not a complete idiot, but close!

Hi folks, I can't help thinking I kinda missed the boat when it comes to computers. I'm 37, really old, right? When I was at school there was one "computer" between 1000 kids and it didn't do anything very exciting. If you were a member of the computer club you were definitely not cool. And now we all know the story of how the nerds have taken over the world.
Anyway..... wasn't until last summer that I finally got my first computer at home. My brother went out and bought a new laptop and gave me his old one. Bless him! And last week I finally got it connected to the net.
I've installed a number of games from CD ROM and downloaded a few things from the net. Then I noticed that DVD performance was not what it was (never been brilliant) and old games like Tomb Raider which was working fine before, were suffering the same problem. Lara moves in jerks. Not good!
Am I right in thinking that performance suffers the more you fill up the hard drive? I uninstalled some of the things which I thought I really didn't need Lara seems to be a bit better. DVDs are still a bit jerky, esp sound.

I realise I'm not working with the latest, most powerful PC but if it's supposed to play DVDs, I'd like it to work properly!

I've got 11 GB with 2.76 GB free.
processor = AMD K6 501 MHz 252 MB RAM

If anybody wants to take 5 minutes and explain to me what the problem is I'd be very grateful. I don't know how you're supposed to keep up with the latest advances unless you work for microsoft! This is the first of my dumb questions. No doubt there will be more.
Thanks.

Welcome to VirtualDr :)

What Operating System is it running?

Do you know if the hard drive has ever been DEFRAGged?

You might tell us which laptop you have, that would help us help you. Then we can go from there. Mostly what slows computers down is spyware/malware and old files, like Temporary Internet files, and Temp files from downloads/installs. Defragging drive regularly helps too as does scan disk.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by chupichulo

Hi folks, I can't help thinking I kinda missed the boat when it comes to computers. I'm 37, really old, right? When I was at school there was one "computer" between 1000 kids and it didn't do anything very exciting. If you were a member of the computer club you were definitely not cool. And now we all know the story of how the nerds have taken over the world.

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I'm 39 and when I was at school we had 1 computer for about 2000 kids.

On Wednesday afternoon it was sports time and someone had the radical idea of including Computing, Film-making and Chess plus a couple of other nerdy non-sporting activities.

Much to my parents disdain I tried all of these activities to avoid outdoor ones.

I was the penultimate geek. :p

Anyway to cut a long story short I got a career in mainframe programming and have been doing IT stuff for 20 years and am almost on a 6 figure salary. :D

I get paid more than my father who has been in the IT industry for 30+ years.

Not that it helps you with your problem, but interesting how an unpoular choice can often lead down a path of many fortunes.

Thanks for your replies guys (and girls?) The laptop itself is from Time.
They were quite big in the UK about ten years ago but I think the store in my local town got killed by PC world.
Uh, the model number on the bottom says: 500-50-304, or maybe 304 NE27 GB3.
I'm on windows XP and yes I did a defrag just a couple of weeks ago.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by chupichulo

Thanks for your replies guys (and girls?) The laptop itself is from Time.
They were quite big in the UK about ten years ago but I think the store in my local town got killed by PC world.
Uh, the model number on the bottom says: 500-50-304, or maybe 304 NE27 GB3.
I'm on windows XP and yes I did a defrag just a couple of weeks ago.

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Did this laptop always have XP installed? I ask because according to your CPU and memory specs, you don't have adequate minimum resources to run XP correctly in the first place... let alone graphics oriented games on TOP of XP.

Not being critical, but I'd expect this stuff would work much better with Win98 on the same platform, and with the age of your system, expanding RAM would probably not be a good investment, considering the CPU speed is fixed regardless.

I would expect that 512meg RAM and a Pentium III at least 1GHz would be about the minimum I would try to run XP on. This is just my personal opinion, your mileage may vary.

System requirements for Windows XP operating systems
http://support.microsoft.com/default...b;EN-US;314865

Quote:

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The minimum hardware requirements for Windows XP Home Edition (and Professional) are:

• Pentium 233-megahertz (MHz) processor or faster (300 MHz is recommended)
• At least 64 megabytes (MB) of RAM (128 MB is recommended)
• At least 1.5 gigabytes (GB) of available space on the hard disk
• CD-ROM or DVD-ROM drive
• Keyboard and a Microsoft Mouse or some other compatible pointing device
• Video adapter and monitor with Super VGA (800 x 600)or higher resolution
• Sound card
• Speakers or headphones

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Quote:

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Originally Posted by SpywareDr

System requirements for Windows XP operating systems
http://support.microsoft.com/default...b;EN-US;314865

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Yes... and I stand by my previous comments. Particularly in reference to his listed symptoms.

