Calling all Tech people, This computer is melting my brain.

[Satori]

HI guys I'm hoping you guys can help me out.

My Pc died recently, I'm not having much luck, 1st my cat and now my Pc lol.
My brother in law was kind enough to offer me his pc because he doesnt use his. Mine should be fixed as soon as my uncle can be tracked down. I've released the hounds already. I suspect my power unit thingy "where the electricity lives" has gone to computer heaven. It no longer turns on and I can hear a spark/clicking in that region. That being the case I suspect the motherboard thing could have been wiped out at the same time. kinda like slamming a door and windows shattering.

Anyways so I've been leant a pc and given the option to buy it for £100 in the event my pc cant be repaired.
I've had a look and on the numbers side it seems to stamp all over my pc. I have two problems as far as I'm aware.

I installed pol and ffxi and can get it to run. I even had a look around windurst and everything seems fine apart from the graphics. it doesnt seem as sharp as my ancient pc used to run it.

This new pc is running Windows 7 home premium.

My old display settings were

Display 1024 x 768 Pixels 32 bit

Game Config options for ffxi config.
1024 x 768
1024 x 1024

Textures low
maps uncompressed.

I set these same settings upon my first login on this system and I've never seen anything so ugly in my life and I've seen Galka lapdance in subligar.
I spent hours logging in and out with different settings and I just can't seem to get it looking nice, I'm struggling with the menu's and text boxes also. I don't like them microscopic and squashed or huge and chunky.

my old nvidia card was a gforce 6200 or was it 6400 <- one of those lol.

The new pc has a NVIDIA GeForce 7100/ NVIDIA nFORCE 630i I updated the drivers.

The pc info itself is a packard bell imedia S3720, Intel core 2 quad cpu Q8300 @ 2.50 GHz 2.50GHz.
installed memory 3.00 GB
system type 64 bit operating system.

Monitor is set at 1280 x 1024 I tried to set this as my old monitor was but I'm unable to get 1024 x 768. Considering I'm using my own monitor and only swapped the tower I thought it would be easy.

Sorry for all the waffle

My problems are

1) I can't seem to get ffxi to look right either its too jagged, not smooth looking, or chat boxes and menus are small and squashed.

2) This pc seems unable to hold an internet connection. took me loads of times to Dl the game updates.
I keep losing connection and getting a box appear mentioning broadband but telling me it's redialing. which seems odd to me I've not seen anything like that since dial up days. I#ve not tried leaving fxi to see if it bumps me off but it happens when browsing the net and on facebook, on youtube if it pops up the video with jump a little then continue.

I really have no idea how to sort these out, Myself and technology don't mix well.
I hope one of you runs the game on a similar system and can give me an idea of how you set up your ffxi config.
Honestly the category's mean nothing to me I have no idea what I'm adjusting or why so each selection I've tried I'm just hoping I'll get lucky and go "yeah that'll do"

I hope you can help me with both problems.

Thanks in advance

Steph

[Raydeus]

Re: Calling all Tech people, This computer is melting my brain.

Holy mother of the Moogles, kupo. I have no idea where to start except for saying I'd need to take a good look at your computer in order to make any appropriate suggestions for it.


In the mean time you need to check your 3D settings (graphics card) to see how they are configured and adjust the background resolution and others via regedit (XI) if your 3D settings alone don't fix the problem.

[cidbahamut]

Re: Calling all Tech people, This computer is melting my brain.

I've heard from a number of folks that FFXI simply doesn't play nice with new age hardware. It has something to do with FFXI's engine and some of the tech it uses being so old that newer computers are all running that through an emulator which just turns everything to rubbish. I don't know how to fix it and I'm probably talking out of my ass a bit on that, so don't take my word for it.
Additionally you might want to take a look at this page, as it might help you clean up the graphics a bit: Graphics - FFXIclopedia, the Final Fantasy XI wiki - Characters, items, jobs, and more
It's not as complicated as it appears, I promise. In fact I think Windower has a fancy GUI that will do the registry editing for you very cleanly.

For the downloading stuff slowly...you might want to take a look at the BlueGartr forums. I know they maintain a torrent with all the game updates so people can bypass the bottleneck with SE's servers doling things out at 56k dial-up speeds.

As for your old PC, if the power supply is shot that doesn't necessarily mean any of your other components are damaged. In fact there's a good chance all you'll need to do is swap in a new power supply and you'll be good to go. It's not exactly difficult, but if you aren't comfortable rummaging around in the innards of your computer I'd recommend getting a tech savvy friend to help you with it, or simply take it to a shop.

