my adventures in computerland

i recently purchased a game (Galactic Civilizations 2), and noticed that it was having slight glitches. not being much of a whiner when it comes to that sort of thing, i ignored it for a while, until I noticed on the forums of the games website that if i updated my dual core systems drivers, it would run smoother. someone also made mention of updating my graphics card driver.

i updated the processors driver without any problems. when i updated my video cards driver, however, my resolution (previously set at 1024x960 or something like that on high color settings) was reduced greatly, and i couldn't fix it without going down to true (16 bit) color. speaking to a friend at work the other night about the problem, he suggested trying some third party drivers (omega drivers). I loaded them, and it made everything run slowly, so i figured on uninstalling both new drivers.

someone, the driver for one of my busses got deleted, and my computer was essentially unusable to me. i couldn't connect to the internet to find the drivers i needed, and the disc i got from my manufacturer wasn't loading the drivers either. i had to restore my system.

luckily, however, i was able to keep all my personal data. in fact, my computer now runs better than it was previously, as i was working so hard and so long at making the damn thing run properly again that i took the extra time to make firefox run properly (getting the WMP plugin to work proved to be more difficult than it should be, and it IS microsofts fault), i was able to customize it more to my liking, and i FINALLY got on board with RSS feeds (which are AWESOME). also, several of the programs i had no use for are conveniently not there anymore.

my only problem thus far has been PRISMXL running in the background, and i've been unable to 100% uninstall every norton file. i've removed PRISMXL before, so i'm sure i can do it again, and i disabled norton by removing all of the files except 3 .dll files that won't let me.

i wrote this whole thing, basically, to let people who are having what seems like big computer issues know that it's not always for the worst. if you're willing to invest the time, you may just come out on top. don't let yourself get frustrated.

25cents,

If you boot into safe mode, you should be able to delete the remaining Norton .dll files. Power on and press f-8, then select "safe mode" from the boot options menu.

Not to downplay the rest of your post, but how'd it turn out with GalCiv? Did you get past the glitches? Great game--you say you've been to the forums, I'm assuming you've also downloaded the patches for it? The boxed set comes with v. 1.1 I believe, and they've got it patched up to 1.4 now. If you're still having problems, try that (if you haven't already.)

yeah, i actually purchased it online. i'm having issues at this point due to serial number or machine SID numbers not matching, but i don't even know what the hell that means. i'm sure it'll be sorted out. stardock has their stuff together.