Just a noobie, PLZ help !!!

Hey guys whats up? Im a big SimFreak and after several months of playing and downloading, my Frive is full and is causing my PC to slow. Ive made sure its not a hijacker or virus, everything is clean but i have all the expansion packs and a ton of downloads for them.

I need your opinion( or fact or link if possible) on what to do now. I dont know what i need to expand my space.All i use this pc for is to play Sims and do schoolwork. All i would like to do is just add more memory but dont know where to start or how much this will cost. Ive seen ppl here talk about video cards and game cards etc...but what would any of u suggest to just speed up my pc? Whats the cheapest and most effective memory i can get? is it best to get it at bestbuy? can i install it myself? If anyone has a link to a good cheap memory thingy? what do i ask for at the store? gemme more memory for my HP?.....plz help !!!


ps...any info about this gaming thing will really help out!! keep in mind i just have the sims on my pc and its 5 eps and just barely getting used to the PC gaming world as i just arrived here from the land of consoles.



Q-Bert23

 

First, have you gone through the basic cleaning steps to remove junk and unwanted programs that slow your PC down? See http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=35407 Once you've done that, defrag the disk.

Second, we would need to know the specs of tour PC to see if it is upgradable. Use tools such as Belarc Advisor or Everest Home Edition .

Some of the information needed are operating system, processor, memory, graphics, disk space (used and total volume). Also, need to know some of the software that you may have running, for example firewall, anti-virus, etc.

 

Alright, like i said im still a complete noobie, so I prolly have this wrong...

MS Win XP
Home Edition
Version 2002
SP2

HP Pavillion
AMD Athlon XP 2800+
2.08 Ghz 448 MB of RAM

Drive F( where the the sims is located)
Used Space 654MB
Free Space 0 bytes
Type:CD drive
file sys: CDFS

Drive C
Used Space 13.1 GB
Free Space 56.8 GB
type:local disk
file sys: NTFS

Drive D
used space 3.92 GB
Free Space: 543 MB
type:local disk
file sys: FAT32


also using Spysweeper, Ad-Aware, CounterSpy, Slap, Easy Reg cleaner( which isnt working)BrowserHijack Retaliator,CCLeaner and Safe Windows.
I did defrag the drives yesterday, and after running through the steps in the link you gave me, everythuing seemed clean. like i said, i prolly typed the wrong info, so be easy on me.......any help given will be appreciated.


Qbert

 

OK. Your F drive is the CD-ROM drive, that is where is put your CD into and will expect to show full. I would expect that when you installed the game that the files were placed and installed on your C drive, i.e., your main disk drive. However, you will still need your CD in order to play the game, this shows that you have licensed game. You will need the correct CD for whichever exapnsion pack of The Sims you've installed. The Sims installs by default into C:\Program Files\Maxis\The Sims. This is where your saved games are usually placed. Hopefully you installed to the C drive rather than your D drive, not that it should make any difference.

The specifications of your PC are more than adequate for running The Sims. What this suggests is that some other component that The Sims depends on is affecting your performance. What I suggest next to do is to run through the DxDiag tests to see if there are issues with your graphics card and graphics driver. To do this press and hold the Windows-key and press R. You should get a Run dialog. Enter dxdiag and press OK. The DxDiag tool will start to load. Go through each panel and run each test noting any errors.

After completing your DxDiag tests, check to see if you have the appropriate and an up-to-date driver for the graphics card. The results of the DxDiag (which can be saved to a file) can show you this.

Report back with the results.

 

Hey, yeh the sims was put into the C:drive, under programfiles/maxis/thesims/
and all the downloads are in the programfiles/maxis/thesims/downloads area. Like i said other than the Norton Av, Spysweeper, CCleaner, Digi Cam, BHR, CounterSpy, EasyReg Cleaner, Ad-Aware SE, Slap,About:Buster and SafeXp...its alittle bare, i dont have many pics or video.

Well heres the info u asked for attached...


Q-Bert23