Sonic and Sega Retro Message Board: Rage - Viewing Profile - Sonic and Sega Retro Message Board

...And both my Ethernet and modem drivers are broken. I can't locate the disc of drivers my computer came with, and even if I could, the reason the drivers are broken is because I was a stupid teenager who didn't take care of his discs and that part of the disc is scratched. So any time I reformat, some of the drivers end up missing, which usually isn't a problem but I'm starting to hate the speed of wireless so I want to get this fixed. Is there an easy way to find what drivers I need and where to get them? For as long as I've been using computers this is all still new to me.

I'm still using my ancient Dell XPS M1710, if it helps.

Do we talk about hardware here? Figured I'd give this a shot.

Short version: My brother bought a DSi some months ago used and it stopped turning on after a month. We've tried a new battery and a new charger, still won't turn on. His solution was to just buy a new one, so I'd like to get this old one working so I could have a DS for the first time in years. It would cost $75 for Nintendo to repair it, and at that point I may as well get a new (used) one.

Any tips for opening it up and seeing if there's something I can fix?

So Star Wars The Old Republic runs like shit on my 5-year-old laptop. Half the time it chugs along at a snail's pace, the other half it's manageable, but still laggy. Frame rate at its worst can be a frame every few seconds, and commands (like simply walking) take seconds to register, if not longer. Yes, I've turned down everything there is to turn down graphically, it still runs like shit. Internet connection isn't the problem either-- I get a much different experience when that occurs (frame rate is decent, but none of the stuff server-side reacts to what I'm doing, ie mobs and stuff).

For a while I've known that my computer can run up to 4GB of RAM as opposed to its current 1GB. I figured this should be the final straw so I used crucial.com to recommend a compatible upgrade. I went with 2GB for now, effectively doubling my RAM, but now that I've ordered it I see that SWTOR only needs 1.5GB of RAM to run on Windows XP.

I kind of need this upgrade either way, but is it possible that 500MB was making all the difference? I hope so, because I'd really like this game to be playable without having to buy a new computer.

Bonus question: My fans need replacing at some point too. Is upgrading the RAM going to put more strain on them? No, I do not know much about computers, so sorry if that's a dumb question.

Avast is going nuts every couple of minutes. Tried to scan my system and a couple viruses were found and apparently taken care of but alerts are still going off. What the best (free) was to clean my system without resorting to reformatting?

Other than to annoy, I mean.