pmistry

The main page for support for Sims 2 is EA Games customer support centre, since Maxis is EA property. http://eatech.custhelp.com/

I personally hate this service, after I picked up Half Life 2 and installed it, I had to create a new user account, register my CD Key, get updates installed (thank goodness I got broadband), and I had to wait for my files to get decrypted. Took about an hour before I got to play Half Life 2. Good game and even though I had no real problems with STEAM. I dislike and I hate having it running in the tray as it occupies 20 megs of memory and goes about its own business downloading updates. For modem users, installing mandatory updates over STEAM could take days. No offline patch installation pisses me off royally. Steam...I don't like it, and I am worried that if something goes awry my copy of Half Life 2 may not work anymore and there goes 60 bucks for the game. Also what about a few years from now and I want to play Half Life 2 but I haven't used my STEAM account for years, will it still work????

In your BIOS you should be looking at some option labelled "Onboard Device Configuration" or anything that says "Onboard." 1. Download the latest chipset drivers and the latest ATI Display drivers at www.ati.com, the drivers on the CD might be too old now. The chipset drivers are probably at www.sis.com.tw or at the Sony support site. I am not sure with retail PCs whether or not you can use default drivers from SiS directly. Look at the Sony site first, your computer documentation should have website support information. 1. Uninstall the drivers/software for your video device, by going into Control Panel and selecting "SiS Video Software" or something to that effect. If there is no software go to the next step. Do not reboot. 2. Uninstall the video device, by going into Control Panel > System > Hardware Tab > Device Manager and uninstalling it from the Display Adapters section. Do not reboot the PC, instead select Turn Off Computer. 3. Install the Radeon card into your computer. 4. Turn on your PC and go into the BIOS setup. Look for any menu that says "Onboard" as this will likely have the option for your video device. Then simply select the option to disable the device. Exit BIOS and save your settings. You may not even be able to turn off the video in the BIOS you might need to set a jumper on your motherboard to disable it. If you need more information you should have a manual for your VAIO PC that explains your BIOS screen and jumper options. 5. Startup Windows XP, it should detect the Radeon card and install default drivers. If it asks for drivers just choose the option to not install drivers at this time. 6. Install the ATI drivers you downloaded, then reboot. 7. Reinstall the SiS chipset drivers and then reboot, this will give you a correctly working AGP driver for your card. 8. Install DirectX 9.0c off of Microsoft's website or the ATI driver CD, you can choose to install whatever version you have, but 9.0c is the latest, and the ATI CD might come with an older version. Good luck.

Download the Full DirectX 9.0c install from Microsoft's website, and install but your game CD should already have this... http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/detai...;displaylang=en Or just search for Directx 9.0c end user redistribution. It is about 35 megs in size.

That is impressive seeing how 4GHz processors won't be around till end of 2005 and those are dual core variants of CPUs coming out. Apparenly Intel canned the 4GHz LGA775 P4 processor.

Go to NFSUnlimited.net, you won't get much help here. But make sure you have done all the Outrun races as well, you need upgrade parts and unique parts to get a higher visual star rating, you need to finish whatever contract you signed and the contract details require you to get on DVD covers too.

No that isn't the problem, the game should just work fine, OpenGL Quake 3 engine. I honestly don't know why it won't work for some people, but force VSYNC ON, old games need VSYNC because today's processors accelerate them too fast.

Thanks Alec, I will take a look into RAM Surf when I get the chance.

Alice runs fine on my P4 2.4/9800 PRO/1GB RAM and XP SP2. You shouldn't really have a problem at all, its based off of the Quake 3 engine and is a OpenGL engine game. Update your drivers, check your refresh rates, check screen sizes, try running with VSYNC ON (old game might need to be slowed down), I can't remember about a patch but look for one, check to see if its runnings in Win9x mode, you could also try running it in Windows 2000 mode. The game's readme says the game will run under Windows 2000 so there should be no problem there. Try up[censored] chipset drivers, sound drivers, update DirectX, etc. Good luck.

Windows 2000 has worse hardware support than XP, also some companies refuse to give Windows 2000 the necessary support to give it something that XP has, eg. Hyper-Threading support. I am not going into some big argument about HT technology and the pros and cons, but tests prove that Windows 2000 with HT enabled is worse than with it disabled, but if you bought an HT processor wouldn't you want to use it?

Anybody know where I can get basic color theme variations for Windows XP besides Blue, Olive, and Silver? I am not interested in getting any WindowsBlind themes with all new icons, objects, etc, and I don't wish to install TGTSoft's ThemeXP, I just want some different color variations of the Luna theme, eg. Longhorn's Slate would be nice...even though there are some around on the web for that, but what about other colors. I know about patching the uxtheme.dll file in Windows XP.

