Hi!

At certain points in this game, the character moves very slowly (slow -mo) and the cursor stops working. An example of this is when she puts the mattress on the ground and uses it to get out of the window. I couldn't get the character to move once she was on the ground. But, all of a sudden, the game started responding. I have turned down all of the video componets.

I had to make roonm on my harddrive in oreder to be able to install the game. Is this a typical thing that you (who have played the game) have experienced or is it my computer?

When it is working properly, it is a really good game!

No it's not typical. It sounds like your hard drive is nearly full, and computers will run slower when their hard drives are almost full. That may be the problem. Check how much free space you have left on your hard drive.

What operating system are you using? Vista's System Restore can eat up hard drive space.

Jenny100,

In order to clean up my computer I removed old games, cleared out my temp files and emptied my recycle bin. After installing SL 2 I currently have 3.43 GB of free space. My total size is 69.7 GB.

My computer is Dell Dimension DIM 5100and I am using XP. My video card is ATI Radeon x300/x550/x1050 Series.

I turned off the anti-alias and turned down the other video options in the game (shadowing etc.)

Hope that is the info you need.

Thanks!

3.43 GB of free space is really not much free space at all these days. Is there anything else you can clear out, or store on DVD? Your computer would perk up if you had more like 26 GB free. You might consider getting a second hard drive (or an external hard drive) to store things on.

Your video card is low end, and may be contributing to your problems with the game. From the ***CNET review***, the Dell Dimension 5100 came with a Radeon X300SE video card. It also has a 305 Watt power supply and a PCI-E x16 slot, so you could probably upgrade your video card to something that would work a little better.

Jenny100,

I don't know anything about video cards or external harddrives. Do I just go somewhere like Best Buy and give them the info about my computer and have them tell me what I should get to upgrade it? Are these things expensive? If they are expensive I don't know if it would be worth it to put a lot of money into a computer that is older. If that is the case, I might be stuck for awhile because a new computer isn't in my budget at the present time.

Could I load some things onto a flash drive to get them off my computer? I have one but have never used it, so I'm not sure how that works either.

When I bought this computer, several years ago, I told the sales person at Dell that the computer would be used to play PC games. I am surprised that I wasn't sold a system with a better video card.

I have a lot of music files on my PC. I don't know how much space they are taking up but maybe I can delete some of them.

I appreciate your help.

The music files may be the key to your space problem. You could burn them to cds as you can play the music directly from the disk. If they are mp3s or wmas burn them as data disk not music disk. The standard size song you can get a large amount on a cd. It would not be a bad idea to make 2 copies of each cd. That way you would have a back up if a disk goes bad.

As for Best Buy and the like hold on for Jenny or Inland they are very good with helping on the video card issue. Best Buy may try you sell you more than you need or may not make the best match for you.

Music files can take up a lot of space. If you have very many 20 gigs would not be a surprise. If you burn the mp3 files to a disk many cd players will be able to play them as well. Like I said make a second copy for back up just in case a disk goes bad. If one does you can always use the good one to make another back up. It happens once in awhile.

That is also a good idea for photos. again make backups and indexing them may make finding what you want later easier.

gats you might try playing the game in compatibility mode that can sometimes help with that"slow motion". I had to do that in order to play Syberia on my old computer and the "slow motion" went away.

Thanks!

I have burned some of the songs on cds but left the files on my computer. It doesn't seem like a cd really holds that many songs amd it takes awhile to burn each cd. I don't want to delete itunes because I sometimes burn the songs again later on other cds. I am not sure how to index them, as you suggested, oldtimer. Do you mean that I should make liner notes for each cd or index them somehow on the computer? I also agree with you about Best Buy. I want to have some knowledge so that they don't sell me the wrong thing.

Kaki's Sister, how do I play in compatibility mode? I am unfamiliar with that.

Thanks!

How large is the flash drive? If it's 32 GB, it would be large enough. If it's only 2 GB it won't help much.


A CDR holds about 700 MB. A DVD holds 4.7 GB (4700 MB). You can get flash drives that will hold a lot more, but they can get expensive.

You can buy an external hard drive that connects to your computer by plugging into a USB port. You can get one that's a terabyte or more (1000 GB) but you probably don't need one that large. For the amount of space they have, they are more economical than using USB flash drives. ***USB external hard drives at Newegg***.

If you are using iTunes to burn songs, it's probably saved them on your hard drive as .m4a files but is burning them as CD audio files (which are much larger). So you may not be gaining much space at all by burning the music on CDR.

I'd recommend the external hard drive -- or having a second hard drive installed inside your computer case.

Jenny100,

I will look into the external hard drive. I am not sure how they work but I will go to Best Buy and see what they have and see if they will explain them to me. I really appreciate all of the great suggestions. Thanks you very much. I will let you know what I decide and how it works out.

I purchased one a few years back, no complaints here. I think I paid around $80.00 (USD) for a 1 terabyte WDC My Book).

I looked online and saw this one at Best Buy that had good customer reviews, is inexpensive and seems like it would be easy for me to use. It only has 250 GB storage. Is that enough or should I buy one with a bigger capacity? I am lost when it comes to the inner workings of a PC.

Thanks.

Seagate - 250GB External USB 2.0 Portable Hard Drive Model: ST902504EXA101-RK | SKU: 9690449

Product Features

* From our expanded online assortment; not available in all Best Buy stores
* 250GB storage capacity
For expanded storage of your important documents, media and other files.
* USB interface
For fast and easy connection to your computer.
* 8MB cache buffer
For increased processing speed.
* 5400 rpm speed
For fast performance.

Seagate is a good brand - but, for an additional $35.00 you can get a drive with 4 times the capacity.