[Satori]

Re: Calling all Tech people, This computer is melting my brain.

Thank you.
I will keep adjusting the variables in the settings of ffxi config menu. I just hoped somebody may have had a similar setup and share their setting values.

I think I'll have to go through each setting one by one until I find one that looks right to me.

If anybody can tell me what overlay graphics resolution and background resolution would best suit the machine,
I'm not having touble as such displaying the game. I swear I almost saw eyelashes at one point.
I just dont seem to find a setting to keep the graphics smooth and having the menu's look like what I'm used to.
Thanks for the help so far I'll keep trying.

[Raydeus]

Re: Calling all Tech people, This computer is melting my brain.

Overlay is best set at your monitor's native resolution. Background can go as high as 4096 x 4096 (Registry edit) I think. The more res you put in it the less blocky it will look. Also works as ghetto Anti-Aliasing. XD

Menus used to be set by overlay but I think they've split them into their own category or something, it's been a while. But if they were you can try setting them at the same res as your overlay, or higher and see how it looks to you. Also, put textures on high and set everything to uncompressed for better looks since the RAM hit is minimal on a game like XI.

[Satori]

Re: Calling all Tech people, This computer is melting my brain.

Thank you.
I'm feeling a step closer to solving one of my problems.
I think I did what you said. I set the fields to the max values then had a look at what the monitor display was saying, Then I set the same values to ffxi. The graphics are fine looking more detailed than I used to play on, Animations seem smooth too I ran around cast a few spells. I zoned summoned avatars and did a few bloodpacts to see how it went all looked good. Only problem is still the size of the chat box and menus. Icons are tiny too.
I'm still going to slowly work down the values from where I am it's just a little frustrating.

Then the task of making this thing keep its connection going lol.

Thanks for the help so far.

[Raydeus]

Re: Calling all Tech people, This computer is melting my brain.

NP I wish I could give you something more specific to work with. <_<;

About the connection have you checked the firewall? It may be blocking XI or some type of traffic.

[Satori]

Re: Calling all Tech people, This computer is melting my brain.

it keeps happening on the internet and facebook also. if midgame or watching a video sometimes it continues as if nothing has happened but in ffxi it dc's me. I get a pop up about the broadband connection and it mentions redialing, I find that odd as I've not seen dialing mentioned in about 5 years.
one of the windows things mentions "connecting through miniport" and ppp or something like that.
I've reset the adress thingy and removed the previous internet connection and created another and compared it to my laptop's settings and I dont see anything standing out to be different.

My apologies if I've not given the correct or enough information. Im not exactly sure what it is i need to be telling you or where to find it.
Thanks again for the help you've been giving me, I appreciate it.

[Raydeus]

Re: Calling all Tech people, This computer is melting my brain.

If you are using the exact same connection you did with your other computer then it's almost guaranteed it's a bad setting in your new rig blocking something in your connection.

There are a few things that could be happening. Too strict network settings, firewall conflicts, network driver not being installed correctly, etc. You are going to need to check all the network settings and see if there's anything causing the conflict.

For firewalls the easiest way to see if the problem is there is to disable it for a little while to test your connection, if it stops DC'ing your then that's it, then you may need to adjust traffic settings or even add an exception depending on what the problem is. For network adapter settings and driver issues it can be more complicated than that.

[Satori]

Re: Calling all Tech people, This computer is melting my brain.

I sorted the graphics part eventually and now have it looking nice and shiny compared to my old pc.
I still can't hold a solid connection though.
This Pc has Norton 360 on it. I've tried to disable the firewall but I can't see how to do it. The windows one is tied to norton 360 when I try to adjust it via control panel.
I tried fiddling with settings but I've had no luck at all. I'm not at the point where I have no idea what things mean and I'm just clicking for the sake of it.

Would it be worth getting hold of his discs and reformating it? "thats where you wipe the pc and install all over again right? Would it benefit me in any way? such as removing the strict settings?
I've scanned it for viruses and spyware/malware. using norton 360, adaware, malwarebytes and avg all of them came up squeaky clean all were operated with the others deactivated so they didnt conflict.

My mum finally got hold of my uncle and turns out he's been off radar for a while because he's got prostate cancer and been trying to hide it. He'll fix my pc with his wife eventually but I may be stuck with this pc for a little longer.

The connection thing happens on all things to do with the internet, browsing, facebook, youtube and ffxi. With ffxi as soon as the connection info box that asks me to connect happens my char gets the dreaded red dot and it's game over, end up on the menu for char select or make a new char, I can log straight back in but within a minute or two it dc's again and then it's completely out of the game back to pol to put password in.

