[mustardtree]

Hello, hope you can help.

On XP Professional games run but the video is jumpy and runs one frame at a time instead of smoothly.

Anti virus and registry clean have found nothing wrong.

Thank you

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We need your stats. It may not be a software problem.

What kind of process are you running?
RAM?
Video Card?
What Games are these you are speaking of? Flight Simulators, RPG's, God Games, Racing?

This will give us a starting point for helping you out.

For the time being, pull up the task manager and see what your resources are looking like. You may have programs running in the background that are scheduled to run at system startup and are eating up your memory.

[magusbuckley]

We need your stats. It may not be a software problem.

What kind of process are you running?
RAM?
Video Card?
What Games are these you are speaking of? Flight Simulators, RPG's, God Games, Racing?

This will give us a starting point for helping you out.

For the time being, pull up the task manager and see what your resources are looking like. You may have programs running in the background that are scheduled to run at system startup and are eating up your memory.

[mustardtree]

Thank you for your reply.

It is fiances laptop that is causing the problem.

He is running it on Ram with no external video card.
Running directx9 and has directx8 as a standby

The game in particular is Wild Wheels, a car racing game with RGB emulation drivers.

He has looked at task manager and has taken everything out except system items and explorer. The ones he has taken out were flagged `user`
He has found that by taking out explorer he gets a blue screen and everything folds up.

I hope I am making sense here.

Thank you

[magusbuckley]

Hello again:

You say he is running it on RAM with no external video card.

He won't have an external video card, but if he is getting an image on his screen he has a video card. It is internal. What we need to know is what size the video card is. Old video cards are something like 4 Megs while the newest cards are 256 Megs. I think most people these days are running 64 Meg or 128 Meg cards. He can determine what type video card he has by looking in his computers documentation paperwork. No paperwork? Look for the computer's model number in your favorite surch engine. You should be able to find out it's stats online.

Also, we know he is running it on RAM. Computer's don't operate without it. What I'm interested in is how much he RAM (memory) he has. To find out how much memory he has, he needs to go into the control panel from the start menu. Then click the System icon. When the pop-up window appears, he will see some information about his computer including the amount of RAM he has installed.


My best guess so far is that he needs a better video card and/or RAM. How old is the computer?

[mustardtree]

Thank you for your help.

He bought the laptop new in May 2004 and it is xp home, and not professional as he first thought.

The specs from a website are as follows, but cant see anything about video card.

Specification Overview
for the sony Vaio PCG K115B
Processor Type Celeron
Processor Speed 2.8GHz CPU
RAM 512MB
Hard Drive 40GB
Display 15 inch TFT display
Screen Resolution 1024 x 768
Optical Drive DVD/CDRW
Operating System MS WinXP Home

[magusbuckley]

Hello:

Sorry to drop the bomb now, but I am not sure what the problem is. This lap top sounds pretty beefy. I'm not sure what the problem could be now. If he is only having trouble with that one game, he should check to make sure it is compatable with Windows XP.

If he gets online often, he should check for spyware which eats up system memory and slows the system down. You can download a free program like Spybot Search and Destroy or choose any of the many products out on the market. Removing spyware can increase your system speed a lot depending on how much spyware you have and are able to remove. Know, however, that removing spyware will disable some of your other applications. For example, many P2P programs will not operate if you aren't running their third party spyware programs. Others, like screen savers, will not run without the spyware you installed with that program.

Now, just check for the spyware if he gets online. Other than that, I'd check the game itself and it's compatablity with XP. If it isn't either of those, I'm just at a loss.

Hope this helps. Good luck on your PC Repair Mission and Have Fun Racing.

[mustardtree]

Thank you very much for taking the time out to help, it is most appreciated.

[:Linux:]

hi,

i would suggest maybe updating the drivers and/or cleaning up any spyware in the background that might be eating up needed room

spyware on a beefy computer like this shouldnt make enough of a difference that you can physically see as with slower computers, but it would still help somewhat if they are there.

try going to Micosoft's Webpage
if it has a video card installed (ie 64 meg, 128 meg, 256 meg) then the laptop probably needs updating patches and/or updating newly provided drivers if at all possible.

if the laptop doesent have a video card (bought from a store or installed as an option or upgrade when you bought the laptop), and you have checked the micorsoft webpage for updates and none were found, it could be somewhat of a more serious problem.

hope this helps,
matt

[mustardtree]

Thank you Linux for your suggestions.

He is away for the weekend, but will certainly check these out when he returns.

Thanks once again.

[morfius]

First of all what video card do you have - it may need a driver update.
Also Laptops with intel celeron processors aren't designed to have support for running fast large games.

The moral is if you want to play large games use a PC.

Sorry to down your hopes there.

[cnm]

Some games and some drivers have an option to turn hardware acceleration on/off. If you have the option, try it both ways.

[mustardtree]

Thank you all so much

I have passed all your suggestions on to my fiance.

He has used the same game on another laptop before with no problems, but it was an older model, so may not have had an intel celeron processor which his new one does, so that seems to be the problem.

I suppose he will want to use my pc to play his game now.

Little boys never grow up, it seems but their toys are more expensive.

Thank you all again.