I've bought a couple of things without looking carefully at the system requirements as stated on the box only to discover later that it says 256RAM.
and as I've only got 252 then I understand it's not going to work. (Jeez! 4 measly points!!)
No problems with Windows, and according to the specs posted above by SpywareDr, I should be OK. I'll leave you to argue that one out between yourselves.
I played with Lara for a bit this afternoon and she was fine, so I conclude that uninstalling some stuff helped. I refer you to my earlier question - use too much space on hard disk = reduced performance. Is that so?
What I'm really not happy about is the poor quality of DVDs. Can I do anything or have I just got an antique computer?
If I had a bit of money, say as much as 2000 euros/dollars (roughly the same, no?) and I went out to buy a bright, sparkly new computer, how much CPU and memory would I get for my money?

For 2000euros, you could build a beaut of a system, or as you said "Buy", you could pickup a beaut of a system in a shop for that too, because you're out of the range where you get one component bringing the system down slowly and causing a bottleneck, usually with budget systems you have to sacrifice performance with some component when buying in a shop.

I would say that performance is reduced slightly when you run low on disk space, as virtual memory is based on that, but it can be balanced out with more RAM, i think with the age of the system you will be limited with upgrades, in order to play DVD's better you would need to get a better graphics card, nothing phenomonal, just a stand alone card that will take some pressure off the CPU, but even then it would not be amazingly good quality.


Liam

There are several services that can be disabled and of coarse you can go into mscongif/start up and stop a lot of programs from starting up.

I have found those to help out on those older machines.

Now your video is using those 4Mb of ram that is why you only see 252 MB of ram.
And no, with that video card, dvds will not right as they basically overload the video card and the cpu. Then throw the sound on top of that. Rough going.

It's all very well you saying "of course." Remember you're dealing with a numbskull and as far as I'm concerned there is no "of course" with computers, apart from maybe, plug it in and switch it on.
mscongif/startup??? what's that all about then? I want to be stopping programmes from starting up? Uh.......?
More problems today. I accept the fact that a game won't play if it says on the box I need 3 million wotsits and I've only got 43 but I just tried to install a new game, Industry Giant 2. Now this is what it says on the box:
64MB RAM Sound, directX compatible.
I don't know about the directX but I've got 252MB of RAM, right?
game installed OK so I click on the icon to start playing and it says, "now testing your graphics card." Uh oh! My new friends over at Virtual Dr aren't that impressed with my graphics card, are we going to have a problem?
sure enough, after a few seconds of flashing I get the noise that windows gives when something don't work right and the hourglass for like 15 minutes.
Now I wish i could tell you what kind of graphics capability my antique laptop has, but I don't know where to look for that information. Control panel? Hardware? Don't find anything there.
Another game which doesn't work right is Black & White, the first one.
Installed, first time I had the animations at the beginning, then a screen of what looked like it was supposed to be text but it wasn't any language I could read. Now I just get, "run.exe has encountered a problem and needs to close" This one doesn't say on the box that it runs on XP. Why not?
I've been posting my problems on the Black & White support boards and a very helpful chap over there told me to do regedit and delete files from there and reinstall. Done that! Can't reinstall cos it won't uninstall.
Get this message: error No. 0x 80040702, failed to load dll:E.
Anybody got any wise words? Keep it simple, folks!

Everest will tell you which graphics card and how much ram it has:

http://www.cybertechhelp.com/getfile.php?id=68

Install then look under Display, and click pci/agp or Windows entry.

Hi Photolady, your link takes me to the homepage of cybertechhelp, which although it looks like a splendid site, didn't help me very much.
I've just been reading a very interesting thread:
blog.dave.org.uk/archives/000402.html - 99k
all about Time Computers and how completely useless/downright crooked they were. Makes me glad my computer works at all.
Thanks for your help. I'll come back when I'm read to buy a new, state of the art system and you can all let me know what to look for. Don't hold your breath

http://www.cybertechhelp.com/downloa...t-home-edition