That "DVD" was probably a CD encoded in Video CD, or Super Video CD format, the DVD-ROM has so many more layers and the data is written more closely than CD, that I don't think a CD-ROM laser could pick it up, even with software help.

My heart goes out to the poor young woman who was killed at Game 7, that is just not right. http://www.boston.com/news/local/massach...merson_student/

Originally posted by theelviscerator: Quote: So you agree they should stop selling alcohol near the games? No, it would make things worse but who knows, it fringes on the whole freedom thing, it just hits yah hard that a decent woman lost her life for nothing but stupidity and irrational behavior, I think the cops and the rioters are both at fault.

Originally posted by theelviscerator: Quote: What part isnt right? Her death is on the heads of the rioting drunking idiots who caused the police to open fire. I am not sure what to say, why did the police aim so high? Was she even doing anything wrong? Like others have said why do people need to get in a drunkin craze after a game? I am not sure, but for her to lose her life like this, that is what "isn't right."

I know pretty much all of those ports, EDGE and PR Doom, there was also MBF, Boom ports, and yeah the Vavoom Project has been around forever. Thanks for compiling and contributing all those links for those Quake games, I gave that Hexen 2 Unofficial patch a whirl awhile back, its nice to see someone doing that,

As an economics major myself all I can say is that it sucks, but becoming a major reality in itself. Back in the 90's computer technology and IT jobs were the hot thing and the area to study and get a job in. Today, most of those jobs are being outsourced to Asia, where the people are caught up to the skill level in North America. My cousin works at IBM Canada here in Markham, Ontario, about a 20 minute drive north of Toronto. He used to do the grunt work, but instead took a position in project management several years ago, his job his stable but those that do the grunt work are becoming less and less as projects are moved to Asia. Our economy is in a state of transition, there was a time when manufacturing and labour jobs were the backbone of the workforce. Today many of those jobs took a hike and went to Mexico, especially during the advent of free trade. Now Mexico is having a difficult time because alot of those companies that came to Mexico for cheaper labour, easier environment regulations, etc, are now moving to China....and I believe once the African nations catch up or something those jobs will move there... Perhaps one day the cycle will end, but in North America, service industry seems to be the ticket. It just sucks because we can do the work here, we are good enough to do the work, and we have the people who know how to do the work and want to do the work....but others say we can't which in the end, doesn't add up.

In Canada, all people in prison can vote. So there is something. Only time will tell what the turnout for the vote is in your upcoming presidential election.

Yeah I hate believing the "man" too. I am younger so I guess I didn't know that they were preaching the service economy back then. Good to know, all things take time the shift may or may not happen, who knows. Although most service industries just can't be moved elsewhere realistically, if yah need a haircut you just can't go to China to get it...just an example, same goes for most health professions, banking, consulting, government work, etc. Its hard to see how the power of vote sometimes, I studied alot of politics in my university years and its just dumb that less than 70 or 60 percent of the people actually vote...yep. United States, 2000 Presidential Election 51%! Turnout Even in my home country, Canada, it was 61 % for the 2000 election.

The larger download has the Catalyst Control Center in it. I use Rage3d Tweak, its pretty decent at tapping special Catalyst driver tweaks.

True enough, but there isn't much you can do, I know it sucks, and I wasn't trying to rub it in or something, its just life and how annoying it can be. I don't see every programming job taking a hike to Asia, but to be among the lucky ones to have a job here still will be hard, no doubt about it. Computer Science courses around here at University had average enrollment grades of 90% or better to get in, that figure has dropped to the low 80's and even 70's in some areas.

Actually Alec, I did download the smaller version, I tried the Catalyst Control center a month or so back when it first came out, and I said, no thanks to that bloat.

With my Audigy 2 I can access CMS settings via the sound icon on my taskbar or by going to Audio HQ in the control panel, or by selecting EAX Console. The Audigy is different from the Live and the steps are a bit different, but CMS allows standard stereo to be upmixed to 4.1/5.1/6.1/7.1 audio.

Try using a real burning program like Nero or Easy CD Creator, and they come with UDF programs like Nero InCD or Roxio's DirectCD. I am assmuming you are currently using the built in XP recording device.

Seriously though, what is ATI trying to achieve with that bloated ugly control panel. The control panel accessed via the Display Properties is more than adequate, if not pretty damn good. I am not a big fan of the Nvidia panel but it too is way better than the control center. I like Nvida's Digital Vibrance feature, I wish ATI had that option.