Look at the 1 terabyte model (Seagate - Expansion 1TB External USB 2.0 Desktop Hard Drive - Black).

InlandAZ,

I bought the Seagate Free Agent Go Portable Hard Drive with 500GB. I think that should be plenty for me. I like the fact that I don't have to plug it in because my outlets around my computer are overloaded with things.

However, it has been a little bit confusing to use. There are no instructions, so when I installed it it asked if I wanted to install the dashboard. Thinking that it was what I needed to do, I clicked on yes. I didn't see any options to choose what I wanted to back-up and when I clicked on back-up, it started scanning and backing- up my whole hard drive. I didn't want to do that but only wanted to store my media files.

I finally found the help document and they make it sound so easy to choose what you want to back-up and click on it. However, I can't find a screen on the dashboard that matches the one they are showing in their diagram

I couldn't mess with it any more and had to get to work, so I will try again tonight. Maybe I will have to uninstall it and start over. I will say that their website etc. isn't much help.

Just copy and paste the files you want to save manually, the same way you would with a floppy drive, only instead of pasting in A: you'll paste to whatever the letter of your external hard drive is. Or you can probably just drag the files to the external drive using Windows Explorer.

If you want, you can create a folder for your music files on the external drive the same way you'd create a folder on your C: hard drive.

You don't need to use any special software unless you want "automatic backup" or something.

Yes, what Jenny said. I have a Free Agent Go and I love it. I first started using the included software as you did for backups and that was fine. But I now just drag and drop the files I want to have a copy of from my C: drive to the Seagate Go drive. I've made folders as she suggested too. Works great.

I think you may have installed the Sync software they ship with the drive - all you really need is the device drivers.

Jenny,

Not sure I am understanding. I have copied and or cut and pasted lots of things but when it comes to music files, I am not sure how to do it. Can I copy and paste the whole itunes icon and they will transfer? Don't I need to delete them from my c drive since I want them off my computer to free up space? If I have to individually copy or cut and paste each song, it would take a long time. My external drive is the F drive.

I am not sure how to access the external drive since it is displaying so funny with this dashboard thing that I have.

I am still at work but will try to figure it out when I get home.

Thanks.

First you have to locate the actual music files.
Then just copy them the way you would any other file.

According to http://support.apple.com/kb/ht2279
they should be in
C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\My Documents\My Music\iTunes...
where <username> is whatever your username is on your computer.

Make sure you've actually copied the files you think you've copied before you go deleting them from your hard drive. If you have a decent Internet connection and want them backed up in more than one place, you might choose something like Carbonite to back them up online.
http://www.carbonite.com/
Or you might find you can copy the files to DVD. Music files are a lot smaller in their .m4a form than as CD audio files.

There must be some way to close the "dashboard thing" and just use Windows Explorer. I'd uninstall it through Control Panel if it's popping up when you don't want it.

I deleted it from my harddrive and reinstalled. I still have the dashboard thing but didn't include the other trial software they offered. The dashboard thing is an installer and it popped up automatically. There isn't a way to bypass it that I could see. My system is supposed to be backed-up. It started the back-up automatically and I wasn't given a chance to choose which files I wanted to use.

I still don't have a screen to look at and use like the one they show in the help section. I am supposed to create a Backup Plan and name it and be able to choose the files I want to back-up but what I see on the screen doesn't match the help screen so I can't do what they are suggesting.

I tried to drag my iTunes folder from the desktop into it but got an error message that I couldn't do that and had to put files in. I thought that was what I was doing. I am not sure how to drag and drop them in without doing each individual song and that will take me forever to do. Is there an easier way to do this that I am missing? If my whole c drive was backeded -up, I think the music files are already backed-up but it is hard to tell.

How do I burn my itunes library onto a DVD? I have burned individual cds but haven't tried to burn all of my music files on a DVD. Do I have to create a playlist and drag each song onto the list and then burn the DVD? That seems really time consuming.

Sorry to be so dense but this has been confusing and all I want to do is clean out my hard drive so that my games will play better!

Thanks for your help.

If you navigate to your Seagate Go drive to look at what's there, is there something called Seagate Manager?

No, there isn't a Seagate Manager. There is a file folder that has my name_backup and the size is larger than 22.1 GB. That must be my back-up. When I look in it there is a Read Me.XML files and a Txt file and a JIM file and a DB3 file plus a couple of others. It doesn't show me what has been backed-up.

The icon that was left on my desktop after the installation is a Seagate Dashboard icon and it doesn't have a Seagate Manager showing either. I wonder why it installed so differently on my computer than it did on others?

Ah, now I see. I looked it up and you have a Seagate GoFlex. It's somewhat different from the Seagate Go. It comes with the dashboard you're talking about.

You might take a look at this review further down the page where it explains the Dashboard and how it works. Don't know if it will help...

GoFlex Review

Thanks for finding that, Draclvr.

I am really stressing out about this because I don't know how to use this device. I have spent countless hours messing with it and I am totally frustrated. Even the Seagate help forums say the same thing: drag and drop the files, but when I do this it won't let me. I tried opening itunes and exporting the files but I have so many choices in MY Computer (Seagate) that I am not sure where to put it.

I have dragged and dropped before but this is apparently too technical for me. Can anyone (who has this same device) tell me specifically what I do to transfer my music files? Right now, my whole computer has been backed up (I didn't want that) and my music files are still taking up space. This device was supposed to be easy to use but it hasn't been for me and I am not completely ignorant about computers (close, but not completely)

I would take it back but my whole computer is now on it and I am sure that I won't be able to figure out how to clear it.

Thank you.