Where on facebook or youtube when it pops up most of the time the connection just continues where it left off like nothing happened.
My laptop gets the message at the same time too, That's on Xp it gives a message pop up "local area connection is now connected" That message also pops up on the laptop but most activities resume as before.

Or is there a way to restore it to it's factory/fresh from the store settings?
I'm starting to think it will be better to start from the beginning and work up?

I'd love to get it all up and running to be able to buy this pc, £100 is a bargain to me when considering my pc was bought in 2005 and this pc stomps all over mine. It's just frustrating.

[cidbahamut]

Re: Calling all Tech people, This computer is melting my brain.

Wait, so the connection issue is showing up on multiple computers? It's possible it could be an issue with the router then. Troubleshooting networking errors is always a pain because there's a ton of things it could be.

If you've got the time, the inclination and the know-how I would recommend doing a fresh install. Just blow away everything on the harddrive(reformat it) and start with a fresh install. That'll give you a baseline to work from and will pretty much rule out software as being the issue. If you don't have the discs it's possible there might be a paritition on the harddrive that contains utilities that will allow you to reset everything to factory defaults, but you usually have to access this from the BIOS screen rather than the operating system itself.

- - - Updated - - -

I'd also recommend you double check all your connections. I had my internet start dropping like crazy last week and couldn't figure it out. I finally took a look at the wires from my computer to my router and then noticed the power plug for the router was hanging half out of the wall socket so it was just turning off due to not getting any power. I still don't know how that happened, but there ya go.

[Satori]

Re: Calling all Tech people, This computer is melting my brain.

I've accessed a Bios screen before. Thats how I reformatted it before with my windows disc. I hope thats the correct way of doing it lol.
I've checked my wires and tried running it through my broadband cable modem only. I have a router thingy so I can use my pc or laptop/360 at the same time. So I tried modem only and still dc. /wrists.

As you can tell I know 0 about pc's apart from a few little things, You probably can guess by the ammount of info I've thrown at you all. I'm not sure what I've given is even related to my issue. I'm just trying to do my best lmao.

Thanks for the help again so far, I'll keep you updated.

Oh about the partition, How will i know if it has one or contains the tools I need? I've only been in the bios of my own pc a couple of times one to disable the old graphics card I had and a few times to boot from the windows disc and start all over "is that reformatting? or did I do a bad bad thing back then?"

[DakAttack]

Re: Calling all Tech people, This computer is melting my brain.

It sounds like somebody is running torrents on your network. The quick disconnections are hardly perceptible outside of FFXI, but FFXI will drop you completely each and every time. I think the problem is simple: your PC is old as balls.

[cidbahamut]

Re: Calling all Tech people, This computer is melting my brain.

Re: partition - Usually it will appear as a secondary harddrive under My Computer, although that's not always the case. When your BIOS screen comes up there will briefly be prompts for buttons you can press to access certain menus(it tends to vary from one computer to the next but usually it's some f-keys), one of those might be labeled with something useful(utilities or something like that) but I can't tell you what exactly it might be. Just keep an eye out as your computer boots up and see what it has and try poking a few of said keys. Dont' worry you'll be able to back out of all the menus you bring up without doing any damage.

Reformatting is a term generally used to indicate the complete formatting of a harddrive and subsequent re-installation of an operating system, but the act of reformatting itself is just the wiping of the drive and configuring it for a specific file system(NTFS, FAT32, etc).

It sounds like you might end up needing to badger your Internet Service Provider for some new hardware, or at least find out if the problem is on their end.

On the off-chance that it's not, there's a set of really basic commands you can run that often clear up some minor networking issues. Basically this is what I use at work to fix networking issues when I don't know what the hell the problem is and it works 90% of the time (the other 10% generally consisting of badgering the ISP to fix stuff on their end).

Open up a command prompt window (start -> run -> type in "cmd")
Next, enter the following lines one at a time:
ipconfig /release
ipconfig /renew
ipconfig /flushdns

It basically resets the settings on your network connection and makes sure you've got an IP that all the networking black magic should play nice with. Even if it doesn't fix the problem it won't make it any worse.

[DakAttack]

Re: Calling all Tech people, This computer is melting my brain.

If you have an OS disk, you can run a Repair Upgrade to repair your OS installation. You can download OS ISOs from the Digital River website, and burn them yourself. You'll need your serial/registration code for this.