who has a wii gaming system

Installing more ram is easy and does not have any affect on windows. Do a search to find out how its done. Also your pc may or may not be capable of installing more ram or sticks. Do a complete search of your motherboard. This stuff really is easy.

Hey thanks alot for the help Marts, I will look inside my mini tower and see if my mother board has either single module or dual module and I'll start from there. My tower is a H.P. compac convertible so I sure hope this is possible,but as you stated, I'm scared that it just might not be possible.
I will write down the stats numbers of my system and I'll ask the comp shop if this can be done. Ive got 1 gig of ram, but the new games that are out seem to reqire at least 2
Thanks again dude

Blakenstein, I sent you a PM last night, pretty much what marts1 said.
Do not be afraid of fiddling with the RAM. One thing I failed to say is they are sensitive to static electricity. Be sure you are grounded when you handle the ram sticks. All you have to do is touch a large metal object (refrigerator) or a metal appliance that is grounded through the power cord before you touch the ram sticks. Also make sure your computer is unplugged from the wall before you do anything. You do not want to get shocked!

Hello Gearnut; Thanks for the info....the private message you sent me did not show up on my computer....only the replies to this thread and others showed up in my email inbox. I also noticed that the time on my computer was 1 hour back-Ijust had to set the com clock 1 hour ahead.

I'll check for the message here at the forum. Thanks again.

The private message is not here at the forum either

RAM is not going to help run GTA 4. 2gb is required as a min, but the GPU is critical.. it's also a very finiky game to get working, and probably not a bad copy you got. if it won't install because it's 'activated' you need to install the deactivation program and deactivate it, reboot and go from there. I got my copy used and needed to do just that.. as for getting the game working, you need current .net framework as well as everything else the program asks for.. don't manually activate it, let it activate when you first run the game.. then windows will try to block it from running. click do not block.. if you click block, it's all over.. deactivate, uninstall and reinstall because theres no going back to the block screen... for a vid card, it required a Geforce 8600 as a min, and a 8800 GTX as a reccomended. I use a GTX 260 which is the same as a 9800+

that said, if your liscense key is bad it could be a scam and if it is, it's copywright infringment as the copy is not liscensed.. I bought a copy of OEM win XP off ebay last year and it turned out to have an invalid key.. they refunded my money in about an hour when I threatened to report them to MS for selling illegal software..

I don't go to game stop, there is a store like game stop but is privately owned near me. they have better prices

my comand and conquer reguiersNIVIDA G-force2 or greater or ATI Radeon7500or greater
but my Intel R grafics media accelorater driver runs the game really well.
GTA should still at least show up-card or no card,ram or no ram

i bought grand turismo 4 for my sony 2 it did not work-took it back and replaced it, -that one did not work -replaced that one also and that one did not work-got tired of runing back and forth so i wrote it off and took a loss.
there is nothing wrong eith my sony2

those G-force video cards are over $200.00 with it or without it it should still at least show up.

I went thru the not showing up also w/ GTA IV, and I actually set my copy aside for a year. It's hard to make it work, but it's possible. just need to give it all it wants like the .net framework and a couple other things need to be done but I can't remember specifics, it's online tho... unless you mean the disc not showing up, you should be able to get the game to show some signs of life. I did get it going, but I had to get a better video card. I had a Geforce 8500 GT, and upgraded to a GTS 250. it's a cheaper Palit brand card, cost $130 shipped from newegg.. bottom line tho, unless you upgrade your video card and add a gig more ram, it's not worth getting the game running because your computers not going to run it. also don't know your prosessor speed, but unless it's a dual core of at least 2.4 GHZ, it's not going to handle it.. my computer is an Athalon x2 6000+ which is dual 3.1 GHZ, and altho it's fast enough and runs the game fine, according to Can You Run It, it's not a reccomended prosessor.

