Vista - What a night!!!

Last night I had a right todo here, I had a game installed called Dreamfall: The Longest Journey Limited Edition, and chose to play it, but as soon as I double clicked the shortcut it said, "Additional Libraries need to be installed" so I go ahead and do so, then I had to reboot, at this stage some of you will know what happened next, but I'll carry on.

During re-boot error, System cannot boot, if you have installed any new hardware blah blah blah, thing is I had'nt and the error also said something along the lines of "sfc.....etc" I am thinking starforce maybe?

So thanks to that I had to format again!! I could not see anything in the manual about updating protection drivers or anything, but even if I had, I had the latest as I needed them for "Brothers in Arms Earned in Blood"

Suffice it to say that I was angry as sin and still am, now its a case of installing all my stuff again and everything, man I hate that, fortunately I did manage to burn alot of important files and programs to some disks, but its still so annoying.

Jekyll and Hyde

sfc is the system file checker, it checks for errors in the operating system, you could have just booted from the installation dvd and went to command prompt, logged into windows and typed sfc /scannow to fix any errors you have.

Ah well the thing is I was not aware of that and would'nt have known, I just thought I did'nt have a choice but to format the HD

Thing is I am now reluctant to install the game and try to play it

I hate it when that happens, luckily for me, my friend works in computers for a living and usually gets me out of big jams like this, although, sometimes, the guy doesn't answer the phone, I get even angrier and do what you just did... format the whole thing again.

I am not a patient man when it comes to computer problems, yet, I could spend 3 days trying to fix a dumb issue... Ain't life grand

I'm like that too, no patience, I used to be for years and now due to things happening in my world, I have none at all, life is grand indeed

Sadly for me I have no-one to help me, no friends here at all, still I can't afford to let people get close, so the computer bloke is the only guy to do it, and that ends soon enough, but anything like that on boot up and I go straight for formatting, hate it but as my knowledge of other things to try is non-existant, what else is there to do

I can understand your frustration at the fact that you have a problem and the only person to fix it is not around, that would kill me lol

Jekyll and Hyde

Hello everyone (this seems to be a thread of skilled and up)

I am not patient when it comes to issues either, which is how I learned all this. If I had someone else to fix my computer, I would not know as much as I do now. I had to do it all myself, which turned out pretty well.

Anyways, JnH, set a restore point and then install it. That way if it screws up, you can just go back to right before it.

~Lordbob

Hi Lordbob,

Yes I have system restore on, but after awhile I turn it off, keep getting it into my head that when I am playing a game and get slowdown or lag as many call it, that it is down to things like that running in the background, don't think I'll ever get the hang of this PC lark

If I was not so much of a rush rush rush kinda guy, and did'nt get so over stressed then I would be fine, but as soon as things go wrong I get ill through all the hassle, just cannot calm down at all

Jekyll and Hyde

Hi mate, sorry to hear of your dramas. On the plus side, at least a fresh OS install gets things running smoothly again

(don't forget to update windows etc )

For future reference (as in start now ), restore points are best left enabled. They don't create any impact while gaming.

Restore points are usually only created under these conditions:

At system startup
Installing new applications
Installing new Windows Updates
Creating a manual restore point

The biggest 'perfomance hit' that runs in the background that affects games is usually the search indexer.

I hate that search indexer on Vista because, as of yet, I can't find a single file on my PC but... that's an entirely new posts so let's not bother with this one.

lordbob is right, the only reason why I have learn so much (within a huge limit of what the majority here are) is by trial and error. I do ask my friend or here but only when I am stuck and can't continue on because my understanding of the error is beyond my knowledge.

Exactly!

~Lordbob