Sims 2

[Serephino]

More problems.  I tried playing Sims 2 and it kept doing a memory dump.  I went through all the hassle of reinstalling.  That didn't help.  My boyfriend pulled out a memory stick that he was having trouble putting in this morning.  That helped.  The game runs, but very very slowly.  I set the resolution to fit my screen and set graphics to medium.  It still has 6gigs of memory, and I wasn't aware this game was all that taxing to run...  It was never this slow before.

[jaybee55]

Sounds like, in addition to all your other driver issues, your computer is using the generic VGA driver rather than the chipset-specific driver it should be using.  Whatever motherboard/driver media you have must be all wrong, or maybe the "installer" only dumps the driver files onto the PC but doesn't load them?  Considering you have a Dell neither would surprise me.

I managed to get most of a re-installed Dell system operating normally a few years back by figuring out what chips/chipsets it was using (for the Ethernet, Display, Sound, etc.) and downloading various versions of the drivers from across the internet (not from Dell) until I found some that worked adequately.  But it wasn't fun.

For hardware identification I did this...
1) Found the physical chips on the motherboard and searched the internet for the part numbers.
2) Booted Linux from a Live CD (I think the distro was Knoppix, but I don't remember), looked at various things in /proc, then ran hwinfo, dmesg, etc.

By the way, Linux automatically found drivers for everything except the USB-based wireless adapter (which wasn't being used anyway) - but I couldn't convince the person who owned the PC to switch from Windows to Linux.

[Serephino]

I'm not using the Dell anymore.  My hard drive got moved over to the box my boyfriend was using, which I think is Alienware.  It thinks it's a Dell still, so maybe that's the problem?

[jaybee55]

Ah.  Alienware was bought by Dell a while back, but they're still better supported boxes (in general) because they're a boutique brand.  And if it's pre-Dell your chances are even better.

In any case it's almost certainly a driver problem.  You can probably find drivers here: http://support.alienware.com/Support_Pages/Restricted_Pages/driver_downloads.aspx

[Serephino]

*nods*  I just checked, and World of Warcraft is being jerky too.  I'll have to wait until my boyfriend comes home.  I'm not allowed to touch stuff lol.  That won't be till 1am *cries*