Protect mappings during major hardware change?

[kengou]

I am preparing to replace my computer's motherboard in order to upgrade the CPU and RAM. I hope I won't need to reinstall Windows as a result, although anything is possible. Last time I reinstalled Windows, despite backing up all my control mappings, I still had to manually remap my controls for every aircraft because the controller IDs and order within DCS (and within Windows) got rearranged.

 

 

Before I make another major change to my PC, I want to take as many precautions as possible to avoid having to remap everything again. It was a long and annoying process.

 

 

What can I do to ensure my controller bindings will all work after a motherboard change or possibly (worst case) a Windows reinstall? Is there a good way to re-order or preserve my device IDs? Will that help?

:joystick:

[Weegie]

I can only partly answer, probably like most you've invested a lot of time on profiles for devices, they aren't lost if their order or hardware id's change.

 

What to do is to copy and save the Config\Input folder somwhere out of the Saved Games\DCS folders. After say a worse case Windows reinstall open DCS with all your devices enabled then close it. DCS will make new profiles for the devices with the new addresses that Windows has now assigned them.

 

Copy the filenames of the new devices in the SavedGames\DCS\Config\Input"Aircraft" directory, one at a time. Then assign that filename to the saved same device in the Input folder that you moved elsewhere. You can now take that renamed old file (containing all your settings) and put it into the Saved\Games\Config\Input"Aircraft" directory replacing the file that was there perviously. Alternatively you can open the old saved input content in say Notepad++ and copy the content over to the new device file that DCS has made.

 

It's still a bit of a faff to do but it's better than having to redo all the control bindings.

 

On an aside I think that when there have been changes to a modules settings file in the game via an update, the settings revert to default. Your old configs are still there, but the problem is if you don't check and exit the game without loading the setup files that were there before the update, then the default settings overwrite your previous ones. Resulting in a loss of the settings. I'm still not 100% on this but I think that's what happens. What I'm doing now is saving my input files outside the Saved Games/DCS folder to somewhere else just in case at every update. I've recently seen this happen not only to me but a few others with the P-47 and it's an almighty pain

[Rudel_chw]

 

What to do is to copy and save the Config\Input folder somwhere out of the Saved Games\DCS folders. ....

 

+1 ... I agree with every part of your post. On my case I use a mklink hardlink to place the whole config folder on my cloud drive, providing backup and file versioning.

[kengou]

I can only partly answer, probably like most you've invested a lot of time on profiles for devices, they aren't lost if their order or hardware id's change.

 

What to do is to copy and save the Config\Input folder somwhere out of the Saved Games\DCS folders. After say a worse case Windows reinstall open DCS with all your devices enabled then close it. DCS will make new profiles for the devices with the new addresses that Windows has now assigned them.

 

Copy the filenames of the new devices in the SavedGames\DCS\Config\Input"Aircraft" directory, one at a time. Then assign that filename to the saved same device in the Input folder that you moved elsewhere. You can now take that renamed old file (containing all your settings) and put it into the Saved\Games\Config\Input"Aircraft" directory replacing the file that was there perviously. Alternatively you can open the old saved input content in say Notepad++ and copy the content over to the new device file that DCS has made.

 

It's still a bit of a faff to do but it's better than having to redo all the control bindings.

 

On an aside I think that when there have been changes to a modules settings file in the game via an update, the settings revert to default. Your old configs are still there, but the problem is if you don't check and exit the game without loading the setup files that were there before the update, then the default settings overwrite your previous ones. Resulting in a loss of the settings. I'm still not 100% on this but I think that's what happens. What I'm doing now is saving my input files outside the Saved Games/DCS folder to somewhere else just in case at every update. I've recently seen this happen not only to me but a few others with the P-47 and it's an almighty pain

Wonderful answer, thanks so much! I'll back all of this up immediately. Hopefully I can avoid the headaches of remapping every controller for every plane next time.

[kengou]

Luckily for me the hardware change went very smoothly and I had no need to restore any mappings. Case closed.