HEllo all :)

hello all i just visited your server to c how well my computer runs on it and it looks awesome. i have watched my friend play on it all the time but i was not into invasion until a few days ago. i just have one question is there anyway i can make the loading screen take much shorter time then it does. sometimes i have to wait a long time to get into the game looking at a loading screen

Welcome!!

Yes there is a way to speed up the process, but you have to do some work to get it done.

Go here and when you have time, download all the maps.

http://www.disastrousconsequences.com/dc/maps.jsp

I'd suggest this post: http://www.disastrousconsequences.com/dcforum/posts/list/1647.page for getting the map packs rather than grabbing them individually. Depends what you want and how much HDD space you have.

umm yeah lol whats HDD hared drive?? if it is how can i figure it out

Yes, HDD is your hard drive. To see how much space you have:

Right click your start button

Select Explore

Right click the drive you'll be downloading to

Select properties
This will give you the information you want.
I quickly counted the downloads that are on the link Double provided and there seems to be about 2.5 gig of downloads (2500 MB, 2,500,000,000 bytes). After you've downloaded them and put them in the proper directories, you can just delete the zips to save space on your drive. If you don't have a lot of space, then download, install, delete zips as you go along.

When I increased my RAM from 512K to 1G my load times literally cut by more than half. Having all the maps helps save you time from downloading at the beginning, but it won't affect your load screen time, which is where the RAM is a huge difference maker.

Hey guys I'm almost back. I had some hard drive issues for the past couple weeks, relating to the fact that windows doesn't like hard drives bigger than 137gb! So I actually ended up ruining my 400Gb drive! I RMA'ed the drive and already got my replacement, so I'm all good now. Plus I went out and got a 150Gb 10,000 rpm RAPTOR hard drive, as my system boot drive, and the 400gb is my storage. I can't believe how fast this drive is. Windows boots in SECONDS after POSTing. Wow!

Dang I wish my copy of UT2k4 was on DVD, I hate having to swap a half dozen CDs into my drive when installing....

From what I understand you can partition your drive and as long as the partitions are less than 137G everything will be kosher. I have a 162G drive and haven't had any problems with it, but it's not my primary drive carrying windows, that drive is only 40G.

I have not had a problem with my Raid0 aray 4 x 160GB HDs, which endsup as 596GB useable, as the primary disk in my computer.

I've got two 250 SATA drives RAID 0 as primary for my 32bit XP, which is what I usually run ... I did have some problems recently but it was because of adding more RAM ...

Turns out that if my MB uses "AUTO" or manually set settings (per manufacturer ratings) for 4GB of RAM (vs the 2 GB manually set) the system isn't always happy ...

But use the SPD detection (which is actually slower than the manufacturer ratings - manufacturer said 2 for CAS latency, and SPD says 2.5) and everything is stable now.

64bit XP is on a 40GB ATA drive, but UT2004 doesn't run significantly faster 64 bit, and the 64 bit client appears to have some issues with text to speech - and I prefer to hear what's typed rather than miss the message and have to hit F2, which usually leads to a rock to the head.

Back to hard drives: if I ever get money sitting around enough ... I'll rebuild my system with the C: drive as the 2 250's RAID 1, but go with a D: drive that's RAID 0 for video work.

But then I'll probably have a whole new MB/CPU setup by then ...

I'm glad you clarified that the RAID 0 decision was financial because I would not recommend it for the primary drive - yes, it gives you the usable space of both drives but it essentially doubles your chances of failure (either disk that fails will take the whole virtual drive down). As you mentioned, RAID 1 (mirroring) would be the best option if one can afford it.