as for PS2 games, not sure what would cause a disc to be truly bad other than a damaged foil or heavy scratches. but it does sound like your PS2 laser might be out of adjustment. used discs from gamestop ect.. if they have no scratches or scratches are barely visable, they have been resurfaced and were once very beat discs.. and resurfaced discs can read diffrently than originals, but the PS2 should be able to read them unless the laser is out of adjustment. resurfacing makes it harder to seek the lead track in the disc, tho it is still readable.. my PS2 is very finikey with resurfaced discs.. my copy of GTA: SA is weird. I got it used ( resurfaced ) and I have to put it in the machine, turn it on, wait for it to try to load, open, rotate disc 180* reinsert, and then if it doesn't work, use another disc, then it'll work. I have the original 1st gen brick PS2, with the laser read issue. I know the laser is falling out of adjustment, but I have been lucky and never needed to open it up yet. all my games still work, and all that I bought new work flawless, so it could appear that if I get a used game that does not work. I could see it as a defective disc, altho it would most likely be my machine

High Matt,; Your sensor on your sony2 is not becoming out of adjustment...it's just getting dirty. My sony runs all my games really good..the used sratchy ones as well as the new ones. The only problem was with those 3 grand turismos (brand new)that did not work.
Thanks for telling me about resufacing...I nver knew about that.

Any way,just got back from a 5 mile ride on my MB and brought home 2 more gigs of ram and already installed...working great. My cpu is Intel Pentium 4 with 3 gig proccesing.

I now have 3 gigs of ram. Lady at store told me that all fancy video cards do is make games run better and enhance the grafics. The real expensive ones are for high definition. If there is game that don't want to run with my Pentium4/3ghz and my 3gigs of ram....well then I don,t want it Thereis nothing wrong with my sony 2, and there is nothing wrong with my HP Compaq mini tower dc 7600 series.

the lady at the store is partly right if it were 2-3 years ago. but games have come so far in the last 3 years, external video cards are necessary. onboard 'accelerated' video cards, do use a seperate but simple GPU, but they also use shared video memory ( onboard RAM ). usually only 64-128 MB by default. you could increase that by going into the BIOS, and 256-512 mb would suffice for better performance on the games you currently use. anything more, and the GPU isn't fast enough to support

high end 'gaming' video cards do more than enhance the graphics nowdays. they compute them ( and more ). Nvidia, since 2007 has used CUDA in there cards. which pretty much enables the card to handle all the graphics processing, rather than rely on CPU power for some calculations like the Intel Intergrated graphics will do... video cards use many little prosessors inside the GPU. there are shader prosessors and stream prosessors. all prosess the video.. not as simple as 'better graphics' anymore

This is the card I got. not the most expensive ( actully 1 of the cheapest ) but good enough that it'll run games into the future hopefully for the full expected 5yr lifespan ( built this computer last year ) of this desktop, b4 I retire it

Well I guess that the next thing I'll do is get a video card. There is a Geforce 250-1gb 783 MHZ on sale at staples for $170.00

I've now got 3 gigs of ram,and my windows xp is reading 2.99 so if I can just get that card then I think that it should do me for a while.

I was told that it's not practical for me to change my CPU unless I'm changing from the very lowest to the very highest-that will have to wait.

It seems to me that my Intell Pentium 4 is now the vey lowest, with only a 2 star rating.

Above this is the Athalon dual core,then they have the new Intell i3 and now they have the Intell i7 wich has a 5 star rating. I was told that to change out the CPU I'll also have to change my mother board and the power supply along with other things, and that's way far out of my league, so I'll just get the fancy card and that should do me for a while. Thanks for the help

$170 for a 1gb GTS 250 isn't bad at all.. if it is 783 MHZ then it is a factory overclocked card ( 'stock' is 738 MHZ ), which is good because it will be warranted for that speed.. ( if you OC'd yourself it would void warranty )..

as far as them telling you, to go from the very worst to the very best.. it's a good idea if you can afford to, but if you can't then don't feel bad if you can only get somthing mid range or near the top. they will still be 'in' most likely for the life of the computer.. but they are right. you would need a new motherboard for any cpu upgrade. I wouldn't reccomend that at this time, 3ghz is still 'fast enough', tho consider the upgrade in 6 months to a year

Sorrry Matt,but I made a mistake....the card is 738mhz and not 783. I geuss all those crazy inversions have got to my head.

You sure know what you're talking about, and thanks again for the info.

