added 10 fps to insurgency

[Cruel Device]

@air_nith: I said lean windows install, which rules out the use of aero.

(My) Definition of lean: Don't use the default install, choose custom installation setup and look which components you need for gaming (e.g. WindowsMediaPlayer is something you don't need )
Keep in mind, that you can always add or remove stuff later (if you've still got the win CD, that is).
After the installation, disable every unneeded functions/features such as aero, or even the XP-styles - classical win2k looks not that cute, but while gaming you won't notice

Another thing to take into accout is the win version you're going to use. I'm still running 32bit XP, which uses way less resources than Vista. However, the choice of OS depends on your system, and of course on your experience.

Unfortunatly, I haven't played around with Windows 7 yet (and I think I'll not switch prior to Service Pack 1 , but as far as I've heard it's miles ahead of Vista in terms of resourcefulness.

It's pretty easy:
1) Partition your hard drive
2) Install Windows on one partition, and some other operating system on the other

P.S. You probably want to back up your hard drive BEFORE you partition it; losing data to a partition = not fun.

Yeah, that's it basically

A few hints from my own experiences.

1. Make a backup!
2. Seriously, make that freakin' backup! Better save than sorry...
3. Plan ahead! Don't do anything before you know how every step you have to take looks like. This way you don't have to look up things in the middle of something (which could be difficult: no working OS, no browser/vent...), or in the worst case, you don't have to use the backup. You made one, right?
4. If you are going to install both windows and linux, make sure you install win first. For some reason Windows sometimes messes around with the MBR (MasterBootRecord = Basically a list of the installed OSs). I've never seen Linux doing this, and haven't read about it. Again, better save than sorry

Again, if you've got questions just ask. Or post in the tech forum.

 

[air_nith]

I'm Sorry Cruel Device I missed the Lean install part of your first post

Another thing to take into accout is the win version you're going to use. I'm still running 32bit XP, which uses way less resources than Vista. However, the choice of OS depends on your system, and of course on your experience.

oh and another thing to consider on the OS you use is if your going to be playing any games with direct X10 because that is only supported with vista or win7. well not officially anyway...
but most x10 games are x9 compatible anyway.