Getting my computer ready

Before any ThunderLAN, its a good idea to make sure your computer is ready. This involves updating window, updating drivers, installing games like the organized games for the night, or other game you’ld like to play, and updating games you already have installed.

Windows Updates

Ok first item on our list, and the easiest is updating windows. Windows will generally keep itself up to date, but its a good idea to give it a push before the lan. This saves the previous amount of internet bandwidth avaliable at the event for game releated uses. For steps on how to do this, see the following FAQ page from Microsoft: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/12373/windows-update-faq

Drivers

This is the most trickest one on the list, drivers. Drivers are what allow windows to use all the different variety of hardware out there, and can be the biggest cause of instablity and bad performance, short of bad hardware itself. Again, windows update will usually do a pretty good job of updating drivers for you, but you will always be able to do a better job yourself.

Here is a list of driver download links for major hardware suppliers:
Nvidia Drivers
AMD Drivers
Intel Drivers
Asus
Gigabyte
MSI
Dell
HP
ACER
One stop shop solutions (quicker and easier, but with slightly more risk)
DriverBooster
DriverPack Solution

Games

When it comes to updates, games these days come in 3 flavours:

  1. The classic standalone once-off install, with manual patching
  2. Games with self updaters or launchers
  3. Store/platform updating.

The standalone game is the easy to understand, as it wont update unless you install the update. The hard part is knowing when there is an update, and where to get it. For newer games, its usually just from the games website. But for older games, it can be a bit of a hunt, usually involving grabing files off fan website or filesharing sites.

Games with self updaters or launchers are easy, as running the launcher and seeing if it has an update.

For store/platform games, run the platform app and let it update all its games. The following is a list of common ones:

GOG Galaxy
UPlay
Steam
Origin