The advertisement says that it's PCIE 2.0
When I looked into my tower, I found PCI and PCIE connections but I don't know what the 2.0 means...I sure hope the card will hook up.

you just need a PCI-E X16 card slot, which if you have a PCI-E listing, you should.. it's a slot about the same length as a normal PCI slot but it's slotted diffrent.. the 2.0 is a revision, so if your slot was 2.0, it would run a little faster, but all 2.0 cards are backwards compatible..

only thing that 'might' be an issue for you is, the power supply should be able to supply 20 amps to the 12v rail ( theres a diagram on the side of all power supplies ). however, as long as you have a PCI-E connector, you might just be able to use it even if it's lower. lots of people have success even if the power supply is under rated.. if you don't have the connector. then you can get an adaptor which converts 2 molex connectors ( the old 4 pin connectors IDE devices use ) into the PCI-E power connector.. if it doesn't work or it gets a bios error. then an ULTRA Lifetime series 600W, will run right around $40 retail now, and they have a lifetime warranty and can supply 32 amps to the 12v rail.. it's what I have and runs that card just fine.. it's a no-frills power supply ( no fancy lighting/ only 1 120MM cooling fan ) but it gets the job done

Well that is really great news to hear from you Matt, because PCI EX 16 is precisely what I have. It's been a long time since I looked in there, but I do remember that I have 2 PCIs, 1 PCI extension ,and 2 PCIEs. I know for a fact that one of my PCIEs is definatley PCI EX 16 ,however I don't remember what the other one is.LOL This is great news and thanks again for the valuable information.

This computer stuff is new to me, but I am starting to learn a lot lately.

What Ive learned so far is that first there was PCI ,then AGP repaced PCI as the new connectors, then PCIE replaced AGP, and now USB is replacing PCIE .

I told this to the store where I bought my computer, and I asked that if this is so, then whats with USB graphic cards, and he told me that those are not even out yet. LOL

you should have 1 PCIE-1x ( tiny connector ) and the PCIE-16x which is right above or below depending on the mobo.

actually, first was ISA which was used widely in 8 bit and 16 bit configurations, then PCI widely in 16 and 32 bit configurations until 2004. PCI-E is now the main use for everything.. there were also non standard card slots in the 80's.. I still dabble with some of the old stuff, and have a functional Tandy 102. 1 of the first LCD 'laptops', and I have a Comodore 64.. still play potty pidgeon and time tunnel on it, as well as some BASIC programming

USB cards are common for laptops, but the downfall is it's slower than PCI-E, and still under- developed, but like systems have been around since the early '00's. MARGI card is the first I'v known about, and that operated with the PCMCIA laptop cardbuss.. USB has to get faster before anything like that can superceede PCI-E x16 2.0

I have a wii... I font like it. I'm not into MLB or Guitar Hero. I only like medal of honor, or war games.

GO PS3!!!!! If you had a PS3 PM me what games you have!

I don't have a PS3 yet , but someday maybe I'll get one. I do have a PS2 and it works great!!!! I know what u mean about guitar hero....it's much more fun to play a real one.,right now I got all this computer stuff that I gotta get happenin.

I just finnished playing a war game(command and conquer-Generals) It's funny that out of all the c&c games on the disc, there was only one part of one mission that there was freeze frame and lag. After I put two more gigs of ram into my com, there was no lag at all.
This is a game where they tell u to shut down user back ground programs-all exept for explorer and taskmanager. They also tell u to turn off virus scanners and firewalls.

well I just tried it again without shutting down my background programs and turnning off my firewalls and ther was lag again, but not as much and only for a short period of time.

I'm wondering where are all the Jet games these days for PC????

I know that there is an ACE Combat 6 out but thats only for PS3 and Xbox 360

Back in the mid 90s,there was a jet game called TORNADO and it was really good,it came on a floppy disc. Too bad there is nothing out there like that now. It seems that all the real good games are the old ones.

Anyway, what has been keeping me real busy lately is Techno 5 virtual music studio.
Just for practice I took an old song out of my head and arranged it . The song is an old one of Deep Purple called Sweet Child In Time. I had to make 152 sound clips for it,starting from scratch. They have something like the Techno 5 comming out for the home counsel Ds called Korg but it is nowhere near as elaborate.