Rawns

the Benny Hill theme tune? May also make them move to class quicker!

I'm just using the Stock cooler with the CPU. I've not over clocked it at all and monitoring the temp, it rarely goes over 50 degrees C, even when gaming! Plus the fan is really quiet on it anyway.

Update. @mac_shinobi sent me a very useful thread on GPU repair guides (https://forums.ebuyer.com/showthread.php/73485-*Graphics-card-failure-repair-guide*). I thought that if my card really was on the way out, then I had nothing to loose so gave it a go. So I stripped the GPU down to it's bare bones, gave it a deep clean, a dab of thermal paste etc and stuck it all back together. Got the card back in yesterday and played a few solid hours of ARMAII: Wastelands. No crashes or lock ups at all. Looking good so far! I'm happy as I don't have to splash out a wad of cash on a new GPU. On the flip side, I'm slightly gutted that it is working as I could do with (well, I want) a newer GPU! However, Saved cash > new GPU. I'll be gaming over the W/E and really test it and update with the results...

"Timeout expired. The timeout period elapsed prior to completion of the operation or the server is not responding." There's your issue. The transfer is timing out, usually it's because of the database and/or server performance. Extend the timeout transfer period as I posted above, get the SIMS reindex patch applied and bounce your box overnight (ideally before the time the transfer scheduled tasks run). You should then find the 1am overnight transfer task works successfully. Also worth just checking the size of your Discover.ldf database file. I've seen some schools where it's grown to a stupid size and releasing the space if it's in simple recovery mode helps.

While the Ship is older now, I really did enjoy playing it. Think I'll D/L it when home and have another blast.

For info, at the moment, 8.1 is not officially supported until the Spring 2014 release. Just use the SOLUS3 UI to push out the Connect.ini to all environment workstations. Sounds like UAC is enabled, so if you decide to create it manually, be sure to run SIMS .net as an Administrator for the first time so that the Connect.ini file is permanently saved, otherwise it will be deleted after SIMS is closed and you'll be back to square one.

Any errors in the log file about the NETWORK SERVICE not having access to transfer data?

What else is in the log file? Usually there is a reason listed for the failure (timeout perido expired or issues with specific references to the tables in the database). I'd firstly extend the Discover time-out period. Navigate to C:\Program Files (x86)\SIMS\Discover Services. Take a copy of Discover.Warehouse.Service.exe.config and name it Discover.Warehouse.Service.exe.config.old. Then open Discover.Warehouse.Service.exe.config in notepad. There should be a section titled like below: Underneath add the following: This will extend the timeout period to 10 minutes. It's also worth applying the SIMS Reindex patch to the SIMS database. I've had these issues in schools before and the reindex patch and a server reboot seems to straighten the transfer service out in most cases.

+1 for this statement. 100% correct.

If I've learnt anything over the years, it's that space goes. FAST. No matter how much of it you have. I'd still say a minimum of 120GB for O/S and programs. I'm up to 80GB already on my 120GB SSD with Win 7, Office, a few more programs, iTUnes etc. My old rig had a 300GB HDD purely for steam and it soon got filled! Depends on how much of a gamer he is. Got 300GB free now on my 1TB gaming drive. And as for media, 1TB minimum dependant on size and quanty of media files. My 1TB NAS is almost full.

If you have 800GB of games downloaded, then a mechanical drive is a lot more cost effective then some monster sized SSD's!

+1 for this. I have a 120GB Samsung Pro SSD for O/S, programs like Office etc, and a 1TB Barracuda HDD for my Steam library and other games. All my music, movies etc are on a NAS. I also have a 2nd 300GB HDD for misc storage (fraps recordings, audio/video conversions, downloads, temp files etc). Oh, oh, and a old external 300GB USB drive for VirtualBox images.

The 3 episode Dave special? I watched that quite recently having not seen it since it aired. I thought "It can't be as bad as I remember, I'll give it another go!". How wrong I was. Just a simple thing like removing audience laughter had a huge impact on it. Awful, awful, awful!!! The newest series on Dave was very good. There were one or two episodes that I felt could have been better, but on the whole, I though it was great!

Voodoo 2 was a huge step up from 'software rendering'!

Won't surprise me if it does happen, especially with the 10 min Sports Relief special due in March. Most likely to be one of the most watched TV items this year I reckon.

That was the first dedicated GPU I ever got. Made Half-Life look the bomb, and it allowed me to play Kingpin: Life of Crime.

BBC News - Still Open All Hours commissioned for full series Seems it proved so popular, David Jason has agreed to do a 6 episode series to be aired later this year. I watched it over Christmas and thought it was OK. There were a lot of nods to Ronnie Barker and I think the origional series has to be watched to fully appreciate. It was however a bit before me time.

Thats why I've always gone Nvidia. The amount of issues people seem to have with AMD driver updates scares me. Friends have had driver update after update and they've never really helped them, and in some cases just caused more issues. Nvidia driver releases are far less frequent and seem to be more stable too. With a history of 4+ Nvidia cards, I can honestly say I've never had a single issue with them in regards to driver updates. However on the flip side, people say you can get more from an AMD GPU compared to a similar priced Nvidia model. That's why I've always gone with AMD CPU's. A fraction of the price of Intels and I find performance just as good.

Oooo, looks good. Interested to know if the RRP really is £217 as a 31% saving is very tasty!

Post updated!

So, my faithful, and rather old Nvidia GTX280 GPU looks like it's finally on the way out after years of service. After 30 mins to an an hour of game time, my rig locks up and this happens: Due to a number of things suddenly breaking, funds are now tight at the moment so I can't afford to splash out on some top end GPU. Therefore any recommendations on a low/mid range GPU are most welcome. Edit: Budget: £100-£150 (May try and stretch to £200 if it's a good deal, and if I can convince the Mrs!) Games: Currently playing: BF4, DayZ SA, DayZ, ARMA3, Skyrim etc Brand: Always had Nvidia cards from Asus, but willing to consider all options... including AMD. Rig specs in my sig so something that will complement it.

Re point 2, you will loose recorded material for any channels you no longer get once your sub is cancelled. The Mrs subscribed to the Christmas movies channel last year and recorded a load of films. She then decided to cancel it as she was not watching them that often. A couple of weeks later, she wanted to watch a film again but all of them had been deleted.

God bless the internet! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4luHEVjqKA

If it's not got an agent yet, it won't be under the "Browse Agent Computers" area. If it's not listed under the network computers browser, sounds like either firewall or DNS are not quite right. Tried adding it manually at the bottom by hostname or IP?

When you try to add the workstation back to the SIMS Channel, how do you find it? Browse AD or brose Network Computers? As long as the workstation is online and has no firewall/DNS issues, it should be listed in the 'Browse Network Computers' browser.