Kick it.
First of all you have to ask yourself
How much ram do i have video and system.
How big is my swap size?
Next dont install old direct x.
Do a complete reformate of the system.
Put on Xp if you have it or else 98. Me is junk.
Once your system is rebooted and working.
Check your bios to make sure everything is cool and turn of video caching.
Next if you have a 32 mb video card and its AGP you should be able to run any game provided you have ATLEAST 128 megs of ram in fact you should have a minimum of 256 thats what i recomend for the minimum know.
If you know where to find how big the windows swap is then u can do this.
If you are using 128 megs of ram set maximum swap to 256.
if you are using 256 megs of ram or higher set it to 128.
This should be good for gaming for sure but i dont recomend setting it to low values if you are doing photoediting or tvcapture.
And dont run norton when playing games it takes up ram

How's the cooling on your video card?

Pentium 4 1.9 Gig / 478 pin 400Mhz FSB
Shuttle Motherboard
Via chipset P4x266 VT8233 DDRam Support
Windows XP (home edition - Clean Install!)
DDRam 768 Meg - WD 80 gig HD ATA 100
Gainward GF3 Powerpack Golden Sample/64 meg
LiteOn 24x10x40 CD-RW - Pioneer DVD 500m
Pinacle Firewire Card - Linksys Lan 10/100
Santa Cruz Sound Card (4127 beta drivers)
Dell 991 Monitor - Altec Lansing 885 Thx Speakers
Microtek 3700 Scanner - HP 1100 Printer
Altec Lansing 885 Thx Speakers

Other:
XPSB1000r ,XP home, Gforce 2 pro 64meg
384 megs PC700 Rdram - 60 gig maxtor HD
DVD-Rom - Sony CD-RW

dirkinthedark wrote:
- Kick it.

He he, many a time...

- First of all you have to ask yourself
- How much ram do i have video and system.

32M video, 128M system

- How big is my swap size?

dunno, I let windows do it, though thanks for the suggestion

- Next dont install old direct x.

That was one recommendation I got from a Dell person, so I tried it. It didn't work though.

- Do a complete reformate of the system.

Done that twice now.

- Put on Xp if you have it or else 98. Me is junk.

I found that out. I got 98.

- Once your system is rebooted and working.
- Check your bios to make sure everything is cool and
- turn of video caching.

Thanks again, yet another something I have yet to try

- Next if you have a 32 mb video card and its AGP you
- should be able to run any game provided you have
- ATLEAST 128 megs of ram in fact you should have a
- minimum of 256 thats what i recomend for the minimum
- know.

That is what I figured when I bought the system too.

- If you know where to find how big the windows swap
- is then u can do this.
- If you are using 128 megs of ram set maximum swap to
- 256.
- if you are using 256 megs of ram or higher set it to
- 128.
- This should be good for gaming for sure but i dont
- recomend setting it to low values if you are doing
- photoediting or tvcapture.

Thanks for the figures, I will set it to that and see how it works.

- And dont run norton when playing games it takes up
- ram

Yeah, I don't run it while playing, just in between to see if I might have cought a virus that was causing all this stuff.

Thanks for the help. It is much apreciated.

dre53 wrote:
- How's the cooling on your video card?

Should be good, even with the case open and it being like 40 degrees F in my room, My vidio card is all alone with about 2 slots in between it and anything else.

this is the tweakology I implement....check it out!

Go to Start à run and type in MSCONFIG and click OK.
Click on .
Uncheck process CONFIG.SYS & process AUTOEXEC.BAT & load Startup group items.
Click on WIN.INI TAB, Click on the (+) next to windows and Uncheck the "run=" & "load=" Lines.
Click on Startup TAB, CHECK scan registry & system tray (Note. if system has winmodem be sure to check that too).
Click Apply then OK (reboot)

Go to Start à run and type in SYSTEM.INI and click OK.
Scroll down To the [386enh] category. At the Bottom of that category type this.

MinSPs=12

Next scroll down till you see the category [VCACHE]. Type under it:

MinFileCache vcache size)
MaxFileCache vcache size)
ChunkSize=512

Click on File à save then exit SYSTEM.INI

Right-click My Computer à Properties and click on Performance.
Click File system and change typical role of this machine from Desktop Computer to Network Server.
Click on OK.
Click virtual memory click on þ (Let me specify my own virtual memory settings).
Change both minimum and maximum from what they are to (swap size).
Click OK, say "Yes", click close (reboot).

Click Start à Programs à accessories à system tools à disk cleanup
Choose C: and click OK, select all, hit "Ok", say "Yes",

Click on Start à find à Files and folders
Look in C:\ and find Files named: *.tmp, ~*.*, *.chk
Click on find now.
Click on Edit à select all, hit shift+delete,
Click on Start à Shutdown, choose Restart, hit "OK", You're done.

Memory table based on total system RAM

RAM size(mb) VCache size(k) Swap size(mb)
16 4096 32
32 8192 64
64 16384 128
96 24576 192
128 32768 256
256 65536 512

(Calculate RAM/4=VCache; RAM*2=Swap)


Dell Dimension 4400
1.7 Ghz
512 mb DDR RAM
80 Gig HDD
48xCdrom
CDRW
Nic , GeForce 3
Soundblaster Live
+ MORE....

Head butt it.
No thats the thing dont let windows handle the swap
It's a dumb os it dosnt like when you give it physical memory thats faster, more relient, and quieter. It would rather slow you down lose track of the files and make loud grinding sounds with your hard drive seriously consider managing it manually.

I have a friend with MD (muscular distrophy) he cant even move or anything right but he has a really cool solution he has a croket stick on his electric wheel chair and everytime his computer freezes he beats it with it. You should see his case theres dents all along the fron bezel and stuff its hallarious.