether or not you want that program to startup when you first turn on your computer...from the looks of it you skip by that part just to get the installation over with. When you do that with a bunch of programs eventually they add up and take up resources and slow your computer down.

You can turn off most of those programs at startup and then most likely your comptuer will run much better. Also you should use the spyware that was posted above and run at least 2 different anti-virus programs. The spyware is for free and if you don't have anti-virus protection let me know and i can show you two that are for free and are considered excellent for anti-virus protection.

If you don't know how to turn off or which programs that should be turned off let me know and i can help you with that too. You have to be careful which programs you do turn off so if you're not sure just ask.

captinjohn

Tukus: I believe you got the answer. When I did download I got a pop-up that had places to check. OPEN or SAVE I do not remember which I did in each try. I think I used open so I could run program. I did try save sometimes...and saved airplanes to desktop. Now as far as spyware. I have Hotmail popper, adaware SE and No Adaware v3.0. I have had them in for several weeks now. Tell you the truth...I dont know all I should about them also. I just installed more memory. Got 512 MB PNY brand..now total of 1 gig I guess. OH, by the way.... the planes never got further than the desktop. Thats another story. Never tought this would be such a nitemare. For the price of the AFPDeluxe and vidio card ....I could have bought a nice small plane with a good used radio. You young fellows out there...forget sims ...get a for real plane with the money. Unless your loaded. I got to find someone close to help me figure out this machine once and for all. Thanks Capt,n

rajul

My Feedback: (58)

Captin, sometimes it is much easier and faster if you could get a friend who is good in PCs to look at your system Could accelerate your learning curve too